Limestone Board sets out new accomodation review process

Jeff Green | Oct 05, 2016

As a group of parents sat quietly in the small gallery, wearing “I Love Yarker School” buttons, members of the Board of Trustees for the Limestone District School Board (LDSB) listened as the fate of the small Kindergarten to Grade 3 school was discussed at a committee meeting last Wednesday, September 28.

Ruth Bailey, Pupil Accommodation Review Facilitator for the LDSB, outlined the issues that led to the establishment of a Pupil Accommodation Review (PAR) for Yarker Family School.

Bailey noted that the Yarker school is the only Kindergarten to Grade 3 school in the board, making it “difficult to maintain a suitable program.” She also said, “Enrolment at Yarker school this year is 26 students, which is below our projections, and 50% of the students that live within the school's boundaries are choosing to go elsewhere ... We feel it is in the best interests of the Yarker students to be served at the Odessa Public School.”

Trustee Suzanne Ruttan, from South Frontenac, pointed out that there would be ample opportunity for the public, the township, and the school community to provide information to the PAR, and that “another staff report will come forward to the board once all that information is received.”

The Limestone Board has undertaken similar reviews in the past to deal with closing or constructing schools. A committee facilitated by board staff, including school staff and community members, was presented with all pertinent information and met over time to come up with a proposal, which may or may not have included closing schools.

However, under new directives from the Ontario Ministry of Education, school board staff are now required to provide a recommended outcome for the process even before the PAR Committee is formed to look at possible solutions to identified issues.

In the case of Yarker, board staff are recommending that the Yarker school be closed at the end of the 2016/17 school year and that students be re-directed to the elementary school in Odessa.

The PAR process for the Yarker school is the first to have been initiated since the board received a Long Term Accommodation Plan (LTAP) from the Ameresco Asset Sustanainability Group on May 24 of this year.

Although the LTAP was only “received for information purposes” in May, the first recommendation in its timeline, “establish a PAR in 2016/17 involving Yarker FS and Odessa PS, with a view to close Yarker FS and redirect pupils to Odessa PS”, has now been adopted by the board.

The LTAP also recommends that the board consider “the consolidation of students at Marysville Public School [on Wolfe Island] with students from the Algonquin Lakeshore Catholic District School Board (ALCDSB) on one site on the island.”

That proposal was also endorsed by the board committee last Wednesday and board staff will pursue the matter with staff at the ALCDSB.

The Yarker PAR and the Marysville consolidation proposals will be ratified at an LDSB board meeting on October 9.

The Yarker and Wolfe Island decisions are being watched by residents and politicians in Frontenac County, because [discussions about] the future of schools in the county are set to take place as well, starting in three years.

The Ameresco Long Term Accommodation Plan implementation timeline calls for schools in South Frontenac to be reviewed in 2019/2020 and schools in Central and North Frontenac to be reviewed in 2023/2024.

The LTAP earmarks closing schools in Glenburnie and Verona as part of the South Frontenac accommodation review.

However, the LTAP is also set to be updated in 2018/2019 and at that time enrolment projections may change based on the 2016 census results.

The current version of the LTAP report is based on enrolment projections that were prepared by Baragers Systems from a variety of data sets, including enrolment figures in the Limestone Board from 2000 – 2015, the 2011 census, and immigration and demographic data.

“2016 census taking will be mandatory once again – it is important to assess changes in pre-school & 65+ age cohorts post release of census data” according to Barager Systems.

The entire long term accommodation process is being undertaken by the Limestone Board under the backdrop of a new Ministry of Education policy initiative that may require that schools throughout the province operate at 100% capacity. This means that for every school in the board that has fewer than the number of students it was built to accommodate, another school needs to be over full.

“Achieving close to 100% utilization year-over-year will require some schools at capacity greater than 100% to offset school populations that can never achieve 100% - that is, some students in portables,” according to the Ameresco Long Term Accommodation Plan for the Limestone Board.