Richmond School Board to host special vote on elementary closures
Posted October 7, 2016 3:23 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
RICHMOND (NEWS1130) – Richmond parents will soon know the fate of three elementary schools slated for closure as the school board prepares to host a special vote next week.
A noticed posted on the board’s website, says trustees will vote at a public meeting next Tuesday on the “Consideration of Termination of the School Closure Process.”
Trustees were originally scheduled to vote on Oct. 17, but board chair Debbie Tablotney says they feel they’ve had enough public input to make a decision.
“We really feel we’ve collected a large amount of input and we’ve heard that they really value their school and school communities and so trustees felt that they were ready to move forward with a special meeting,” she says.
Richmond’s superintendent of schools Sherry Elwood recommended last month that Woodward, McKay and Dixon elementary schools be shuttered before the September 2017 in order to meet the province’s requirements for balanced budgets and 95 per cent capacity to fund seismic upgrades.
The province then backtracked on the capacity requirement.
“That led parents to question the validity of the superintendent’s report as to whether we did need to move ahead with closures to proceed with seismic upgrades,” Tablotney says. “The ground did shift a little bit and we heard that.”
Although Tablotney didn’t want to comment on how she plans to vote on Tuesday, she says as the parent of a child whose school was almost closed some years ago, she sympathizes with families.
