Verdun school board forced to seek new classrooms
By P.A.Sévigny
Following what many describe as a tragic failure of the city’s erstwhile democratic process, Nuns island school board officials are now working hard to come up with some kind of working solution for island parents who are now scrambling to find a place for their school-age children. Based upon an effective local NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) campaign which effectively derailed the Verdun Borough’s efforts to change a local park’s zoning in order to help the CSMB (Commission Scholaire Marguerite Bourgeois) use a relatively small portion of the park as a convenient site for a new primary school, the commission is now forced to find at least four new classrooms in time for next September when a new wave of children are expected to begin their first year at school. As both the central city and the borough continue to repeat how they have neither the will nor the money to buy the land required to build the new school, Yves Sylvain, the CSMB’s executive director, said the school board has little choice but to open new classrooms in Notre Dame de la Paix, one of the borough’s mainland primary school located on Brault Street near the bridge leading to Nuns island. Even as island parents objected to being forced to have their children commute to the mainland by bus in order to attend their first school, Sylvain assured them they had nothing to worry about because the new classrooms will probably be used as temporary reception centers for the children of new immigrants who wish to settle in both Verdun and the island.
While the new classrooms may provide some kind of short-term solution to the CSMB’s pressing need for more classrooms, school commission executive Geneviève Hotte also discussed recent enrollment numbers which indicate how the school board’s immediate problems are bound to get worse over the next three years. While Hotte believes the school board’s numbers are excessive, she left little doubt about the school board’s immediate need for at least one new primary school if the island’s children are to be spared a daily bus ride to and from the mainland in order to get their basic education. As both the CSMB and Québec’s Education minister expect over 1100 primary students to enter the school system in time for the September (2013) school year, CSMB officials still have a few months to find a suitable piece of land in order to build their new school in time to accommodate their new students. Apart from a single site on Levert Street located near the island’s busy Place du Commerce, Sylvain said the La Fontaine Park is still the only realistic site left on the island for the CSMB’s new school. But following the borough’s recent failure to secure the site for their new school, Sylvain also said that it’s now up to the province to solve the problems raised by local NIMBY movements which are now stalling similar initiatives all over the island. While some parents were discouraged by the news, Sylvain ended the evening on a positive note after advising his audience to be patient and to wait for further developments in the new year.
“Now it’s up to the people in Québec City,” he said.
Following several serious discussions with senior officials within the province’s education department, Sylvain said he has no doubt the government is already working on a plan by which the CSMB can finally begin to build their school for the children who live on Nuns island.