Numbers don't add up
The Record (New Westminster)
Jun 20 2009
By: Maureen Maier

Dear Editor:

To make good decisions we need two things: complete, accurate information and political will to do what is right. At the moment we have neither.

The board of trustees is now finished its round of consultations over closing Connaught Heights Elementary. However, the large booklet of statistics that they use to try and "clarify" the effects and reasonableness of various options is both flawed and misleading, and the options presented ignore the most obvious and logical solutions.

First of all, they believed that there would be adequate daycare at Lord Tweedsmuir to include incoming Connaught students. Their numbers show two vacancies out of 60 spots. As parents we had to inform them that their statistics were misleading to the point of being blatant lies - those spots are in Kindercare only; anyone looking for only after-school care already has to wait over four years to get a spot!….

What parents aren't aware of is that the Ministry of Education required all the population calculations to be done as if every room in the school that isn't the main office or the gym is used as a classroom. So when they say this certain number of students would all fit in Lord Tweedsmuir's actual school building, that means with no music room, no computer room, no learning center, no offices for aboriginal ed or counsellor, after-school programs, etc.

The ministry's assumptions are not acceptable, so why are we using them as our guidelines for making decisions?

Yes, there is a need to balance out our school populations, as some schools are overcrowded and the new school configurations are going to make others under-utilized….

Until there is enough room to house all of Tweed's kids in their own building, no one should even consider closing Connaught.