Some parents may not be happy when they find out how boundary changes for Giles and Bellewood public schools will impact their family.
They will find out Wednesday night what the new boundaries are for French immersion students in West Windsor at a public meeting. The meeting is at Marlborough Public School starting at 7pm.
Both Marlborough and Central public schools will start accepting French immersion students in JK to Grade 1 starting this September.
Greater Essex County District School Board Superintendent of Education, Accommodation Todd Awender on January 29, 2015. (Photo by Jason Viau)
Superintendent of Education Todd Awender admits some parents will not be pleased to find out their younger children may be going to one school, while their older siblings go to another.
"Unfortunately, when we do make these decisions, it is nearly impossible to make everybody happy," he says. "But what we do try to do in these situations, is try to impact the fewest amount of people and families that we possibly can."
Capacity continues to be a challenge at Giles and Bellewood. Awender says close to 20% of all students at the Greater Essex County District School Board are currently enrolled in French immersion. He says JK enrollment this past February indicates the popularity of the programming is not slowing down.
"We have approximately 1,050 students that are at Bellewood. We do have 11 portables on the site right now. And then, over at Giles, we have approximately 760," he says. "All of our projections and trends suggest that it will continue."
Photo of Bellewood Public School in Windsor courtesy of www.google.ca/maps.
The new Giles Public School is designed to accommodate 650 students, so already enrollment there is 100 over capacity.
"We wouldn't want, come September, to have to turn students away from the school because we just can't accommodate them because of occupancy codes," explains Awender.
Right now, Marlborough and Central are under capacity with 350 students and 230 students, respectively.
Some parents may be wondering why the board did not anticipate the continued growth of French immersion in recent programming and accommodation review in West Windsor.
"At this point in time, you can't do any accommodation reviews. They're currently being looked at by the ministry," he says. "These particular moves don't fall under the criteria for an accommodation review. As a result, it's more of a programming and boundary adjustment that we're doing."
The change in programming at Central and Marlborough will mean renovations at both schools, but Awender says work this summer will not be extensive and will be funded through the province's School Condition Index.
In the next couple years, he would like to build a business case for replacing the 92-year-old building at Marlborough as the French immersion program there grows.
Parents found out in a letter home from school last Thursday the board was making the changes.
