A Coniston grandmother said she's unhappy the Sudbury Catholic District School Board has decided to “right-size” its school in the community.
The school board is receiving about $1 million from the provincial government to tear down a wing of St. Paul Catholic Elementary School that needs extensive roof repairs.
The board said it doesn't need all of the room in the school anyway because it has far fewer students than it did when it opened in the 1960s.
But Ann Lisk, who has grandchildren attending Grades 3, 5 and 8 at St. Paul, said she thinks these plans are a mistake.
“It's really a crazy idea,” said Lisk, whose husband, Les Lisk, ran for council in Ward 9 in the last municipal election. “There's no foresight at all.”
She said a 54-unit seniors' apartment building is set to be built in Coniston, and she reasons that means seniors living in the town will sell their homes to live in the building, meaning more young families will move to town.
If the school is underutilized, Lisk said she thinks part of it should be rented out — to the school's on-site daycare, for example — or used as a lunchroom, which St. Paul doesn't already have — students eat lunch in their classrooms.
Then, it could be converted back into classrooms if there's a sudden influx of new students.
But Sudbury Catholic District School Board chair Michael Bellmore said he doubts St. Paul's student population will ever swell back to what it was when the school was built.
All boards in Northern Ontario are facing declining enrolment, as families just aren't having as many kids as they used to, he said. Board staff looked at population data in making the decision.
“We go on projections provided by senior staff, who do a detailed and thorough analysis of the population trends in the area,” he said.
“We take very seriously all of the decisions that we make, and at this time, based on the population, based on the trend lines, you're looking at a declining enrolment area. I don't see us getting back the numbers we had at the time that the school was built.”
Bellmore said he's not personally aware of the seniors' building Lisk is referring to, but said her logic that it may increase St. Paul's enrolment numbers doesn't necessarily follow.
He said vacated homes could be purchased by seniors looking to downsize, or young couples that aren't planning to have children right away or at all.
As for Lisk's idea to rent out the unused portion of St. Paul, Bellmore said he's not sure there's much demand for commercial space in Coniston.
If the board did that, it would have to pay to repair the school's roof as well as continue to maintain that wing.
Bellmore said it would cost the school board about the same to repair the roof as it will to right-size the school — nearly $1 million.
He said board staff are preparing a tender for demolition work right now, which will likely begin in late summer and last into the fall.
The chosen contractor would have to comply with health and safety requirements and ensure students are impacted as little as possible, Bellmore said.
The right-sizing isn't the only change coming to St. Paul. The school's Grade 7 and 8 students are being sent to St. Charles Catholic Secondary School next fall, which features a wing for students in those grades.
Bellmore said the decision was made because there's only about 15 students in Grade 7 and 8 at St. Paul, and there's better programming for them at St. Charles. Lisk said she has no issue with this change.
