From October 7th to October 21st
1
In order to protect the identity of all individuals who have submitted correspondence
with regard to the Central Guelph (FI) Accommodation Review and in keeping with the
Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, all personal
information and/or identifiers have been severed from all recorded communication
(i.e. e-mails and letters) prior to distribution. The intent or message has not been
changed.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Hi Bob,
I have some questions regarding the history of French Immersion at Victory. I am not
sure who to direct these to!
When did Victory become a dual track school?
When (what year) did the West End FI students start going to Victory and why?
Best regards,
I understand that Dennis has sent you his interpretation of the Victory FI history.
Jenny Waterston has had an extensive experience with this school and below offers her
insight into your question:
"I believe that Victory has always been a dual track school as long as FI has been
offered in Wellington County.
It has definitely been so since Michael started school in 1979 but I believe it was one
of the first sites.
The FI students from the west side were sent to Victory to relieve the pressure on Taylor
Evans. At that time Taylor Evans had a huge local population as well as FI. I don't
recall the year but it was before Mitchell Woods opened and before the addition at
Gateway.
Sorry about not knowing the dates!
Jenny”
I hope that these responses answer your questions. If not, please raise them tomorrow
night.
R.J. (Bob) Borden,
From the limited historical school enrolment info we have here in Planning, it would
appear that French Immersion enrolments were first recorded at Victory PS in the late
1970's (1976/77).
A dual track program also appeared to start at Paisley Rd the same year. I have no
record as to whether the West End (west of the Hanlon) students were assigned to
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Victory PS or Paisley Rd when the area developed. I do know that in 1993, the West
End students were assigned to a dual track program at Taylor Evans PS where they
remained until 1998. With FI numbers declining in the West End (108 K-6) and the
enrolment at Taylor Evans up over 700 students, the board decided to move the West
End students Victory PS.
Dennis
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Hi Bob,
I went to the review meeting last week and I was a little surprised to hear that a dual
track school was even a consideration for Priory Park. (Priory and John McCrae are
neighbors and I don't understand the logic) I'm wondering if.....
a school closer to the south end would serve the community better.
(as a dual track) the school that is going to open in 2009 would
create an other community school for the FI families......perhaps even walk to for
some of the families...
I wait with my children for the bus. Last year, my kids got on the bus that was headed
for John McCrae. That bus started its route down below the 401. Some of the
children had been on that bus for almost an hour!!!! (a sleepy looking bunch).
If it were my family I would appreciate a school closer to my home.
I urge the ARC committee to investigate the option of a school
further south.
Thank You
Thank you for your comments and questions. I have forwarded your e-mail to the ARC
and they will all receive a copy for their consideration.
Just to reconfirm; the scenarios that were included in Report #2 were just put in by
staff as a starting point for discussions by the ARC. In fact, the ARC has not even
collectively reviewed any scenarios up to this point. At Wednesday's (tomorrow)
meeting, the ARC will have its first encounter with dealing with scenarios (i.e., using an
assessment tool to gauge the value of a scenario.).
I anticipate that before this ARC has completed its mandate it will have reviewed and
assessed many scenarios, including ones surrounding your issues.
Thanks again and stay in touch.
R.J. (Bob) Borden,
From October 7th to October 21st
3
To the ARC Committee,
As a French Immersion parent from the West End I would like to voice my opinions
about the proposed plans for the Central Immersion review. I have been involved in
my son's school for the past 5 years and it is very hard to be going through out this
whole process as I and my children have many friends affected by whatever decision
comes from this review and I would really not want to see Victory become a divided
school pitting one area against the other.
You may think that since I am from the West End I may be in favour of Victory turning
into a French Immersion Centre as this means my children can remain at Victory
however this is not the case. It would bother me to see children bussed into Victory to
have the English students being bussed out to another school; this is not really an
environmentally friendly choice and in this day of recession it is not very cost effective.
Do I like the idea of my children going to Paisley? No, not because it is a bad school
but because Victory is what my children know, where their friends are, and where they
feel comfortable and this is a big thing as it takes them a long time to warm up to
anything. My oldest son had a chance to go to a different school and when asked if
he wanted to go to a new school he said "No!" My middle son was asked numerous
times "Where do you go to school?" with out hesitation he would say "Victory Public
School." To have them leave a school they know and have grown to love (whether
they realize it or not) is really not a great option for my family. So, this leaves me with
a problem neither scenario works for my family however, I was wondering the
possibility of one of the solutions being modified? If the PLTAP or scenario 1 is
accepted could there be a clause that states any child that is registered at Victory
School as of Fall 2008 will be grandfathered through until they finish their years at
Victory?
Do other parents from the West End feel as I do? Some do yes, they do not want to
see their children leave the school they have come to know and enjoy. The sense I am
getting from other West End French Immersion Parents is that they would like to see
the Victory students carry on together until they reach grade 7 and need to switch
schools naturally.
Thank you for taking the time to read the letter and for all of the hard work you are
doing yours is not any easy job.
Sincerely,
Information received – Thank you.
From October 7th to October 21st
4
Received: Thursday, October 9, 2008
Thank you for hearing me out after the Public Meeting on Oct 1, 2008. I certainly
understand how difficult this process is and how challenging it is to please a lot of
people with different interests. I do not claim to understand the issues in the South
end scenarios and restrict my suggestions to the issues facing our community and
Victory Public School. I also want to thank you for the opportunity to address the issue
of imbalances in our schools enrolment.
One of the goals of the ARC is to address unbalances in enrolment in the schools
being reviewed. Victory Public School has a multitude of imbalances. There is an
imbalance between the enrolment in the English (E) and French Immersion
(FI) Tracks. There is an imbalance in enrolment between the primary grades and the
grades 3 through 6. There is also a problem with the growing numbers of students
being buses in from the west end of Guelph for the French Immersion program and
the schools inability to continue to find space for these students if the numbers
continue even into next year. There is also an imbalance in the make up of the
children within the two tracks themselves.
French Immersion has become very popular in our neighbourhood partly because of
the benefits of an enriched program that allows a student to learn another language.
This decision is difficult to make for a four year old yet it is made easier because the
local school has a dual track. If the French program is not a good fit for the child, he
or she can be switched over to the English track in the same school. It often is
something parents will try out. Unfortunately the English program becomes the fall
back for all the children with learning disabilities or behaviour problems, thus causing
another imbalance within the school. The options for children excelling in the English
program is currently to go to the gifted program at Fred A. Hamilton. This further
changes the make up of the English education in grades 4 through 6. This
imbalance is certainly outside of the scope of this review but is nonetheless and
important one that may not only be an effect of the problem but may also be one
cause of the imbalance.
With the marked increase in students interested in French Immersion and the
development of the West End of Guelph in the past 4 years there has been a
significant numbers of children who are buses to VPS. Twenty-nine percent of the
schools current enrolment is bused. At present we have 6 JK-SK classes in FI and
only a split FI 5/6 class. Some of this discrepancy is due to attrition but the largest
portion is due to growing interest. If this student population continues at the same
rate through the upper grades of the school, the population of VPS, if in fact it could
find some way to house it, would be greater than 50% from the West End. This is not
a sustainable model for any school.
From October 7th to October 21st
5
Victory Public School is a historical building on a small footprint in a great location.
It can not safely accommodate too many portable. There are currently three and this
does restrict the area the children have at recess. There is access to Exhibition Park
across the street that balances its small play grounds. It was not built with cars and
buses in mind in 1919. It has a small parking area that cannot house the vehicles of
all the teachers. In the winter the surrounding streets can become difficult with snow
removal for parking and safe pedestrian traffic. This is exacerbated by the numbers of
cars from parents driving children from out of the walking area. Due to this physical
restriction VPS would be better as a community school for local residents than a
French Centre for the local students and the West End bused children.
The problem with making VPS a strictly walking community school is that the school is
still imbalanced between the FI and the E tracks of students. Our
new proposal parallels the LTP scenario #1 however, it involves a change in the
southern boundary of Victory Public School. This would increase the school's
enrolment possibly in both French Immersion and in English and decrease the
enrolment to Central Public School. This loss for Central would be offset by the
displaced English track student from Paisley School in scenario #1.
I would suggest that the boundary should change from London to Suffolk but I do not
have access to the numbers that are involved in order to flush this out further. We
would need assistance from the planning department for this. We were informed at
the first public meeting that any proposal that involved the loss of students from
another school would require that school to have a seat at the ARC table. I urge you
to include Central Public School in the accommodation review and consider our
boundary change.
We will be putting together a more formal proposal and sending a delegate to speak
to the ARC but I wanted to send this along for you to consider as I understand that
time is of the essence.
Thank you for your consideration of this plan,
Response from D. Steplock: “Thank you for your thoughtful insights and suggestions.
We will forward them to the attention of the ARC at our next meeting.”
Friday, October 17, 2008 (same individual as above, and twice in last mailings)
Thank you for your response and for taking my concerns to the AR committee so
promptly. Was there a decision or any discussion about whether to invite the principal
at Central Public School Mr. Scott Preston, to join the ARC? I asked a Victory
representative first but they were unable to answer this question for me.
Because of the late arrival of your email - it did not go to the ARC last week (only
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emails received prior to October 7th) - yours is in the group of mail that we will
address on October 29th - Sorry for the delay - but there were 15 pages of emails
sent prior to yours - They will review it as they can. I hope you understand that we
cannot get back to each individual and discuss 'what the ARC decides to do with the
information'.... just that it will get reviewed with all of the other information - and the
ARC will act on new information - as they see fit during the review process. Thank you
for your understanding of the need for the ARC to follow these parameters and
process of the review. - Deb Steplock