All 5 central schools to close

Edmonton public school trustees have voted to close all five central schools the administration had proposed be shut due to low enrolment.

In votes that came school by school in a meeting that stretched into the early hours, trustees approved the closure of Capilano, Fulton Place, Eastwood, McCauley and Parkdale schools.

Four of Christine Hood's children would have attended Fulton Place School next year. She said she'll home school them now, rather than send them to a nearby junior high that will become a kindergarten to Grade 9 school. Hardisty Junior High now has students from Grades 5 to 9.

Hood said her children will grow up fast enough, and doesn't want them in constant contact with much older students.

For Capilano, the vote was 8-1, with only trustee David Colburn dissenting.

Colburn warned that the province is looking at a new formula for school closure decisions, so trustees could be closing schools they don't have to.

'District of choice, not district of closure'

Edmonton, he said, should be known as a "district of choice, not district of closure."

Capilano School is not in Colburn's ward, but three others that were voted to be closed — Eastwood, Parkdale and McCauley — are. Another school in Colburn's ward, Spruce Avenue, will see its elementary program closed and moved to a nearby school.

Fulton Place, like Capilano, is in the ward represented by George Rice.

Wendy Wilton has a son in Grade 4 at Capilano School. She said Rice let down parents who worked so hard to keep the school going.

"We have programs that are volunteer run by the parents where the school board has abandoned us," she said, during a break at the meeting.

"The fight started five years ago, when Capilano was first put on the chopping block, and I wish luck to the parents at any of the other schools that are staying open," she said. "Because as soon as you a part of this process, you're marked. People don't want to go to a school that might close. They don't want to have to move their kids three years down the road."

Board chair Don Fleming told reporters he wants parents "to go home thinking that the decisions that we made were in the very best interests of their children."

"Tonight's decisions are difficult, difficult decisions," he said. "But they're really very necessary if we're going to keep the public education system sustainable in Edmonton."

Trustees were greeted by a throng of protesters outside the Edmonton Public School Board building Tuesday night, attempting one last time to see the five central schools got a reprieve.

Some of the protesters carried signs saying: "Ask. Are kids going from undercrowded to overcrowded?"  "How does the board define success?" and "Don't just get mad, get involved: October 18, 2010" — a reference to school board elections coming up in the fall.

Inside, it was a packed house, with about a dozen people in the overflow area the board had set up in preparation for what it knew would be a big crowd.