French school rezoning aims to keep communities together

P.E.I.'s French School Board, the Conseil scholaire de la langue française, is in the middle of planning its first rezoning in almost 20 years.

The board has held two of four planned consultation meetings. These consultations are important, said assistant superintendent Bruce Joshua, in helping the board understand how people in different regions of the province interact.

"It's very valuable, some of the insights and perceptions of how they associate as communities and how they're interrelated," said Joshua.

"It's not quite so simple as drawing a line on the map … it's more complex than that." 

Growing demand for French education

Drawing the zoning lines so that they match as closely as possible to how Islanders see themselves as communities is a primary goal, but the school board also has to consider the best use of its resources.

As the number of students on the Island wishing to take advantage of an education in the French language grows, some schools — such as François-Buote in Charlottetown — are getting crowded.

The board also wants to improve the efficiency of busing. The goal is two-fold: minimizing the distance travelled by buses, and the time students spend on them.

"We want the students to spend as much time as possible in classrooms and socializing and doing extracurricular activities more than sitting on a school bus," said Joshua.

"The more we can reduce the ride times the better it is."

The next consultation meeting is for the Pierre-Chaisson School zone, and will be held at the West Prince Acadian Centre in DeBlois Thursday starting at 6:30 p.m. The final meeting is for the François-Buote School and Saint-Augustin School zones, to be held Tuesday at the Carrefour de l'Isle-Saint-Jean in Charlottetown, again starting at 6:30 p.m.