Short list not guarantee of school closure

Parents of children inthe five central Edmonton schools facing closure Tuesday night are being toldthat sometimes the board's decision can go in their favour.

"It's not always going to work, but what I've learned in this process is change is coming," said Carrie Walmsley, who helped parents at Mill Creek School keep their school open in 2007. "It's just a very slow process."

"Take a deep breath, set your emotions, try to calm them down, reach out to those of us who have already gone through the process," she said.

The schools on the Edmonton public board's list for closure this year are McCauley, Parkdale, Capilano, Fulton Place and Eastwood. Trustees will also consider the fate of the elementary school program at Spruce Avenue School on Tuesday.

In 2006, the board put Mill Creek school on its short list for closure. It took a determined battle by parents to ensure that didn't happen, said Kris Morra, who has three daughters at Mill Creek.

"Thousands of manhours went into the fight to save this school, thousands," Morra told CBC News. "I read every single report, of every single school in the city, about numbers, figuring out how these numbers worked. We talked to every single parent in the school spoke at school board meetings, wrote letters to the editor to let people know what a great program this was, what a great school this was, and how important it was that it stayed in this community."

Morra drives 20 minutes every morning to take her girls to school, drawn in part by the Spanish bilingual program. She creditedWalmsley, head of the Mill Creek School Council at the time, with leading the charge in 2006.

'It was really exhausting'

"It was really exhausting. I had to take two years [to] completely disengage from that. It was just exhausting," Walmsley said.

The board suggested Mill Creek students be moved to Ritchie School in spite of the need for a multi-million-dollar renovation. Parents conducted a survey on the idea, Walmsley said.

"Ritchie School needed extensive renovations in order to accommodate elementary-age children," she said.

"The price tag was about $16 million and the parents were not confident that would actually come through in a timely fashion and didn't want to send their children into situation where they would be subjected to construction."

The survey also showed many of the parents would move their children elsewhere, possibly even out of the public school system.

That survey, and the support of former trustee Svend Hanson, was critical to their victory, Walmsley said.

"[Hanson] was a very influential member of the school board at the time. He'd been on the board for several years, and we were able to meet with him and we feel that the willingness for our trustee on the school board to be responsive to the constituents that elected him, is what swung the decision in our favour," she said.

Hanson, now retired, said it was the hard work by parents that really deserves the credit.

"Did I convince anyone? I might have," he said. "I totally supported it. I totally supported their position."

In the end, trustees voted in March 2007 to keep Mill Creek School open, and four years later, school numbers are up and not just in enrolment.

Enrolment and achievement up

In 2006, there were fewer than 150 students. Now, there are 170. But the more important measure of success is scholastic achievement, said Andrew Lummis, principal of Mill Creek School.

"We're very proud in the achievement of our students, and the results they have on the PATs provincial achievement tests," he said.

Seven times as many Grade 6 students at the school achieved a standard of excellence in math tests compared to 2006, the year the school was first considered for closure, Lummis said. In language arts, the number of students achieving a standard of excellence has doubled.

"If you were to take a picture of success, we are a good example of that," Lummis said.

Trustees from the public school board will make their decisions on the five schools threatened with closure Tuesday night.