On behalf of the Board of Education of School District No. 57 (Prince George) I am compelled to respond to letters that appeared recently in the Prince George Citizen.
Reader Sean Ollech raised questions about the reconfiguration and the implementation the district service centre to be established at the current John McInnis junior secondary school site. Mr. Ollech is accurate in stating that this school is an excellent one. We agree. However, the enrolment at this school, which was 462 in 2005, will drop to 253 by 2014. This situation, coupled with continued enrolment decline in other schools, renders the building inoperable from both a financial and an educational perspective.
The district service center will consolidate a number of existing district operations into one building. This initiative will provide many benefits, by ensuring the continuation of important district services and providing opportunities to lower district costs, increase revenue and improve services to schools. There will be actually less space used districtwide, and fewer administrative staff than presently exist.
Education programming will continue at John McInnis. The Center for Learning Alternatives (CLA), with its 792 students and 84.5 staff, currently housed on 2nd Avenue and in leased spaces throughout Prince George, will relocate there. The District Resource Center, currently housed in the closed Gladstone elementary school, and all of the area support teams, who provide valuable special education assessment and support, will accompany the CLA to John McInnis.
Furthermore, it is important to recognize that the board, through its consultation process with various communities, has taken the politics of the day to the grassroots level. Trustees worked tirelessly to provide a plan that will move the district forward on a financially sustainable and educationally sound foundation. I can assure the community that at the center of all of the decisions that were made, students were the principal and driving focus.
Lyn Hall
Chairperson
Board of Education
School District No. 57 (Prince George)
