Two Cambridge elementary schools to close

The Waterloo Catholic District School Board voted unanimously to ask the region not to continue with a planned roundabout at a meeting on Monday, Oct. 24, 2011.

It was good news and bad news for parents of children in Catholic elementary schools in southeast Galt.

At a Monday night meeting of the Waterloo Catholic District School Board, trustees voted to close St. Ambrose on Chalmers Street South and St. Francis on McDonald Avenue, but to keep doors open at St. Anne on Elgin Street North.

Diane da Silva, who has children at St. Anne and was one of the parents leading the charge to keep that school from closing, said she was happy with the decision.

“It took a lot of hard work to get to this point. We weren’t going to do it without a fight,” she told CTV.

“Our school was saved.”

A school board report says most of the schools in southeast Galt are in the north end of the neighbourhood, but most students are coming from underserved areas in newer subdivisions to the south.

School board chair Wayne Buchholtz said some students displaced by the closures will end up at a new school and others at an expanded facility.

“We’ll be looking at building a new school on the other side of Dundas (Street), looking at an addition to St. Vincent de Paul,” he said.

The board’s accommodation review committee had recommended that the board purchase Lincoln Avenue Public School from the Waterloo Region District School Board, renovate it and then close St. Ambrose and St. Anne, but an outcry from St. Anne parents caused a change in plans.

The school board’s recommendations will now be submitted to the Ministry of Education.