Parents fighting to keep Richmond school with 13 students open

School board to debate cancelling classes A small school in Richmond with just 13 registered students may soon cancel all its classes.

Shortly after the bells rang to signal the start of summer vacation, parents of Sea Island School students learned all classes may be cancelled in September.

The Richmond School Board has called a special meeting to discuss eliminating its education program at the grade-one-to-grade-three school for the upcoming school year.

Parent Peter Jarvenpaa said he was shocked to receive the email on Friday, just at the start of the long weekend.

"I think it is pretty underhanded; the timing of it is just terrible. The level of professionalism that they're displaying is abhorrent. In a regular business world, this just wouldn't happen," he said.

In a new district report, staff recommends cancelling classes and busing students to Samuel Brighouse School, which is about an eight-minute drive away.

While the report does not consider this to be a school closure, parents feel it is a way to avoid the process.

"I think it is a way to subvert the process of a school closure," Jarvenpaa said. "A school without kids isn't a school – it's a building."

According to the report, the school has historically seen low enrollment numbers.

The elementary school is in Burkeville, a neighbourhood near the airport with roughly 300 homes. Families living on the other side of the bridges are not part of the school's catchment area.

In 1997, the total kindergarten-to-grade-three enrollment was 54. While there had been brief increases, overall registration has steadily declined, according to the report.

The school board said it understands why parents feel like they are caught off guard, adding it would be providing supports to help with the transition.

"It's never a good time to give news like this," said Ken Hamaguchi, chair of the Richmond School Board. "Anytime you pull the plug, there's always going to be question: Why can't you wait longer or why didn't you do this sooner?"

In April, the district decided to not to offer kindergarten for the 2019-20 school year because there were only three kids registered.

"We saw that as the beginning of the end of what they were going to do to the school," Jarvenpaa said.

At that time of that announcement, there were 22 students in grades one to three registered and a new teacher was announced to teach the multi-grade classroom.

By the time the staff report was released, the registration number had plunged to just 13. The report blames this low enrollment rate for prompting the recommendation.

"We did have a teacher hired and ready to go into the program, but within a couple of weeks, the numbers dropped to the point where it was no longer viable to offer that classroom," explained Hamaguchi.

The staff report outlines why it does not believe the 13 students will have the best education experience with such a small classroom.

Jarvenpaa said parents have been campaigning since the start of the 2019 when they learned kindergarten may not be offered anymore, but they felt the school board did not support them.

"I asked them straight out to give us a hand and work with us to bolster the numbers to help bring in kids … the school board's reaction was silence," he said.

Hamaguchi said it would be challenging for the board to promote one school over another, adding it supports all the schools the same.

"That would be difficult. It is just like children, you don't promote one over the other," he said.

The special school board meeting was called for 7 p.m. Wednesday.