Some Elmer S. Gish parents are furious this week that their junior high students might be booted to Lorne Akins next year due to overcrowding.
Elmer S. Gish parents learned in a meeting with the St. Albert Public School board administration this week that the board planned to eliminate the school's regular (Global) junior high program because the school was overcrowded. Students in that program would be sent to Lorne Akins.
Gish is a triple-track school where students can enrol in the Cogito (high academic focus), Logos (Christian) or Global (standard) programs. It has been overcrowded under provincial standards since at least 2014.
Gish has 864 students and a recommended capacity of 855, reports assistant superintendent Michael Brenneis. Of these, 512 are in Cogito, 246 are in Global, and 106 are in Logos.
The school picked up 152 more students at this school year and, if growth rates continue, will have a population of 1,200 by 2018.
"The school simply cannot sustain another increase of this size next year," wrote superintendent Barry Wowk in a letter sent to parents this week.
The new Lois E. Hole Elementary was supposed to take the pressure off Gish, but it's been delayed to 2017. Board staff asked Global parents to voluntarily move their Grade 8 and 9 students to Lorne Akins last year, but not enough did.
In an interview, Wowk says he now plans to completely close the Cogito program to new students except for kindergarten. The program is already closed to all non-St. Albert residents.
"For lack of a better word, I'm going to super-close it," he says.
"No new people till we get our new schools."
He's also proposed to close the school's Global junior high program. This move would send 59 students to Lorne Akins and free up two classrooms.
"That's causing a lot of concern," he admits, as many parents don't want their children to change schools.
Wowk says he decided to move the Global students because the global program was the "least viable" at the school in terms of numbers. Kindergarten to Grade 6 Global students would stay at Gish, he notes.
Angry parents
Sarah Lindgren, a long-time Gish parent who has two children in the school, one entering Grade 9 in the fall says she is furious with the news.
Lindgren says when Wowk made his announcement, it made her and other parents feel unwelcome at Gish.
"My son right now is looking to go from a school where he knows a lot of the kids … to a school where, and I remember his words, 'I don't know anyone there.'"
In his letter to parents, Wowk says he made this decision in order to affect the fewest number of people possible.
"It's doublespeak," Lindgren says of this reasoning.
"They want to keep the Cogito families together. They want to keep the Cogito kids with their friends," she says.
"It's like I live on Animal Farm (an allegorical novel by George Orwell). Yes, we are all equal, but the Cogito people are more equal than others."
Lindgren argues that the board should ask the significant number of Edmonton students in the Cogito program to leave and go to Edmonton-based Cogito schools instead of moving the Global students. She was not sure how many Edmontonians were in the Gish Cogito program.
Gish parent Jill Cunningham, who spearheaded the effort to create the school's edible garden in 2013, says she was saddened, but not surprised by this proposal.
"My daughter's friends, a lot of them are pretty upset and angry," she says, as this move will break them up.
Still, she wasn't sure if the board had an alternative.
"The best situation would have been if the Alberta government had been better prepared for this and the schools were already being built."
While the Cogito change was a definite go, Wowk says that he's reconsidering the junior high closure in wake of resident feedback.
