DSB-One closing school in Haileybury

Trustees with District School Board Ontario North East have voted to close Haileybury Public School effective June 30th.

Beginning this September, students at Haileybury Public will attend New Liskeard Public School.

The vote was held during a Special Board Meeting on March 23rd. Voting in favour of the motion for closure were trustees Doug Shearer, Bob Brush, Dennis Draves, Tom Henderson, Rosemary Pochopsky, and Saunders Porter. Howard Archibald and Peter Osterberg voted against the motion. Trustees Heather Bozzer and Wayne Major were absent.

“School boards across the Province continue to face tough decisions as a result of declining student enrolment and aging infrastructure. This decision is both financially sound and in the best interests of the students. My thanks to the parents and the members of the community involved in the Accommodation Review Committee for their valuable input,” said Board Chair Doug Shearer.

As part of the Accommodation Review, a series of public meetings were held to gather feedback from the community. The closure of the school is a sign of the times at Boards across Ontario.

Haileybury Public School was built in 1925, with additions made to the school in 1952 and 1990. A considerable amount of money had been spent on repairs at the school over the years, most recently in 2013, when the Board spent about 509-thousand dollars on mould and asbestos abatement, and other repairs. The Accommmodation Review Committee was told that in order to keep Haileybury Public School up to standard, the building would need over 6.9 million dollars of upgrades within the next five years.

The declining population was another problem. In 2014, the school had an enrolment of 120 students. With the recent relocation of Grade 7 and 8 students to Timiskaming District Secondary School, the population of the school declined to 74. That’s not very much when you consider the building has the capacity to hold 325 students. “When we reviewed the space, we noted that the entire top floor of the school was not being used,” said Director of Education, Linda Knight. “There were double grades which we soon knew were going to turn into triple grades. The projection for 2016 would have been only 65 students.”

In May 2015 the Board of Trustees updated its’ Five Year Capital Plan, and included the proposal of building a new JK-12 school for Temiskaming Shores and area students. The building of the new school would be conditional on funding by the Ministry of Education and would include allocation of shared space with the City of Temiskaming Shores as a community partner.