Re: Closing Prince Charles Public School

Nicki Gowdy | Jul 20, 2016

I disagree with you, Brenda Crawford (Letter to the editor, Re: Closing Prince Charles Public School, Jul 14/16). Prince Charles does not need to close at all. If school boundaries were enforced and all children who live in the Verona catchment area actually attended the school then all three schools (Prince Charles, Harrowsmith and Loughborough) would be around 80-90 percent capacity, no closures needed! As well a savings on bussing would happen also, as only 1 bus would be required for most roads instead of 2-3 servicing the other schools. When families look at buying homes in an area that should mean the school in that area is where you would attend.

As to your comment about academic achievements, Prince Charles’ numbers are not a true representation of the school as the number of students taking part in the provincial testing is too low to give an accurate showing. Also the behavior program which used to be at the school in Verona was moved to Harrowsmith as the need was greater for Harrowsmith and Loughborough and the numbers had significantly decreased for the northern area. Another argument, as well, could be to move the French Immersion program to Verona due to space availability, because if I recall correctly years ago Harrowsmith's numbers were down so that was why the program was put into that school. For well over 60 years the natural progression to SHS from Prince Charles has worked fine, why change something that isn't broken?