| May 01, 2014


Editorial by Jeff Green


Granite Ridge Education Centre is a few days away from its formal ribbon cutting/grand opening ceremony. A lot has been said in the community about the decision to build a comprehensive school for the region (which drew a mixed response); its location (a mixed to negative response); and its name (negative with only a few glimmers of support). The jury is still out, and likely will be for a few more years, about how good an educational and public use facility the school will be in the long term.

One thing is clear, however; the decision to open the school in January of this year was done at the expense of the elementary students who are now attending Granite Ridge.

While hindsight is 20/20 a bit of foresight can still go a long way.

About a year ago, when the 2014 school year was being planned by Limestone Board officials, a decision was made to open Granite Ridge in January of 2014, no matter what.

There were other options at the time. One was to leave everything as it was and keep Hinchinbrooke and Sharbot Lake public schools open for one more year, including the busing. This may have been more costly operationally, but the advantage would have been that Hinchinbrooke students would have the benefit of a playground and a full gym all year long, and Sharbot Lake students would at least have had a yard. No one would have attended classes in a portable, as the combined group did up until Christmas. In September, they would have moved over to a completed school, including a proper bus loading zone, a yard to play in, etc.

Secondary students would have had a year that was similar to 2013. They would remain in Sharbot Lake High School through the fall, which happened anyway, and if the new school was complete after the first term or after the March break, they could have moved over. The demolition of Sharbot Lake High School could have been scheduled for the beginning of July, leaving 6-7 weeks for landscaping of the new site.

But that is not what happened.

Instead, Granite Ridge was officially born in September of 2013. Hinchinbrooke students were squeezed into Sharbot Lake Public School, which had been outfitted with portables. This was originally to have been the case for only two months, but it was obvious from the start that Granite Ridge would not be completed in the fall. High school students were in the Sharbot Lake High School building, as they had been the year before.

Later in the fall, with the new building still not ready, board officials must have felt they had no choice but to stick to the January opening precisely because they had closed Hinchinbrooke school. Having squeezed all the elementary students into an inferior facility after closing a better one, how could they leave them there for more than half a year?

In any event, with Granite Ridge still under construction, the decision was made to start moving desks and everything else into the new building. They had come to the point of no return. The new school had to open on January 5.

And, even though it was only under a conditional occupation permit, pending some still incomplete requirements, the students started attending the new building.

Elementary students were no longer in an old school, but they also no longer had a playground to play in. The small enclosure, which rumour has it has been nicknamed “the prison yard” by at least one of the teachers, is not a playground.

When spring finally came, the demolition began, and the students are now going to school in a building that is still under construction, next to a demolition site.

The idea behind Granite Ridge Education Centre is to establish a coherent, caring, school community where children who come from a geographically and economically diverse area can come together and learn.

Certainly as far as they youngest of them are concerned, and some of these students were as young as 3 or 4 years old last September, the 2013-14 school year has been one of dislocation and confusion.

These problems will likely fade away by September, and Granite Ridge will have an opportunity for a re-start, but the roll out has been a disaster.

While there are always growing pains when a new school is built, the case of GREC stands out because it was easy to see coming, and would have been easy to avoid.

As the Limestone Board moves on towards major school construction in Kingston, they might take all that went on in Sharbot Lake this year as an object lesson. Next time, wait until the new school is finished - really finished - before moving the students in.

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