On Thursday, a small group of parents, educators and community leaders gathered in Strathcona community centre for a meeting about school closures in East Vancouver.\u00a0 The driving rain likely kept many at home, but those that did show up to the small room on the community centre\u2019s ground floor spoke passionately about keeping schools like Seymour and Queen Alexandra Elementary open.<\/p>\n
Jenny Kwan, MLA for Vancouver-Mount Pleasant, moderated a panel discussion about the effects of cuts to education spending.<\/p>\n
For Andrea Esslemont, an Aboriginal mother living in Strathcona, the closing of Seymour Elementary school means a huge upheaval.\u00a0 Esslemont, a mother of three, used to transport her ten year old daughter, who has special needs, to a school outside of the neighbourhood. \u00a0She worked for a year to get her child into a school closer to her home.\u00a0 Within weeks of her daughter starting school, Esslemont found out that Seymour had been identified as one of 11 possible school closures.<\/p>\n
Having her daughter at a school in the neighbourhood is important for Esslemont because she believes that there is more community support available there.\u00a0 She said that going to a school nearby means that her daughter works with people who know her and can keep her safe.\u00a0 She worries about her daughter getting lost in the system if she attends a larger school. \u00a0She is also concerned about the logistics of moving her daughter elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Chrystal Tabobandung, from the Ojibwe nation, has four boys attending Queen Alexandra Elementary.\u00a0 \u201cI haven\u2019t considered it,\u201d she said when asked what she\u2019d do if the school closed, \u201cI\u2019m going to fight with everything I have.\u201d\u00a0 Tabobandung called for parents to join together and act, rather than relying on petitions and meetings to stop the government\u2019s planned closures.<\/p>\n
Noel Herron, former principal of Strathcona Elementary school, highlighted the vulnerability of inner city students.\u00a0 While the government cites declining enrollment as a reason for closing the schools, Herron believes that smaller classes are necessary for children in the area.\u00a0 He also pointed to the role of schools as resource centres for the neighbourhood.\u00a0 \u201cYou close a school, you close the heart of a community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Thursday, a small group of parents, educators and community leaders gathered in Strathcona community centre for a meeting about school closures in East Vancouver.\u00a0 The driving rain likely kept many at home, but those that did show up to the small room on the community centre\u2019s ground floor spoke passionately about keeping schools like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37824],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vancouver-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1306"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1429,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306\/revisions\/1429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/thunderblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}