Wise takes aim at bringing high school to CSL by 2013

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Free Press, Jan. 31, 2012

Wise’s “win-win” for NDG & CSL

2012-01-18 Suburban RVHS (Suburban Newspaper, Jan. 18, 2012)

EMSB votes to consider a new high school in Cote Saint-Luc, Royal Vale stays in NDG

This evening, EMSB commissioner Dr. Syd Wise proposed to keep Royal Vale High School in NDG and for the school board to open a new high school in Cote Saint-Luc at the former Wagar High School on Parkhaven Road.

While some commissioners immediately viewed the proposal as a win-win, commissioners Feldman and Barbieri challenged the proposal and asked for it to be deferred to a later meeting. However, the proposal was ultimately accepted by Chairman Angela Mancini with the modification that the proposed high school would be studied by a task force until May 2012 for final decision by the EMSB.  All commissioners voted in favour with the exception of Liz Leaman.

The task force will be struck with EMSB commissioners and representatives from Cote Saint-Luc City Council to iron out details to potentially establish a new high school for September 2013.

This is good news indeed for Cote Saint-Luc, NDG, RVHS parents and all West End residents as well as the English-speaking community at large.

A mainstream English public high school has long been sought after by Cote Saint-Luc City Council.  Mayor Anthony Housefather made an impassioned and eloquent presentation to the EMSB last month which surely helped to convince the commissioners of the merits of the Cote Saint-Luc position.

Thank you Dr. Wise and EMSB commissioners for your consideration.  Thank you Mayor Housefather for your leadership and vision.

While the final decision is now a few months away, prospects have not looked better in several years.

Read more in the Montreal Gazette.

CTV News report.

Royal Vale High School’s future to be decided Wednesday

Parents cautiously optimistic about Royal Vale High School’s future. (Montreal Gazette)

In Côte St. Luc, Mayor Anthony Housefather said he still hopes the EMSB will open an English public high school in his city. Côte St. Luc never asked for Royal Vale high school to be moved, Housefather said.

“Côte St. Luc is simply asking for a mainstream English high school in the former Wagar building,” he said. “We’re confident that the presentation we made to the EMSB will hopefully yield us one.”

 

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Parents+cautiously+optimistic+about+Royal+Vale+High+School+future/5969110/story.html#ixzz1j3x2DNhn

English Montreal School Board changes tone on school closings

English Montreal School Board changes tone on school closings. (Montreal Gazette)

Excitement is building over buildings at this 11th hour.  Media reports indicate that the EMSB committee looking into relocations and closings has reversed its recommendation to move Royal Vale High School to Cote Saint-Luc.

Ultimately the decision will be made by the EMSB commissioners at a meeting scheduled for this Wednesday.  Cote Saint-Luc has made an impassioned pitch for a public high school and we hope that the commissioners will agree.  Many parents and the communities involved will be anxious for this news.

Fate of several EMSB schools to be decided this week

Fate of several EMSB schools to be decided this week. (Montreal Gazette)

Community weighs in on Royal Vale

Suburban Newspaper, Dec. 14, 2011

EMSB hearings on Royal Vale

…and from the Suburban News, Dec. 13, 2011…

Relocation is not merger

Letters to the editor

Montreal Gazette

Re: Let Royal Vale stay in NDG, Dec. 7, 2011. Jack Jedwab’s analogy of the forced municipal mergers and criticism of Cote Saint-Luc city council in its support of the proposed move of Royal Vale High School from NDG to CSL is completely flawed and incorrectly lays blame on my council.

Relocating the school to another building is not being forcibly merged. In the forced mergers, the City of Cote Saint-Luc ceased to exist and its council disappeared. With relocation, RVHS will not cease to exist and its governing board does not disappear. It just runs the school at another location.

Most of all, it is not the elected council of Cote Saint-Luc that proposed the relocation of RVHS. The English Montreal School Board long-range planning committee recommended relocation to CSL and this is the only proposal that the EMSB is currently considering.

As a municipal representative and former executive director of Alliance Quebec, I find it regrettable that our embattled English-speaking communities are pitted one against another for the retention or relocation of an English public high school. All neighbourhoods that can support such a school deserve to have one. CSL is unarguably such a community.

Glenn J. Nashen

City Councillor

Cote Saint-Luc

Mayor Housefather gets A+ on school move presentation

Cote Saint-Luc Mayor Anthony Housefather, backed by members of City Council and parents in support of welcoming Royal Vale High School to The Palatucci Facility and a petition with 704 signatures, scored top grades in a brilliant presentation spelling out the position of his city.

With exceptional recreational, cultural and municipal facilities only steps from the Palatucci Facility, a community without a mainstream public high school, a neighbourhood that is getting younger according to the last census and a large English-speaking population, Cote Saint-Luc is ripe for an EMSB high school.

While NDG has other excellent facilities as well, unfortunately their pool, arena, future library and other facilities are not located in the immediate proximity to the existing school as is the case in Cote Saint-Luc. Ironically, just this week, the RVHS swim team expressed interest in relocating their program to the new $18 million CSL Aquatic and Community Centre.  Mayor Housefather, a life-long competitive swimmer indicated that the proximity of the school to the pool will facilitate early morning and late afternoon swim practices for the students.  He also said that competitive swimmers excel in scholastic aptitude and that the two facilities, side by side, would greatly benefit students.

Regrettably Quebec’s embattled English-speaking communities are pitted one against another for the retention or relocation of an English public high school.  Both communities of NDG and CSL are equally deserving of a high calibre school but the issue on the table as determined by the commissioners of the EMSB, not by the municipal councils, is whether or not to locate RVHS in Cote Saint-Luc as proposed by the long-range planning committee of the school board.

Housefather made an impassioned speech (which you can watch on EMSB TV beginnning at 1:30:00) citing facts and figures which lend support to the establishment of the high school in CSL.

The decision rests with the EMSB commissioners who will make the ultimate choice on January 11, 2012.  Housefather thanked them all for their sense of commitment to the community and wished them well in their deliberation in hopes of success for the students in and around Cote Saint-Luc.

Major school changes: Temperatures rise at hearings

By Brenda Branswell, GAZETTE Education reporter
December 6, 2011 11:06 PM

MONTREAL – “Keep us as we are.”

That was one of the messages to English Montreal School Board commissioners on Tuesday from Royal Vale School parents who oppose a proposal to relocate its high school to Côte St. Luc.

And it was reinforced by other parents who cheered them on, holding up signs with messages like “We Love Royal Vale the Way it is!” and “Don’t Steal our School!”

“Royal Vale is an elementary and a high school together. Please leave it alone. Let it stay as a gem in your crown,” said Anouk Benzacar, who has two children at the school.

After a somewhat low-key start this week to the EMSB’s public hearings on major school changes, the temperature rose a few degrees on Tuesday with the Royal Vale proposal that has sparked petitions on both sides of the debate and seen the City of Côte St. Luc and the borough of Côte des Neiges/Notre Dame de Grâce staking out opposing positions.

The EMSB is considering a series of proposals to close, merge and relocate schools. Commissioners will vote on the recommendations next month. Côte St. Luc Mayor Anthony Housefather, who has been pushing to bring a mainstream English public high school to Côte St. Luc, argued in favour of the Royal Vale proposal.

“You need to look at it from the best future of the board – and the best future of your entire school network, which is why I imagine the long-range planning (committee) made the suggestion and put the proposal on the table,” Housefather said.

The board’s long-range planning committee obviously looked at the fact that only 15 of 46 Royal Vale graduates who left Grade 6 went on to its high school, he said.

Royal Vale is a kindergarten-to-Grade 11 school under the same roof in N.D.G. The recommendation suggests that its elementary section would stay at the school’s location with the high school section moving to the Giovanni Palatucci facility, the former Wagar High School building. According to the scenario, Royal Vale’s high school would share the building with John Grant High School, an alternative special education vocational centre.

Marymount Adult Education Centre, which is in the Palatucci facility, would have to be relocated to an empty building that becomes available next summer.

“If you move (Royal Vale’s high school) it is very, very clear that the enrolment will continue to diminish and eventually you will close that facility,” CDN/NDG borough mayor Michael Applebaum told commissioners. “And I don’t think that is what you’re looking to do.”

It’s the third EMSB proposal in recent years to relocate Royal Vale to Côte St. Luc. The board’s planning committee has said enrolment “could increase” with more students from Côte St. Luc, Hampstead and Montreal West, especially those attending private schools in the area.

“We sincerely believe that the Royal Vale student body would be very well served by the excellent Giovanni Palatucci Facility and its nearby enviable Cote St. Luc facilities,” said the brief submitted by the city of Côte St. Luc. “We are confident that if Royal Vale were located in Côte St. Luc, it would also attract a considerable number of new students from our city as well as from other nearby municipalities,” it said.

The assertion that establishing Royal Vale in Côte St. Luc would bring in students from the private sector “is anecdotal only,” Royal Vale’s governing board stated in its brief. “In fact, no true market survey has been made.”

Wagar High School closed in 2005 due to low enrolment.

Carlyle School’s governing board was also scheduled to present a brief on Tuesday. The long-range planning committee has proposed closing Carlyle in Town of Mount Royal and shifting its students to Coronation Elementary School in Côte des Neiges.

Commissioners also heard from St. Raphael’s School community about a proposal to relocate its elementary and secondary programs to another school facility that closed in June that it deemed appropriate. St. Raphael’s works with students with behaviour problems to help reintegrate them back into mainstream schools. The brief submitted by St. Raphael’s governing board concluded by saying: “We hope you will recognize the need for St. Raphael to remain in our building.”

On Wednesday the hearings and will deal with several proposals including one to close James Lyng High School and another to merge St. Gabriel and St. John Bosco elementary schools.

 

bbranswell@montrealgazette.com

 

 

 

 

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Major+school+changes+Temperatures+rise+hearings/5821445/story.html

Parents favouring RVHS move to CSL get organized

Supporters of Royal Vale CSL start petition

The debate over the future of Royal Vale High School took a new turn last week as a group of parents supportive of its proposed move to Cote Saint-Luc have launched a petition.  Read the whole story from this week’s Suburban here: 2011-11-30SuburbanRVHS.

Sign the petition here.

CSL council passes resolution for its own English high school

Mayor Housefather explains why CSL needs a public high school