Geof Botting & Kathy Hewitt.
Near North District School Board director of education Geof Botting and chair Kathy Hewitt prepare to leave Monday night’s information session after just an hour, leaving many with unanswered questions. Now, a group of parents is organizing a bus ride to the North Bay school board meeting next Tuesday, hoping for another chance to have their say there.
Roland Cillers/Beacon Star
PARRY SOUND – A bus of angry parents will likely attend next Tuesday’s Near North District School Board meeting – even though they aren’t allowed to speak.
Tempers continue to flare over the board’s sudden September 28 decision to move Grade 7/8 students from William Beatty, Nobel and McDougall elementary schools into the high school next fall.
Visit trustees
Parents and other residents didn’t feel any better after a short public meeting Monday night. Now they plan to visit trustees in North Bay, even though all delegations to the board have been denied a chance to present to the board.
Local restaurant owner Jamie Blake’s daughter will have just turned 13 when she goes to the high school to begin Grade 7 next fall. His two sons, born earlier in the calendar year, will only be 11 when they reach Grade 7 in a few years.
The decision, made even though it wasn’t on the school board’s meeting agenda, and without any consultation with the community – even catching Parry Sound trustee Jim Beatty by surprise, shows the chair and a nucleus of North Bay board members have no interest in what Parry Sounders have to say, Blake said.
At Monday’s public meeting “they said there wouldn’t even be savings for three years,” Blake said. “It doesn’t make sense from a fiscal perspective. There is no common sense here, and I don’t want my 11-year-old at the high school. That’s why it has to be rescinded.”
Blake and others are trying to arrange to have one bus, maybe two, ride up to the site of the meeting. Others are planning to make the trip themselves.
Facebook conversations, emails and a petition site are all gathering traffic and more feedback from those interested in making the trip.
“The whole thing is if the board did come and say we’re going to put the Grade 7/8 students in this room, or this wing, (whether) they will have access to eating areas, if there will still be a Grade 8 camping trip and graduation … it was unprofessional, they had no answers, not one answer,” Blake said. “It goes against every political aspect of how things work. It’s morally wrong. It goes against the legal way of doing things. This has to be rescinded. We need more time.”
Tracey Bye, whose son will have just turned 12 in August when he goes to the high school, is among those organizing the trip.
“He would be directly affected,” she said. “They way they handled it … consulting with the community after the fact is not consulting. Even if they won’t let us speak, we want them to know this has to be handled differently.”
To book a spot on the bus, and help organizers determine how many busses are needed, sign up at 11 a.m. on Saturday at a table set up at the north end of the Parry Sound Mall, call Bye at 705-342-1044, or email her at vinyldesignsigns@hotmail.com.
The bus will leave the Parry Sound Mall parking lot at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 23, returning at about 10 p.m. The online petition is found online at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/710/208/349/stop-grades-7-and-8s-from-going-to-parry-sound-high-school. An earlier online petition, since closed, gathered 567 names.
The Near North director Geof Botting and chair Kathy Hewitt did not return the North Star’s requests for comment.