120-year-old Lady Evelyn School faces closure under school board plan

JOHN DANCE

   The rich 120-year history of Lady Evelyn School (LES) on Evelyn Avenue may come to an end and Old Ottawa East will no longer have a public school if the Ottawa Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) doesn’t reverse course. Parents of children at the school are fighting hard to ensure the school remains open but its future looks bleak.

   Just before the school’s 90 students started their Christmas break, their parents received a letter from Stacey Kay, OCDSB director of education, announcing that no junior kindergarten would exist at LES for the 2026-27 school year, and, in each subsequent year, another grade would be eliminated. Further, she wrote that no new students would be admitted to the remaining grades.

   The announcement took parents by surprise. While they were fully aware that the school’s “alternative” program was, unfortunately, going to be wound down, the expectation was that it would be replaced by the French immersion program – ideally for all grades – and that LES would be a community school serving Old Ottawa East.

   LES, unlike many other nearby schools, has modern and under-capacity facilities. For instance, it has air conditioning. Currently, LES is using only 26 percent of its capacity while a number of schools in adjacent communities are over-capacity. Elgin Street School, which is one of the schools OOE children may attend, is operating at 145 percent of its capacity, necessitating three portable classrooms.

Impacts of Class Phase-Out

   The impact of no-new-kindergarten students at LES is much more severe than simply the elimination of one class because parents with more than one child at LES may end up with children having to go to two schools, meaning two different drop-offs and pick-ups each day, with one of the schools being farther away in an adjacent community. To avoid this, parents will choose a single school that can accommodate both children.

   The effects of the phasing out of the alternative program at LES are much larger than an inconvenience to the school’s students. The impact of this potential closure will be significant to the OOE community and the surrounding communities, where schools are over-capacity. These decisions will block the opportunity to create a much-needed OCDSB “community” school for OOE.

   Parents are fighting hard to keep LES open. As the LES parent advocacy group

notes in its op-ed in this Mainstreeter, it is urging the OCDSB to reconsider its decision. “Instead of ceasing enrolments and potentially closing Lady Evelyn, the Board should introduce a French Immersion program at Lady Evelyn,” they write. Amongst the many reasons they cite for saving LES, they highlight “the strategic value of a school in a rapidly intensifying neighbourhood.”

Need for OOE School

   If LES is closed, OOE – with its 8,500 people and prospects for many more as new residential developments are built – will have no public elementary school and all children will be forced to travel to schools in Sandy Hill, Centretown or Old Ottawa South. Aside from the considerable extra travel time for children and their parents, the closure of LES will add to the already congested peak-hour traffic in Old Ottawa East.

   In her note to parents, Kay wrote “[T]he long-term planning for the future use and boundaries of the Alternative school sites is also on our work plan,” but no details were provided on when and how this would be done.

       In the meantime, LES enrolment will fall precipitously. Bob Gordon, chair of the Lady Evelyn school council, estimates that within two years enrolment will decline to about 60 students. However, if a French immersion program is offered at LES, it will likely be fully enrolled, the parent advocacy group says.

   A few blocks to the south of LES, the provincial government is funding the $27 million Au Coeur d’Ottawa school in the Deschâtelets Building with a capacity of 489 students. This elementary school will serve students in the French Catholic Board.

   Meanwhile, it seems the provincial government is allowing a perfectly good school that would well serve the many Old Ottawa East students of the English public board to become vacant.

   The Mainstreeter asked the OCDSB a number of questions pertaining to the phasing out of LES, but the Board did not respond. This lack of accountability has been accentuated by the province’s takeover of supervision of the Board and the removal of school trustees who previously were a focal point for parents trying to resolve issues.

   The LES parent advocacy group encourages residents to visit the Save-Lady-Evelyn-School website and to provide their perspectives on the phasing down of LES to Bob Plamondon, the provincially appointed supervisor of OCDSB (robert.plamondon@ocdsb.ca), Stacey Kay (stacey.kay@ocdsb.ca), and Councillor Shawn Menard (capitalward@ottawa.ca).

   At this writing, 447 people had signed the petition to save LES and there were 42 families who expressed an interest in having their child attend kindergarten at LES if it offered the French immersion program.