Last Thursday, the Kawartha Pine Ridge School Board voted 7-4 in favour of closing Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School (PCVS), despite overwhelming opposition from PCVS students, parents, and alumni, and from downtown business and community members.
This decision is a mistake and should be reversed.
Arthur has been following this story since last winter, when an Accommodation Review Committee was formed to examine declining enrolment at Thomas A. Stewart, Kenner, PCVS, and Adam Scott. That committee was comprised of students and principals from the four schools,as well as KPR Board Trustees Rose Kitney, Cathy Abraham, and Roy Wilfong, among others. Throughout this process, teachers at the schools have been prohibited from commenting on the situation.
Arthur attended the fourth and final ARC meeting at PCVS this July, where Board Chair Don Blair tabled a controversial motion to recommend that a Peterborough school be closed, but declined to specify which one.
At that meeting, ARC members reported that they had not had time to consider (and in fact, in many cases, had not even read) materials submitted by the community. On several occasions, Blair – who earned over $60,000 for his work on the committee -- referred to materials that had not been circulated to the remainder of the ARC.
The ARC complained that they could not do their work effectively because of limitations on the time and duration of meetings set by the KPR board, but students at the meeting were flabbergasted at the lack of preparedness demonstrated that evening.
Over the summer, the KPR Board ruled out Kenner and Adam Scott as potential schools to close. They first recommended that TASS be closed, and also explored the possibility of relocating the Board offices to TASS, but decided against it when the cost of renovating the school was deemed to be too high.
It is unclear what the renovation cost would be to move PCVS students to TASS – especially because the presence of asbestos was one reason that the Board office relocation was a no-go. If Board staff don’t want to work at TASS, why should we send students there?
Last Monday, following the decision to leave Board offices at their current location, the Board recommended the closure of PCVS. We are horrified at this decision, and we are not alone.
PCVS students have been fighting the closure of their school since this winter. This past week, they formed a human chain from their front doors to Market Hall, demonstrating the close connection the school has with the downtown.
On Thursday, students walked out of classes and protested outside the Board offices prior to the meeting. Downtown businesses closed their doors Thursday afternoon to express the importance of students to the downtown community, not just as customers, but as contributors to Peterborough’s arts community as well.
An avalanche of support for PCVS’s unique role in downtown Peterborough was presented at Thursday’s board meeting. Supporters reminded trustees that PCVS is at capacity; that it has the lowest per-capita operating costs of all Peterborough high schools; that students who face racist and homophobic harassment at other schools find a safe haven at PCVS; that low-income and at-risk students are more likely to attend school if it is located close to downtown; that PCVS’s reputation helps high school students their university applications noticed.
This decision means that students who transferred to PCVS to avoid homphobia at their home schools must choose between attending a Catholic school, where their identities are explicitly not supported, or returning to the schools that their bullies attend. This is unacceptable.
Arthur has two PCVS students working in our offices, and their impact on what we do is unmistakeable. One of our co-op students told us that she had been informed that KPR was not going to take students’ opinions into consideration, which is the last thing that students should be told.
After the Trustees’ votes were tallied, a PCVS student commented, “Congratulations KPRDSB, you just killed downtown Peterborough.” We think that the City of Peterborough should take that seriously, before struggling businesses close their doors. Peterborough City council can choose to involve itself in this decision, and should be taken to task for their reluctance to do so thus far. Parents at PCVS are looking to repeal the Trustees’ decision, and they should not have to do this work alone.
This closure will be a blow to some of Peterborough’s smallest, most marginalized communities, but the source of this strife is likely provincial. In 1998, the Harris government amalgamated 129 school boards into 60. The Peterborough County Board of Education and the Northumberland-Clarington Board became the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board.
Last week, these trustees voted 7-4 in favour of closing PCVS. The motion was tabled by board Chair Rusty Hick, a former principal at Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School. Only two of the other eleven trustees, Rose Kitney and Roy Wolfong, represent Peterborough, and they both voted against PCVS’s closure. This decision was made by people who don’t know what it is like to live or go to school in downtown Peterborough, in spite of all the evidence provided by community members who know that this is a mistake.
Rather than closing schools, we should be advocating for more teachers and smaller class sizes for the core courses that students need. Students should be able to go to school close to home, not just at PCVS but wherever they live in Peterborough.
Here at the Arthur office, we can’t help but think back to the closure of Trent’s downtown colleges, in spite of the efforts of Trent students and faculty to keep them open. We hope that Peterborough’s high school students will have better success, and we stand behind PCVS.
