Brent Wood currently teaches at the University of Toronto's Mississauga campus. He has been a resident of downtown Peterborough for 20 years, and his daughter, Caileigh, just graduated from PCVS. Wood is the author of PCVS Cornerstone, “An independent blog focusing on facts and arguments regarding Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School, the corner stone of our fair city, and KPR’s misguided attempts to remove it.”
Wood started blogging about a week after the Kawartha Pine Ridge school board voted to close Peterborough Collegiate, the only secondary school still located in downtown Peterborough. Wood has been posting extensive and highly detailed arguments against the school’s closure ever since. Especially since KPR teachers have been barred from speaking about the decision, Wood’s blog has become a prominent resource for those hoping to keep PCVS from closing.
Last week, Wood met with fledgling reporter and PCVS student Mya Rushnell to discuss this project.
Wood says he is ideally positioned to be writing an independent blog such as this one. As an educator, but not an employee at KPR, he says he’s able to give an informed opinion, and has no professional obligation to stay silent. He’s not able to participate in the appeal process as a parent of a PCVS student, but, as the parent of a PCVS alum, he understands parents’ perspectives.
Wood says that even though he no longer has a direct connection to the school itself, he is worried about the changes that would happen in the downtown if the schoolcloses. “You can’t have a functioning neighbourhood without a school, because then there’s no point in living there,” he says. “People would move. I would move.”
Still, according to Wood, PCVS is “one of the best schools in Canada.” PCVS has an amazing atmosphere, [and] all the art makes it come alive. The vibe that you get when you walk through the doors is unlike anything else. The atmosphere is different from all the other “poured concrete boxes that are called schools.” PCVS’s history and architecture create an atmosphere of respectful behaviour and elevated intellectual standards.
Most importantly, though, Wood recognizes that the pertinent facts regarding the ARC process weren’t accessible to the general public. Not everyone is able to sort through board reports, meeting minutes, and other information that gets buried on the KPR website, he says. One function of the blog is to sort through the legalese on the official documents and present information in a more straightforward format.
Wood says that anyone with a connection to PCVS, and those who oppose school closures in Peterborough in general, have been appreciative of this endeavour so far. He says he gets letters saying, “We love this,” and “Thank you for writing this.” However, “the KPR board are less enthusiastic about it,” Wood said. This is unsurprising, considering Wood’s pull-no-punches style of argumentation. A recent post on the blog draws attention to the fact that Lloyd is a real estate agent for properties on Armour Road, which is located nearby to Thomas A. Stewart, another school that had been considered for closure.
Wood says he feels his aggressive writing style is justified given the current situation. KPR Board Chair Rusty Hick “kept telling the trustees that a school had to close, but was telling the public that closing a school would be the last resort.” This “last resort” clause was the Accommodation Review Committee’s only substantial recommendation, Wood notes. But “our ‘last resort’ lasted 30 days. Hick wasn’t listening [to the community.] The decision to close PCVS was already made,” Wood said. He called the decision a “sucker-punch.”
Wood argues that the announcement of TASSS’s closure was never sincere. “If Hicks first said in June that he was closing PCVS then there would have been an entire summer of community protest,” he said. “The trustees might have given in to the pressure.” Instead, the decision to close PCVS was made by Hick three days prior to the Board meeting, which did not even leave enough time for community members to ask to speak at the meeting. If the ARC review had occurred in 2014, as originally scheduled, no school would have been closed. “Now is the only time that [Hick] could push this through,” Wood said. “Enrollment will level off.” In 2014, no one would support a school closure because people would just say, “we’ve gotten through the worst of it.”
Wood also argues that the Board’s assertion that school closures must occur to improve programming is a red herring. Funding for programming is not based on the size of schools, but on the number of students, he said. In fact, “the KPR budget is increasing by about 2% each year” as enrollment has decreased. “No one has said anything about what’s wrong with programming now.”
Wood says he is motivated to keep posting because he is “creeped out” by the silence from teachers and from their union. “If this was the Steelworkers, the union would be standing up against cuts,” said Wood. The [teachers’] union should “speak up and try and help.” He continued, “I’ve never seen PCVS teachers afraid. They’re always the ones to speak what they think. What was said to make them act like this?” He continued, “it reminds me of Harry Potter and how everyone is afraid to say Voldemort’s name.”
For more of what Wood has to say, see pcvscornerstone.blogspot.com.
