Students of the South Surrey White Rock Learning Centre shared great distress about their school closing and having to go back to mainstream schools, during the public consultation process.
"The SSWR Learning Centre should not be closed. The lives of the most vulnerable and at-risk youth should not be considered cost-savings for the district. Do the right thing and reverse this decision. It’s not too late. Thank you for listening. And hopefully, thank you for caring about the kids," one respondent wrote in a survey.
The findings of the learning centre's consultation process were revealed by the district at the regular Wednesday (May 14) board meeting. This process came after the board already made the decision to close the school – not typical of past school closure proposals.
Often, there is a proposal to close a school, followed by public consultations with the community. Findings are then presented to the board and, finally, the board votes on a decision at a public board meeting, per district policy.
Instead, in the case of the South Surrey school, the final decision was conveyed to students and their families in a letter home, without a prior consultation process.
After much pushback, the board ended up deciding to hold a consultation process but made it clear that the closure decision would not change.
At the regular board meeting, Kristi Blakeway and Perry Smith from the district presented the findings from the consultations that ran for roughly two months.
"When looking at the site, there were some facility limitations, including no gym, limited access to library resources, fewer elective choices and fewer extracurricular activities," Blakeway said, of the reasons why the district decided to close the South Surrey White Rock Learning Centre.
In the board's defence of not breaking any policies in the handling of the school's closure, the district began reframing it as a "relocation" of the learning centre to four alternative programs inside the south-end high schools.
"Respondents expressed disappointment and frustration with the decision to close — or relocate the learning centre," Blakeway said during her presentation.
This framing by the district has been unconvincing to some of the community, with Surrey Teachers' Association president Lizanne Foster even expressing pointed confusion during the meeting's question period.
"I do remember seeing on one of the slides, the phrase 'decision to close,' so I'm confused by the use throughout the presentation of the term 'relocation' because the Surrey Teachers' Association was informed the centre was going to close," Foster said.
In the results released by the district, survey-takers, majority current students, expressed frustration with the district holding a consultation after a decision to close the school had already been made.
"This is not a consultation after you have already made a decision," one individual wrote.
A current student expressed sadness at the district's decision, saying "I’ve grown from being behind in almost all my classes to being ahead because of the learning centre's help and support."
"Horrible mistake closing the centre. This place offers real hope. I came from one of the HOPE programs. This centre offers 1000000 percent more to students than that program," another said. (HOPE, or Helping Others and Providing Education, is a program for students that run inside mainstream schools for students who need more individualized supports.)
At the end of the presentation, the board reaffirmed their plan to close the learning centre and transfer students to alternative programs inside South Surrey's high schools and have one portable operating the hub program in a portable at Earl Marriott Secondary.
"I just find it so discouraging that SD36 has a program with a proven success rate and it axes it," another respondent said.
