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But if Bridge closes the students will be dispersed to other schools, none of which are part of that daycare.

“If he can’t get child care, then I can’t work,” Nowitsky said. “My son will not be in French anymore.”

Bridge Elementary also has a meal program for low-income students that includes both lunch and breakfast programs.

“It’s very disturbing to think about what will happen to these essential programs that benefit the community when the schools close,” Nowitsky said.

Kelly Greene’s six-year-old son is a student at Richmond’s Diefenbaker Elementary, another school at risk of closure.

She also has a four-year-old child and an 18-month-old toddler and the family moved to their neighbourhood specifically for the school. If it closes, students may be sent to Grauer Elementary, which is nearly three kilometres away but has a lot of empty spaces.

Greene tried the walk to Grauer with a group of children and it took 47 minutes.

“During that time, one child needed a snack, another child tripped and fell, and another child could not walk any further at the 2.5-kilometre mark and had to be carried,” Greene said in a recent letter to the editor.

“We were passed by roaring dump trucks, we crossed the quite frankly scary intersection at No. 1 and Francis roads, and we trudged past kilometres of seemingly vacant arterial road mega-homes.”

She says it is “unacceptable and completely reprehensible that anyone would consider (schoolchildren’s) lives a bargaining chip in the ongoing budget war the provincial government has been waging against education.”