Merging Catholic and Public school boards best option for Ottawa-area students and communities

Former Ontario PC candidate and Ottawa Citizen columnist Randall Denley borrowed a play from the Green Party of Ontario (GPO) playbook in his column today advocating for the merger of the Public and Catholic School Boards in Ottawa.

On this we agree--The Schools Boards must be merged!

The #GPO estimates $1 Billion can be saved province wide. Why divide local communities and deprive them of a local school? Why destroy an already weakened public school system to support a flawed plan?

The Catholic School Board recruits non-Catholics now to keep their numbers up. The two Boards are essentially competing for students. It doesn't make sense to maintain the administrative and operational duplication while closing local schools at the same time. The students are the one's losing out.

No where in any elementary school handbook does it say mega-schools, like the one being proposed for Knoxdale in my community of Trend-Arlington (in Nepean), are better than small schools for learning. This is especially true for elementary school aged children.

As a teacher and community leader who teaches and coaches elementary school children, I can tell you that Grade 7 students are not ready to go to high school. These kids are not mature enough to be exposed to the social and sexual pressures of high school. To suggest otherwise is to ignore what every Grade 7 teacher already knows.