Kings County school under threat of closure: sources

A report on how to deal with declining school enrolment in eastern P.E.I. will be released Wednesday, and is expected to recommend the closure of the elementary school in Georgetown.

Sources told CBC News this week that Georgetown Elementary will be one of 11 schools recommended for closure. Georgetown Mayor Peter Llewellyn can't understand why his town's school might be on that list.

"If they're going to say they're going to close our school and it's going to have to be based on some airy-fairy numbers," said Llewellyn.

"There's nothing in there that I've seen, and I guess I make my living by looking at numbers. I've looked at them and someone is really going to have to sit down and explain to me how they are going to come up with any savings, or how that would affect the education of the kids from this area."

The school population is declining across the 43 schools controlled by the Eastern School District, though some schools, such as Glen Stewart in Stratford, just east of Charlottetown, are overcrowded.

Georgetown is in the provincial district of Conservative MLA Mike Currie, and that district could be hit hard. Apart from Georgetown, there are three other schools Dundas Elementary, Cardigan Consolidated, and St. Peters Consolidated and enrolment at each of them is declining.

"In the last election I didn't see anything in the campaign literature where Robert Ghiz said that he was going to close schools," said Currie.

"Certainly I will be disappointed if that's the case. It takes a strong rural Prince Edward Island and an urban Prince Edward Island to make a strong province and Mr. Ghiz doesn't realize that."

The previous Progressive Conservative government, in power from 1996 to 2007, operated under an express policy of not closing schools.

Not in his wildest dream

While the report has not yet been released, Llewellyn is already drawing up his battle plan to save the town's school.

"It's really hard to even go there because in my wildest dream I can't imagine them closing the school after looking at the numbers," he said.

"We would have to sit down and start almost a forensic audit on how the money is going to be spent and where they would go and how they measured to arrive at that decision."

Following the release of the report Wednesday the government will open discussions on the recommendations. The public discussion phase will last 90 days, and then the provincial cabinet will sit down to make the final decisions.