Rezoning too rushed: Home and School

The P.E.I. Home and School Federation is asking the Eastern School District to make some changes to its school rezoning process.

Hundreds of parents showed up at a school board meeting this week, upset about the rezoning plans designed to make room for kindergarten students in the school system next fall. Currently kindergarten students are taught in private facilities.

Federation president Bill Whelan told CBC News on Friday that the board appears to be rushing things.

"Following the meeting on Wednesday, the first report for the rezoning has to be submitted in 12 working days," said Whelan.

"That's not workable; it's not achievable. So the Home and School Federation has requested in our letter yesterday to extend that deadline by at least two months."

In that same letter the federation asked the board to have members of the school community more deeply involved in the process.

"We'd like to see more parents involved in the discussions. We'd like to see principals and teachers involved in the discussion around rezoning," he said.

"The federation is very concerned, as are parents, that their concerns, their values, their input is just being missed in this process."

The Western School Board brought trustees together with parents and principals from the schools affected. They met for months to find a solution.

"We'd come with ideas, they'd come back the next week with different numbers how many classrooms, how many numbers of children would be in the school, what would work, what wouldn't work," Angie Matheson of the Elm Street Home and School Association said Friday.

"We really felt we had a really good say in what was decided."

Over in the Eastern School District, a committee of trustees and district staff is considering a set of options put together by superintendent Sandy MacDonald. Many parents are concerned, confused and looking for a way in.

"[I'm] still a little iffy on the confidence of how the board's set up and how they've come to these decisions based on the lack of debate that went on in there tonight," Sherwood parent Heidi Lawlor said Friday.

Matheson said the debate over rezoning in the Western School Board has been calmer and better informed because of the role parents have played.

"It's been open right from dayone it's been an open book. And anyone that wanted to know any information, we were allowed to give them information, we were allowed to talk about it. We came back with parents' concerns, they were all discussed."