After five years of uncertainty, Hume Park Elementary school’s fate is finally sealed.
The New Westminster board of education voted unanimously Tuesday night to close the school as of July 1..
The childcare center and home learning program will continue to operate.
The battle was lost almost before the meeting began as evidenced by the fact there were only two people in the audience to watch the final vote, held in the New Westminster Secondary school library.
District superintendent John Gaiptman said that all the parents of students in the school’s kindergarten to Grade 5 classes had been spoken to prior to the meeting and most students had been placed for the fall in either F.W. Howay or Richard McBride elementary schools.
“There is nothing more important than having to close a public school,” said Gaiptman when he addressed the board at the start of Tuesday’s meeting.
“This should be the toughest decision that you make as a board. Public schools are the lifeline of our democratic system, and I think that whenever possible we need to be out there promoting public schools. Unfortunately, Hume Park went down to such a low number of students that we found ourselves in the position of having to recommend to the board that Hume Park be closed.”
Sixty-two students were enrolled in 2009 when the district first considered closing the school for financial and educational reasons. Since that time the school has been on the chopping block twice more and the enrollment numbers have continued to drop.
There are currently 27 students attending the school. As of May 20, only 11 students had registered for the fall, according to Sandra Pace, the district’s director of instruction.
Each trustee spoke to the issue prior to the vote with several expressing reluctant support for the closure.
“This is the third time that this has come before the board, and I guess this will be the first time I will be voting for it,” said trustee James Janzen.
“The previous few times I thought that the importance of having that school … outweighed the financial benefits of closing it, and I was always optimistic that the enrollment would come back.”
Prior to voting in favour of the closure, trustee Michael Ewen criticized the board for “dithering” over the issue for the last five years.
“By bringing this up time and again all we have served to do is drive people away in droves, which is really unfortunate,” Ewen said.
Trustee MaryAnn Mortensen stressed the financial reasons for the closure.
“We have a fiscal responsibility, and we need to make a fiscally responsible decision that affords us the ability to provide educationally sound programs across the district,” she said.
The closure will save $76,000 annually, according April’s Hume Park Elementary Consolidation report from the district.
