Students, staff and families of Saint Mary’s Elementary in Halifax are preparing themselves for a second evening of convincing the school board not to close the south-end facility. The school is one of three that may be shut.
“We have a few days to regroup,” Cindy Littlefair said yesterday. She’s put three of her children through the school and has a fourth attending now.
The public meeting Tuesday night was standing-room only, as about 300 people made the case to keep the 115-pupil school open.
The second meeting has been rescheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 6 p.m.
“The community was extremely well represented. There were seniors, professors from NSCAD and TUNS (DalTech) and professionals from around the world,” Littlefair said.
Closing Saint Mary’s would be a “backward” move, she said. “Saint Mary’s is an example of what a good number of parents want to do, which is commute with their kids to their place of work.”
She’s asking the board to give Saint Mary’s a few years to prove its worth.
School board chairman Irvine Carvery said he was “quite impressed” by the meeting. “They feel very strongly about their school and what it’s doing for their students.”
He was especially moved by the student presentations. “Obviously, literature is a strong subject at the school.”
He noted that it was the previous board that put the school under the axe. “We came into the process, and it’s a process we have to see through to the end.”
St. Patrick’s-Alexandra School, a north-end Halifax school, and Alderney Elementary School in Dartmouth are also being reviewed. Public meetings for those schools have finished and the board is to hold its final vote on all three by the end of March.
