Parents not thrilled with decision to move French immersion out of Harbour Landing School

Parents at École Harbour Landing School are neither thrilled nor frustrated with the decision to move the French immersion program out of the school.

On Tuesday night, the Regina Public School Board voted to move the program to A.E. Perry School as of the 2020-21 school year.

Kathleen Eisler is the chair of the Harbour Landing School Community Council. She said the school is so over capacity it was obvious something needed to be done.

“It was sort of a lose-lose situation. No matter what the solution was, not everyone was going to be happy,” she said.

Eisler explained that it’s not great for the French students because this will be the second time they’re being moved in three years. The students were moved from the French immersion program at Massey Elementary School to Harbour Landing when the new school opened in 2017.

However, the school board did assure parents that their kids will be able to stay in the program at Perry until Grade 8.

This is a band-aid fix at best, according to Eisler, and she said it may not even do that much to fix the over-capacity problem.

Ecole Harbour Landing School will still be over capacity even if all the French immersion students move, and she said Tuesday night’s school board meeting didn’t consider that not all the families might move.

“What is going to happen if, out of the 180 families that this affects, only 50 of those students move and we still have 130 students that just convert to the English program? We haven’t solved anything,” said Eisler.

Families in the French immersion program are being asked to let the school know their intentions by Feb. 1. Eisler said that will give them a better idea of what next year is going to look like.

Overall, she said something had to be done and she thinks this was the best solution they could create at this time.

“It’s not a long-term solution,” she said. “If a new school does not get approved in Harbour Landing in the budget this year, they’re going to have to come up with another solution.”

Examples of other solutions would be rezoning the school areas or changing Ecole Harbour Landing School to a K-5 school, according to Eisler.

As for the school being close to 300 students over capacity, Eisler said it doesn’t actually affect the kids that much. She said the administration has done a good job of setting up classrooms and the teachers are doing well at making sure it doesn’t affect the classroom time. But she said the kids aren’t getting as much gym time as is recommended.

Eisler said the school is managing things right now, but with more and more kids coming in and not enough moving out, a real solution is urgently needed.

“There’s literally not another classroom space to use,” she said. “So, that’s where the problem is urgent. We don’t have a place to add a portable, relocatable classroom. There is literally not another physical space to place a classroom.”