If the North Vancouver School District wants a new school they can either pay the going rate for Lower Lonsdale real estate or open the shuttered Cloverley school.
That was the City of North Vancouver council’s message for the school district at a June 12 meeting in which Mayor Darrell Mussatto made the case for rebuilding and reopening Cloverley.
With the new Moodyville slated to quintuple the neighbourhood’s previous population, the Queensbury area school is close enough to Lower Lonsdale to accommodate the burgeoning school-age population, according to the mayor, a former substitute teacher.
While the school district may need a new elementary school by 2021, superintendent Mark Pearmain previously told council Cloverley isn’t close enough to residential density.
A student living at St. Davids Avenue and East Second Street in Moodyville would be about 1.6 kilometres from Cloverley, assuming the student can’t find any shortcuts.
The current school – which is in poor condition, according to the school district – has capacity for about 225 students.
Approximately 250 Lower Lonsdale area students trek each school day to Larson, Braemar and Cleveland elementaries, according to Pearmain.
Those schools offer French immersion, a program the superintendent hopes to bring to a new school in Lower Lonsdale.
The responsibility of providing land for schools falls to the provincial government – not the municipal one, Coun. Craig Keating noted.
“We are not the Ministry of Education and we are not in the business of providing sites for schools.”
There’s concern in the neighbourhood about the future of the site, Keating noted.
The school district considered residential development on the Cloverley site in 2014, eventually commissioning a report that suggested a four-storey apartment and about 50 townhouses. However, no proposal has been formally submitted.
Selling the land for development would have been a “grand mistake,” according to Coun. Rod Clark, who welcomed a rebuilt Cloverley.
“I think it’s a great option to be able to have a school in relatively close proximity,” he said.
While Coun. Pam Bookham expressed sympathy for school boards operating under a provincial government that has “looked to privatize education,” she also said the city shouldn’t forego development potential on a given site to accommodate the school district.
Bookham also addressed the sale of Ridgeway Annex.
“We no sooner saw the sale of Ridgeway Annex to a private developer than the portables landed on Ridgeway (Elementary), taking up the playing fields,” she said.
Selling Ridgeway resulted in brand new schools, countered Coun. Linda Buchanan.
The school district sold Ridgeway Annex for $5.1 million. That sum – along with the proceeds from another sale – were funnelled into the rebuild of Sutherland Secondary and restoration work at Queen Mary and Ridgeway, according to school district treasurer Georgia Allison.
Aside from accommodating Ridgeway and Queen Mary students during recent rebuilds, Cloverley has been closed as a public school since 1982. Tenants over the past 35 years have included the publicly funded parent-participation Windsor House school, francophone school Andre Piolat, dance academy Pro Arte and the YMCA.
