School-board trustees will meet later today (Monday, Nov. 10) to debate — and likely pass — a bylaw to close Stuart Wood elementary.
The 4 p.m. meeting at the school-board offices on Ninth Avenue was called after the Kamloops-Thompson board of education consulted with its lawyer following a letter from counsel representing a downtown residents association questioning the process trustees followed at the June 23 meeting when they voted to shut the St. Paul Street school.
A memorandum to trustees from board secretary-treasurer Kelvin Stretch said the proper procedure is to approve “a school-closure bylaw for the specific school.” At its June 23 meeting, when the closure was decided, it was passed unanimously by a motion that also included other elements of a reconfiguration required to move the staff and students from Stuart Wood to another school building on McGill Road.
Last week, Micah Rankin of Jensen Law Corporation, on behalf of the Downtown and West End Residents Association, wrote to the board questioning the absence of the bylaw and the extent of public consultation that preceded the June 23 meeting.
Stretch’s memo describes “an extensive consultation process from November 2013 to June 2014,” although a subsequent letter from Rankin to the board, dated Nov. 7, continues to criticize the process followed.
Rankin’s letter asserts consultation did not begin last November, when trustees received a report that triggered the review of the school. Rankin writes: “The board’s consultation duties are triggered when the board agrees that closure or reorganization is warranted. That is what the plain language of the district policy says and that is what is required by law.
“The board’s resolution on June 23, 2014, if it has any legal significance, was simply the board’s agreement that a closure or reorganization of Stuart Wood is warranted, thereby triggering the board’s consultation duties under its internal policy.”
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