Vancouver School Board unveils plan to ease overcrowding, low enrolment

The Vancouver School Board is planning to shut down a secondary school and move it to a university campus as a first step to deal with the problem of too many students in some schools and not enough students in others.

'Nobody is going to be abandoned in this in terms of their same entitlement to a sense of neighbourhood, locality and security.' — Chris Kelly, Superintendent of Vancouver School Board

The school board on Thursday released the first phase of its review of educational facilities, covering the Dunbar and University of British Columbia areas.

Among the proposals is a plan to shut down University Hill Secondary School and move it to a new location on the UBC Campus.

The review says the biggest problem for the UBC area is overcrowding at both University Hill Secondary, which has almost 200 students too many, and University Hill Elementary, which is 70 students over capacity.

One proposal is to move the secondary school to the Vancouver National Research Council at East Mall and 16th Avenue inside the UBC campus. The old high school building would then be renovated and turned into a new elementary school.

Closing a school is not something the board takes lightly, said Chris Kelly, the superintendent of schools for the Vancouver School Board, Thursday.

"If and when a facility is closed and a child is moved along with a family, nobody is going to be abandoned in this in terms of their same entitlement to a sense of neighbourhood, locality and security. Those things are pretty much embedded in our mission," he told CBC News.

Public consultation in next two weeks

Another problem the review has identified is that there are 290 empty unfilled places in adjacent schools and nearly 10,000 vacant spots district wide.

The provincial government has said it won't fund new facilities until the school board deals with those vacancies by, among other things, closing down schools.

The school board will hold a series of meetings over the next two weeks to hear from the public about the proposals, Kelly said.

School trustees will have to make a decision about what happens to the University Hill Secondary School site by the end of March, he said.

The UBC and Dunbar review is the first of three planned, school board trustee Eleanor Gregory told CBC News on Thursday.

No decisions have been made on the timing of the other two reviews, Gregory said, but the board intends to look at the situations in Yaletown, International Village, False Creek South and Southeast Vancouver.

A spokesperson for Kelly's office said no decision has been made yet on future reviews.