Students asked to switch schools to alleviate crowding at Moncton High School

Moncton's newest high school is so crowded that students coming from Edith Cavell School are being asked to transfer from Moncton High to Bernice MacNaughton. 

Acting superintendent Pamela Wilson sent a letter to parents last week, asking students to consider switching to the less crowded high school. 

The letter, which is posted on Moncton High School's web page and sent to parents on Aug. 18, offers students fresh out of Edith Cavell the "opportunity" to switch from Moncton High to Bernice MacNaugton.

Students would then have the "option" of continuing at Bernice MacNaughton for the duration of their high school years. 

Officials from the school district did not respond to requests for an interview, and no one at Moncton High School or Edith Cavell answered the phone.

Moncton High principal Mike BeLong was also contacted by email but said he needed the approval of the superintendent before commenting. He did not respond by publication time. 

A former chair of the district education council for Anglophone East said overcrowding has been a long-standing issue at Moncton High.

In fact, Harry Doyle said the school was over-capacity not long after it opened in January 2015, on the northern outskirts of the city, about 10 kilometres from its former downtown location. He said officials had to add portables to accommodate all of the students. 

Moncton High had about 1,200 students last year, and Bernice MacNaughton, in the west end of the city, had about 800.

Unless students decide to switch schools voluntarily, Doyle said, additional portables will have to be added to Moncton High. 

Or, he said, school boundaries will have to be changed and students will be forced to change schools. 

"And it's a little late to change boundaries," he said on Monday afternoon. "Maybe it's a little late to [ask students to switch], but it would be a lot worse to try to change boundaries now and say you have to go to MacNaughton."

He said the letter, which he hasn't seen but was aware of, asks students to switch voluntarily. 

"So we're just asking if there's interest. And we suspect if you live downtown … rather than have your kid go to Moncton High, just run across to MacNaughton would make more sense."

A family tradition

But to some, the high school experience is more than just geography. 

Brock Gallant has a child going into Grade 7 at Edith Cavell. Although his family isn't impacted this year, he believes they will be in two years, when his son graduates from middle school. 

"It's clear this is going to be an ongoing issue," he said. "It's clear that a decision that was surrounded in controversy will continue to be controversial. And it's clear that there will be a lot of parents left feeling like a fast one has been pulled."

When his family moved downtown 17 years ago, "it was with the expectation that our son would go to Moncton High School — like I did, like my wife did, like her father did. 

"And it's a very disappointing situation to be in, because we made life decisions based on the resources that were available at the time. Now those resources are being moved, reallocated, and it's just too expensive to chase those resources around."

New high school needed

Doyle has long taken issue with the Education Department's history of building schools that are over-capacity within a short time of opening. 

Six years after Moncton High School opened to students, Doyle said, the city needs another new high school.

"We have to have room. This place is growing like leaps and bounds. And so we really need [a new school], unless we're just going to tack on portables forever," said Doyle.

Connie Keating, the president of the New Brunswick Teachers' Association, said Moncton High School's overcrowding is a "district issue."

"It's not a provincial issue of which we would tend to weigh into." 

She said if teachers are concerned about the situation, they should contact the association. 

"But at this point, we're looking at it as a district issue," said Keating. 

The Department of Education said it was aware of the situation at Moncton High School.

In an emailed response, spokesperson Flavio Nienow said the department "is working with the school district to identify potential solutions to space pressures.

"Modular classrooms were added to the school last year in response to the district's request for additional teaching spaces at that time. Other measures to mitigate capacity concerns such as grade reconfigurations and boundary re-alignments are within the district education council's purview."