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Every graduating class is remembered through a mural or art project they create
Photos by Hal Milne
This website is for providing information to the community about the threat to close Garibaldi Annex in East Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Pages
Links
- Garibaldi Survey (New!)
- Frog Hollow Proposal
- Keira McPhee's Blog
- Forum
- In Support of Public Education - Charles Menzies
- Parents Website
- Garibaldi Annex Website (not up-to-date)
- Garibaldi Annex Website (VSB version)
- Garibaldi School Plan
- Shane Simpson, Vancouver-Hastings MLA
- VSB Garibaldi Possible Closure Website
- Save Queen Elizabeth Annex Website
- Save Queen Elizabeth Annex Blog
- David King Lecture on Public Education
- VSB Memorandum of Understanding
Blog Archive
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2007
(25)
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December
(12)
- Save Public Education in Vancouver
- PAC Meeting with Dan Marriott, acting Associate Su...
- Program Interest - Results from the Survey
- Comments from the Survey
- Kate Mulligan's Report on the VSB Vote to Close Ga...
- Notes from tonight's VSB Meeting
- VSB Meeting to hear community feedback Tonight!
- Closing east-side schools, Opening west-side schools
- Survey now on-line
- Garibaldi in Today's Vancouver Courier
- Petition Update
- Flyer No. 2 and Letter of Commitment
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December
(12)
Every graduating class is remembered through a mural or art project they create
Photos by Hal Milne
3 comments:
I just posted this on the VSB site:
We moved into the neighbourhood 3 years ago and heard immediately that Garibaldi was going to close, and that it was primarily E.S.L. focused. Our son is now starting French Immersion kindergarten at Hastings. If a compelling program was offered at Garibaldi, F.I., Fine Arts, we'd love to come on home to our small, neighbourhood school.
The fact that Hastings is so huge, with 2 F.I. kindergartens and a huge waitlist demonstrates that the need is here.
The focus on E.S.L. students needs to continue- that's our neighbourhood. But E.S.L or Mandarin immersion could work in cooperation with other programming that would also appeal to the many families who live here whose first language is English.
There is a tremendous opportunity at Garibaldi to build a school that appeals to and celebrates the incredible cultural and linguistic diversity of this neighbourhood.
One way to do this is to offer the language programs which are so desired. The recent decision to offer F.I. at Strathcona is laudible but the catchement area includes all of downtown. It doesn't begin to address the pent-up demand for programming in East Van.
For a small school to attract a true representation of the neighbourhood and to not simply divide students into separate linguistic camps, there needs to be programming that brings all the students together.
Hiring immersion teachers with a passion for the arts, and/or the environment could accomplish this. There is a tremendous focus on local food security issues from Vancouver Coastal Health. Our local neighbourhood house at Frog Hollow has a food security coordinator. Vancouver Coastal Health is funding diverse projects throughout the region to address our local food insecurity.
This neighbourhood has a tremendous number of backyard food gardeners of diverse cultural backgrounds. A community school approach that invites our local elders in to teach food growing and a school yard that offers community garden space (in conjunction with the City's 2010 community garden initiative) could set an example for the rest of Vancouver.
Thanks for your comments, Keira. I agree that providing the services parents require will bring the students back.
Is it true the school board is actually building a new school on the west side? What are we parents being taken for, a bunch of fools? I, for one, am outraged that the school board has told us the whole story.
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