Parents to discuss future of junior high programs in Bedford

Another discussion on the future of some schools in HRM will take centre stage tonight.

An emergency community meeting has been called for parents of students in Bedford Junior High and its feeder schools.

The meeting is aimed at reviewing information in preparation for the Feb. 27 Halifax Regional School Board (HRSB) vote that will deal with the future of the junior high programs.

In April of last year, HRSB decided to merge Bedford Junior High and Bedford South and put the students in the old CP Allen location.

Parent Jean St Amand, who’s organizing tonight’s meeting, told News 95.7 that decision was reversed in May.

“So the parents of all the various different feeder schools were caught relatively unaware because we didn’t know that decision had taken place until fairly recently,” said St Amand.

Part of the concern is that there could be a large group of junior high students going to CP Allen, but St Amand said there’s more to it.

“For those of us that have kids that would be otherwise headed to Bedford Junior High, we’re just a little concerned that the school hasn’t had any real upkeep to it quite some time and there are health concerns associated with it,” he explained.

He adds the other side is that they don’t want to see CP Allen shuttered unnecessarily either.

“If it’s a better location that the school has access to then we’d like it to get used for our kids but we understand that the board has a bit of a dilemma to overcome in trying to figure out how to use this asset to the best of their ability and not go against the wishes of the community either,” said St Amand.

He said as of right now, everything is status quo. Leave Bedford Junior High as is, leave Bedford South as is and mothball CP Allen.

St Amand explained the plan for tonight is to get the feeder schools together to ask some questions about what will happen going forward.

“This will be a unique opportunity for the parents to hear some of these facts directly from the people who collected and prepared the report for the school board,” he said.

HRSB representative for Bedford Steve Warburton and Dana Carruthers, the Chair of the Boundary Review Committee and a member of the Bedford Junior High SAC will be in attendance.

The meeting starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Basinview Drive Community School.

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