Education

Vancouver School Board votes to close Queen Elizabeth Annex

by Charlie Smith on June 6th, 2022 at 9:59 PM
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      A small French-immersion school for Vancouver students in kindergarten to Grade 3 will be closed permanently, effective June 30, 2023.

      The decision to shut down Queen Elizabeth Annex (4275 Crown Street) will come as a result of a Vancouver School Board vote tonight (June 6) following a public engagement process.

      “School closures are difficult conversations and the decision to close the school was not made easily,” says VSB chair Janet Fraser said in a news release. “Recognizing there may be many questions from the impacted school communities, district staff will immediately begin to work with impacted students, families and staff to support a successful transition ahead of the move in September 2023.”

      Fraser along with fellow Green trustees Estrellita Gonzalez and Lois Chan-Pedley, NPA trustees Carmen Cho and Fraser Ballantyne, and Vision Vancouver trustee Allan Wong voted in favour of the motion.

      Voting against were Oliver Hanson (NPA), Barb Parrott (COPE), and Jennifer Reddy (OneCity Vancouver).

      Reddy tweeted that "neighbourhood schools are meant to be held in trust for future generations."

      The Queen Elizabeth Annex parent advisory council opposed the closure. 

      This wasn't the first attempt to shut down the school—a vote in 2016 did not approve the closure of 12 schools, including Queen Elizabeth Annex.

      In 2019, VSB staff again proposed closing Queen Elizabeth Annex, but trustees did not go along with the idea.

      In the meantime, the Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique (CSF) sued the Ministry of Education. This came after a B.C. Supreme Court ruling required the provincial government to supply the CSF with a school site west of Granville Street.

      Later, the CSF added the VSB to its lawsuit.

      According to a VSB statement on May 2, the CSF has a "serious interest" in purchasing the Queen Elizabeth Annex site.

      "Although land disposal is a different and separate process, there could be significant capital revenue generated from CSF acquiring the QEA school site," the May 2 VSB statement said. "This revenue could be used to support other capital priorities such as building new schools, expanding existing schools, and/or enhancing seismic projects from an upgrade project to a replacement school."

      In 2019, then education minister Rob Fleming said that if the VSB transferred the school to the CSF, he would "have an opportunity" to bring forward a new school at the Olympic Village, which area parents desperately want.

      That drew a derisive reaction from former VSB chair Patti Bacchus in a column on Straight.com.

      "The sounds like pressure from a minister who claims he isn’t pressuring school boards to close schools," Bacchus wrote at the time. "It also makes me question why Fleming can’t make the case to the government that the Olympic Village really needs a school, without using it to strong-arm the VSB into closing an annex in the face of fierce community opposition."

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