Green Party trustees defend vote to close Queen Elizabeth Annex

by Charlie Smith on June 7th, 2022 at 12:00 PM

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The Green Party of Vancouver has claimed that the B.C. government would not fund a new Olympic Village school unless another school was closed.

As a result, all three Green trustees voted last night to close Queen Elizabeth Annex at the end of the 2022-23 school year.

They were among six trustees—the others being the NPA's Carmen Cho and Fraser Ballantyne and Vision Vancouver's Allan Wong—who approved the permanent shutdown.

It means that the site, which currently offers French immersion to 71 students between kindergarten and Grade 3, could be taken over by Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique (CSF).

"The Province has made it clear that they will not build the Olympic Village elementary school unless we make this site available to CSF,” Green trustee Lois Chan-Pedley said in a party news release. “We have offered other locations in the area but the CSF are only interested in the QEA site.

“The needs of current students and the future of the new school are dependent on this decision,” she continued. “The bottom line is schools in the Olympic Village area are severely over capacity with many underserved students and families, and there’s even more density on the way. Meanwhile there are plenty of spaces and room to grow in schools near QEA."

Three trustees—the NPA's Oliver Hanson, COPE's Barb Parrott, and OneCityVancouver's Jennifer Reddy—voted against the motion.

"Neighbourhood schools are meant to be held in trust for future generations," Reddy tweeted. "Tonight, I voted against the closure of Queen Elizabeth Annex that is the heartbeat of a growing community. Unfortunately my vote was not on the prevailing side. I’m sorry to see this closure pass."

Green trustee and board chair Janet Fraser, on the other hand, said that trustees "need to consider the needs of all the students in the district".

The other Green trustee, Estrellita Gonzalez, said that the board's long-range plan has "identified opportunities to move the entire QEA French immersion program to one of two nearby schools that are currently under capacity".

“I’m hopeful that we can go a step further and expand the program at one of the schools, as Queen Elizabeth Elementary has the room to accommodate all QEA students and possibly add more French Immersion spaces," Gonzalez said.

She added that for Green trustees, the only option is to turn Queen Elizabeth Annex over to the CSF on a long-term lease.

“We are fully committed to the VSB policy of maintaining or increasing our current number of school sites and preserving them for current and future use," Gonzalez said. "If we want a say in what happens with the QEA land we need to be proactive and move now before the province steps in and takes the site from us."

The decion to close the school was opposed by the Queen Elizabeth Annex parent advisory council. You can see it's comments in the tweets below.