The Waterloo Region District School Board has a message for people worried about the future of two special schools for at-risk students: Neither school will close.
However, while both New Dawn School and Z at the Y will see their doors remain open, they will see their maximum enrolment cut from 20 students apiece to 12.
That’s because the programs are expected to be moved off the school board’s books and onto those of the Ministry of Children and Youth Services.
“When we have a collaborative between the school board and the agency … there’s a cap on the number of students that can be supported within those programs,” says Peter Rubenschuh, a WRDSB assistant superintendent.
The New Dawn community held a rally Saturday to protest the enrolment cuts, with several students crediting the facility for turning around their life.
At a meeting with the school board Monday, New Dawn staff were told they could no longer speak to the media.
Rubenschuh said that was done so as not to jeopardize the agreement with the ministry, which has not been finalized.
“We’ve been involved in this process for a couple of months … but if we don’t have the details of those agreements in place, then those agreements are still vulnerable,” he tells CTV News.
“If we were to go out too early with some assumptions, and then those assumptions changed, then certainly we’d have another issue.”
Despite the programs no longer being under the board’s financial purview, the board says they are still reviewing the programs and may move students into a regular high school or another facility.
