To the editor:
Re: "Class Notes: Condo project to include new school," March 22.
The former U.S. Speaker of the House [Tip O'Neill] famously coined the phrase "all politics is local " and no better illustration of this can be found than in the recent, eve-of-election, announcements and letters by the B.C. Liberals finally giving the green light to the long overdue construction of the new International Village School in Yaletown.
For over a decade, after interminable discussions, persistent stalling and repeated appeals from Vancouver trustees and Yaletown parents, it now seems that September 2015 will see the opening of this K-7 school on Abbott Street and the current spillover of downtown students to the adjacent Lord Strathcona school will cease.
But the shenanigans of local politics do not stop there, as the century-old Strathcona school - the oldest school in B.C., with four buildings on the heritage registry of the City of Vancouver - is once more, shamelessly, denied immediate seismic upgrading while this coming September will see two schools in Gordon Campbell's former Point Grey riding namely, Queen Mary ($19.1 million) and General Gordon ($14.7 million), jump the VSB's priority seismic listing for major seismic mitigation.
To add insult to injury, after a 12-year, foot-dragging battle, the VSB was told in a February 26 letter to "engage an independent value analysis consultant" for Strathcona and, get this for doublespeak reasoning, "to achieve potential cost savings or efficiencies" while, at the same time, its seismic upgrading costs were arbitrarily reduced from $36 million to $29.9 million.
It is not lost on local observers that Strathcona school is located in a strong NDP riding.
Shame on the B.C. Liberals for their manipulative ways and for their blatant lack of fairness. Noel Herron, Former principal of Strathcona School and VSB trustee
