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The little school will stay open

Three-year battle to save school ends in a unanimous vote

Hume Park School has become the little school that could after trustees voted unanimously in favour on Tuesday night to keep the school open for the long term and come up with ways to draw more students.

"In the end, you see a great little gem being saved and going to be used for good," said Hume Park Elementary parent Nikki Binns, who has been fighting to keep the school open since the option of closure first surfaced three years ago.

The small Sapperton school's fate has been up-and-down since 2009, when superintendent John Woudzia recommended that the board shut it down because of the cost to operate the school.

At the time, trustees voted 4-3 to keep the school open with enrolment at 62 students. The school's enrolment has dwindled to just 26 this year - due, according to some Hume Park parents, to the fact that it has been on the chopping block for the last three years. Anxious parents, tired of the back-and-forth battle, yanked their kids out of the school and took them instead to other schools, such as Richard McBride Elementary, located up the hill.

But Hume Park parents managed to find certainty through a long process that started in June 2011, when the school board passed a motion for the Hume Park community to develop a plan, with support from district staff, to increase enrolment at the school.

Following the board motion, five parents and two teachers from Hume Park formed a committee. They met 21 times over the course of the year to develop a report for the board.

The report provided student enrolment projections for Hume Park School based on future developments. The projections were obtained through Baragar Demographics.

The results of the analysis showed that enrolment will start to increase significantly at the school around 2017 and then increase to such an extent that the school may just go from Kindergarten to Grade 3.

The report also predicted that if Hume Park School were to close it would put extensive pressure on Richard McBride Elementary.

Board of education chair James Janzen said the impact on McBride if Hume were to close would be significant.

"When you look at the numbers - it shows growth in the district, and McBride is getting pretty big," she said. "It didn't make sense to close a school with projected growth over the next 10, 15 years."

The school could become an arts-and environment-focused school, said Binns.

Along with Binns, the committee members involved in securing Hume Park School's fate are Gayle Vanags, Candide Wakely, Christina Berry, Pramonkia Prasad, Beverly Jakeman and Charles Freeman.

Roughly 20 people turned up at Tuesday's meeting to learn the school's fate. Binns said there was a roaring applause after trustees voted.

nhope@royalcityrecord.com