Dear Editor:
In your front-page story (It's a deal: School funding approved) of Wednesday, April 18, it says: "the district will finally have a middle school for students on the west side of the city."
I have to challenge this statement as I don't consider the John Robson site to be the "west side of the city." This is even further away from home for most of us (3.8 km) than the earlier proposed high school site (2.3 km). In fact, it is just as far from my house as the east side Glenbrook Middle School at McBride (3.9 km). Hundreds of cars will have to drive halfway across the city twice a day (15.2 km per day) to one of the worst traffic points of the city.
At least the neighbourhood has been cleaned up around the New Westminster SkyTrain station and Douglas College in recent years, which made this location worse than the high school.
Most of the parents I have spoken to don't want the middle school. I am just glad that my son will be in Grade 8 in Burnaby by the time the middle school opens, then I won't have to deal with School District No. 40 ever again.
I have been counting on the incompetence displayed so often over the past decade to delay this middle school until 2014. If it opened earlier, I would have to try and find an elementary school in Burnaby.
I can only assume that the school board keeps getting re-elected thanks to low voter turnout (less than 24 per cent) caused by excessively complex and confusing ballots. There are dozens of names with no affiliation shown or even whether they are an incumbent.
If every neighbourhood could elect their own representative to the school board and city council, voter turnout would soar. Accountability to the neighbourhoods would also exist for the first time.
My only impact from the middle school should be the lowering of my property value due to my community school only operating until Grade 5. No parent would want to send their Grade 6 kid from Connaught Heights down to the John Robson site or drive twice a day.
Mark Talbot, New Westminster
