The move of the music concentration from the Curé-Antoine-Labelle public secondary school to another school for the start of the 2024 school year is arousing great misunderstanding. Parents, teachers, students and former students believe that the new place will be less well suited and fear a decline in the quality of this particular program, which has seen several professional musicians.
“It’s like putting a damper on the program, and we are afraid that it will disappear because it will no longer be attractive”, launches Catherine Baril, whose daughter plays the cello and is finishing her 2e secondary.
The mother learned the news in a letter dated May 10. Students from 1D and 2e are currently attending the arts-study program in music at Poly-Jeunesse school in Laval. They then move to Curé-Antoine-Labelle, located a little further, for their 3e4e and 5e secondary. But from the 2024-2025 school year, secondary levels 1 to 5 will be offered only at Poly-Jeunesse.
A news that disappointed his daughter. She was eager to practice and give concerts at Curé-Antoine-Labelle, which has a proper performance hall with 527 seats, and to take advantage of the multimedia rooms.
“At Poly-Jeunesse, they simply have an agora, and that’s where the young people eat during dinner time. It’s a hole in the ground, with no seats, with a semblance of a small stage, and it’s surrounded by ping-pong and pool tables and lockers, Catherine Baril drops. Our daughter’s recital was there in the evening recently, and the janitors were passing by with their Zamboni and carts. »
A petition was written by students in the program and posted online for the attention of the director general of the Center de services scolaire de Laval, Yves Michel Volcy. It was filed with the establishment last week after collecting nearly 1,700 signatures. “We would like you to consider reversing your decision,” reads the wording. We do not understand the justification for this move, permanent, while the situation that seems to justify it is temporary. »
Organizational constraints
Contacted by The dutythe School Services Center invokes work in other buildings, which requires the movement of students, and a reduced reception capacity at Curé-Antoine-Labelle for the start of the 2024 school year.
“The Poly-Jeunesse school has suitable spaces for the deployment of this program. Thus, it has as many studios and even more music cubicles necessary for the practice of instruments than the Curé-Antoine-Labelle school, ”assures Annie Goyette, assistant director of communications, in an email.
“It is true that the Poly-Jeunesse school does not have an auditorium,” she adds. But with regard to concerts and performances, students will be able to have access to the public square [agora] school and even, if necessary, at the Curé-Antoine-Labelle auditorium, as well as at other performance halls through various partnerships. It is mentioned that “Poly-Jeunesse staff is also mobilized to find creative and innovative ways to meet the needs of students in terms of concerts and performances.”
This agora is far from suitable, many believe. “It’s not a place suitable for sound and acoustics, and working on the quality of what we do in a symphony orchestra”, underlines Marie-Michèle Bertrand, former student of the program and horn teacher in this concentration. music from 2014 to last February.
The program at Curé-Antoine-Labelle is one of the few in the region that includes a symphony orchestra from 3e secondary school, which “demands significant resources”, in addition to rehearsing in the auditorium, she reports. School students also have access to a computer-aided music studio. “The facilities at Poly-Jeunesse are good, but they are not adapted to accommodate all that the program at Curé-Antoine-Labelle offers,” says Marie-Michèle Bertrand. She fears that certain portions of the music concentration will disappear.
“This program is definitely the spark for many students,” adds the one who holds a master’s degree from the prestigious New England Conservatory in Boston and a bachelor’s degree from the Schulich School of Music at McGill University.
For her part, Catherine Baril points out that her daughter does have access to cubicles at Poly-Jeunesse, but that these are in the classroom. “She tells me it’s noisy. While there is a class, we hear in the cubicle. And in the course, we hear the cubicles. It’s not ideal,” she says. At Curé-Antoine-Labelle, the cubicle corridors are better configured and they are separated from the classrooms.
“There is no reason for this decision. The music concentration is the poor relation, and they decided that they would be the ones who were going to pay, ”she drops.
Alain Paquette, whose daughter is in 3e in the program and who posted the petition for the students online, is also not convinced by the responses from the Center de services scolaire de Laval. He deplores a lack of transparency. “What we are asking is to know what the other detailed solutions were and why, suddenly, Poly-Jeunesse becomes the best option when before, everyone agreed that it should be up to Curé-Antoine. “Labelle,” he said. We are not being shown. The impression we have is that someone has played Tetris with the music program. »