Parents are angry with their service center which wants to force their children to take the school bus rather than attend the new secondary school which will soon open 3 km from their home.
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“When I learned that, I wasn’t just shocked: I didn’t believe it,” testifies Nicolas Robidoux, resident of the Bellefeuille district, in Saint-Jérôme.
As of today, more than 1,440 people have signed a petition to urge the Center de services scolaire de la Rivière-du-Nord (CSSRDN) to review its admission scenarios for the secondary school, which is currently in construction on Lajeunesse Boulevard West. It should open its doors during the year 2023-2024.
Marie-France Gauvin, instigator of the petition on change.org, lives 3 km from the future school.
By bike, his son can get there in 9 min.
The trip will be even shorter if the City’s project to extend Maisonneuve Boulevard to the new school materializes, which will save them a big detour, says Ms. Gauvin.
Not in the area
However, her son will probably not be able to attend her, she learned, during a meeting of the school board of the primary school at Couleurs-du-Savoir, last week.
The students in this school’s basin will instead have to continue to take the school bus for more than 55 minutes, morning and evening, to get to the Saint-Jérôme high school, on the other side of Highway 15.
Pupils who nevertheless live in the same sector, but even further north of the future school, will however be able to attend it, the parents questioned are surprised.
Without explaining the reason for this division, the CSSRDN indicates by e-mail that this is the scenario “the most viable in the long term, according to our analyses, which are based on customer forecasts for the next 10 years”.
Walking distance?
According to the scales of the CSS, no student in the Colors-of-Knowledge school basin lives within walking distance of the future school, that is to say 2 km or less. Students in the area would therefore have to be transported by school bus anyway.
“It’s a non-argument,” grows impatient Lucas Charbonneau, before these “administrative rules” that he considers disconnected from the field. “A neighborhood vision, that, there is none. »
For the parents interviewed, a thirty-minute walk is preferable to an hour on the yellow bus.
They invoke the notion of proximity, but also the importance of active transportation… not to mention the breakdown of service in school transportation which is increasing due to the shortage of drivers.
And if there is going to be school transportation, it would make far more sense to take a vehicle for short trips around the neighborhood, rather than lugging the kids across the highway, he suggests. .
Overflow
On the side of the CSSRDN, we remind you that a new primary school is also under construction very close to the future secondary school, which would already be overflowing.
“You have to keep in mind to reduce the average travel time for all of our students, including those who live in remote areas,” points out Nadyne Brochu.
This scenario is the subject of a consultation and parents can send their comments, it is specified.
Samanta Bartolini sees it more as a “public relations exercise” to better sweep their proposals under the carpet. “They call it a ‘script’, but it’s actually a decision,” she suspects.