Private, public schools make a deal

BY MARC LALONDE

marc.lalonde@transcontinental.ca

The recent sale of the former Charles A. Kirkland school building in Roxboro will enable the Lester B. Pearson School Board to boost payments on loans for infrastructure work on its remaining open buildings, board chairman Marcus Tabachnick said.

The $1.727 million the board received from private institution Ecole Charles Perrault for the former Charles A. Kirkland building “will help us pay down the loans we took out for building upgrades and speed up the repayments.”

The Pearson board spent $14 million on school renovations last year and Tabachnick expects the board to spend that much and possibly more on further building renovations this summer.

“We have a lot of projects that are both slated for the summer and currently underway,” he said, including expansion of Westwood junior and senior high schools and the board’s new technology centre in LaSalle.

The sale of other vacant school buildings, including Allancroft in Beaconsfield and two in Dollard des Ormeaux, are currently in negotiation, Tabachnick added.

“We are currently in negotiation on a number of them — Allancroft included — and I don’t know if we’re close to closing those sales, but we are in negotiation,” he said.

In the same Pearson board meeting April 2, the board voted to approve funding and creation of an international language centre in the former Seigniory school building in Pointe Claire.

The international language centre will house and teach 42 international students from as far away as China all year long, Tabachnick said.

“It’s already full. We’ve sold out all 42 spaces we had available,” he said, adding Pearson will spend close to $1 million renovating the building in order to house the students: the first wave of learners will be a collection of sixth-graders from China, Tabachnick said.

“It’s a first for Quebec to get international students this young,” he said.

That’s why the board is paying special attention to creating a stable atmosphere inside the building. Part of the building will be turned into a dormitory, with 42 individual rooms, a common room, a dining area and a kitchen, Tabachnick said, adding the language centre was an idea that was a long time in development.

“The centre was a concept we’d been talking about for a while,” he said. “We also have to do some electrical updates and configure the building for more Internet connections.”

The remaining third of the building will remain unused for the time being, but could be used down the road for expansion purposes, he said.