The McGill Road campus of Beattie School of the Arts is pictured.
Image Credit: Google Maps Streetview
March 11, 2016 - 6:30 PM
KAMLOOPS - An awkwardly worded motion means the Kamloops school board gave the wrong school a new name, so the trustees will have to look at the renaming of Beattie School on McGill Road at their upcoming meeting.
Back on Feb. 15 the board voted on school name changes. While the board intended to change the name of the school on McGill Road, currently known as the Beattie School of Arts, Supt. Karl deBruijn says the board accidentally voted to rename the Stuart Wood School.
He says if you take the motion literally it changed the name of Stuart Wood School to McGill School, adding it was awkwardly worded.
“That wasn’t the intention and everyone knew the intention," deBruijn says.
He says the board will either need to rescind the old motion and write a new one, or amend the current one with a vote. However, he says this technicality gives the board a new option.
During the last board meeting on Feb. 29 the board heard from retired teacher Shelia Parks about the history of the Beattie name in Kamloops education and deBruijn says Parks made a case to keep the name on a Kamloops school.
Additionally, the policy the board was following in naming the school McGill School applies to new buildings, not the renaming of old buildings. DeBruijn says the board has no policy in regards to how schools should be renamed.
“The actual board policy was never intended to rename facilities, it was to name new facilities,” he says. “It was developed for when we were building new schools like Pine Ridge and Sa-Hali Secondary.”
DeBruijn says this means there is an opportunity for the school to continue to be named Beattie School, if the board so decides. In either case, he says, the board will need to have another vote to decide on a name for the building’s next school year.
The two Beattie School of Arts campuses will be amalgamating to become the Kamloops School of the Arts and all students from Kindergarten to Grade 12 will be at the downtown campus. Stuart Wood School is closing at the end of this school year and the administration, students and school community are moving to the building on McGill Road.
The school board will deal with the issue at their meeting on Monday, March 14.
To contact a reporter for this story, email Brendan Kergin at bkergin@infonews.ca or call 250-819-6089. To contact an editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.
— This story was corrected at 9:15 a.m., Saturday, March 12, 2016 to say the two Beattie School of Arts are joining to become the Kamloops School of the Arts.
News from © iNFOnews, 2016