Citizens protest school closure at city hall

Students upset at the decision to close their high school held a noisy protest outside Hamilton city hall Monday night.

Jordan Williams was calling on members of the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board to listen to concerned Parkview students and parents. The crowd gathered outside city hall, waving signs and expressing their anger at the decision to close Parkview. The school is home to around 230 students and is set up to help many of them with special needs and vocational programs. When the school closes, these students and other special needs students still coming into high school will have to go to other schools. And they’re concerned about what that will mean to their educations:

Jordan says: “Now what happens if next year, not just say us, now. But what about the students who have learning disabilities — severe — all over the city who are coming through high school? Are you going to make sure they have the exclusive program and one facility to go to?

Tim Simmons is a Ward 3 School Trustee: “In all of our composite high schools, our regular high schools, in most of them now we have kids with learning disabilities. We have about 20% of our students have some sort of learning disability.”

Jordan says: “Because I’ve been shuffled through and the reason I believe I speak for everybody that goes to Parkview, the reason we’re at one facility is because we can’t function at a regular high school where there’s a class full of 30 kids.”

Students still have more questions and they want to ask them to the Director of Education Dr. John Milloy. Tim Simmons says Milloy will be answering questions Tuesday evening at the Sherman hub meeting.