By Dan Laxer
The Suburban
Two Montreal schools, F.A.C.E. and Centennial Academy, are facing existential threats.
The Quebec Education Ministry has decided that renovations to F.A.C.E. have become too costly – rising to $375 million from the original estimate of $243 million. It has decided, rather, to move the high school and elementary school to two different buildings, École Christophe Colomb and École Saint-Urbain. Both also need work. The cost of renovating them will come to a little more than $200 million.
Geneviève Gueritaud has two children who graduated from F.A.C.E., and another who is in Secondary II. She says the government’s plan and attitude toward the school is shortsighted.
F.A.C.E. combines a core education with arts education. It is housed in the old Montreal High School, a heritage building completed in 1924. With a building that old a certain state of disrepair is to be expected: lack of drinking water due to lead pipes, the façade and school under constant construction, hallways closed for repairs. “When you enter the school, you are baffled by how beautiful it is,” Gueritaud says, “but you are also appalled by the state of it.” Surely, she says, the government has the money to do what is necessary to keep it open.
The two new locations, Gueritaud says, don’t have the facilities and space that F.A.C.E. needs, no auditorium, not enough art rooms, and no library.
And separating the elementary from the high schools defeats the purpose of F.A.C.E., where younger students learn from the older ones, French and English coexist, and teachers follow students throughout their time there. It is as if the government considers the school a failed experiment, even though it’s been around since 1975, and lacks the will to save it.
But Gueritaud says the government is missing the point.
“This is not just about one school in the core of downtown Montreal that few privileged kids are lucky to attend. It’s about allocating public funds for what actually matters for society.”
Gueritaud chokes up when she talks about F.A.C.E., a school that alumni come back with pride.
“Do we really want to scrap a project that is actually working, that is actually producing culturally engaged, culturally committed, interested, articulate people in downtown Montreal?”
Centennial Academy is also facing closure. The private high school for students with learning challenges, ADHD, autism, anxiety, and other issues is in dire financial straits.
An English institution for nearly six decades, it added a French sector in 2016. The school is now evenly split Anglophone and Francophone, But it only gets government funding for one – the Anglo side – due to a freeze on private school funding. As a result, Centennial Academy is looking at a deficit that it may not be able to overcome.
But unlike in the case of F.A.C.E., which seems a done deal, Education Minister Bernard Drainville is said to be considering emergency funding for Centennial if it can show it has some kind of recovery plan in place.
Centennial is a private school with a tuition price tag of $23,000 per year.
The prospect of its closure was discussed in the National Assembly, with Liberal MNA Madwa-Nika Cadet warning that the school may only have two months left.
Both F.A.C.E. and Centennial have groups fighting for each school’s survival, with Facebook pages – Sauvons F.A.C.E./Save F.A.C.E., and Coalition Sauvons – raising awareness. Centennial. Drainville has met with the latter group. And F.A.C.E. has a petition before the National Assembly presented by Jennifer Maccarone, the MNA for the school’s riding. n