Students sign up to stop overcrowding, Longfields-Davidson Heights already over capacity with Grade 12 still to come

Posted Feb 16, 2012 By Jennifer McIntosh

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Nepean-Carleton MPP and conservative provincial education critic Lisa MacLeod, left, looks over the start of a petition to expand Longfields-Davidson Heights Secondary School with student council co-presidents Anna Clement and Reshma Dalial. The students collected 500 signatures over two lunch hours. MacLeod officially launched the petition at the school on Feb. 9.

Jennifer McIntosh, Metroland

Nepean-Carleton MPP and conservative provincial education critic Lisa MacLeod, left, looks over the start of a petition to expand Longfields-Davidson Heights Secondary School with student council co-presidents Anna Clement and Reshma Dalial. The students collected 500 signatures over two lunch hours. MacLeod officially launched the petition at the school on Feb. 9.

EMC news - Anna Clement and Reshma Dalial are learning about civic engagement thanks to a petition.

The two co-presidents of the student council at Longfields-Davidson Heights Secondary School are demanding the province fast-track expansion of the school, which opened in 2009.

The school - which has yet to have any students in Grade 12 - is already bursting at the seams, with nearly 1,400 students at a school designed to accommodate 1,300.

Clement said that she and some other students have already managed to collect 500 signatures during two different lunch hours in advance of the petition launch.

Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod launched a petition on Feb. 9. MacLeod is the Progressive Conservative education critic.

"No one wants class in more portables," she said. "And it's important for the future students and the community. It's pretty amazing that it's a new school and it's already overcrowded."

Taz Mawji, who is co-chair of the school's parent council and has a son currently in a portable, said it isn't about the quality of education, but about the students' sense of community.

"We don't doubt the teachers are delivering the lessons to students to the best of their abilities," she said. "But it takes away from that sense of school community if the kids aren't physically in the school."

Mawji added that with the crush for space, the school is less able to provide specialized classes like design and technology.

MacLeod said she knows there are pressures across the province for more funding for new schools, but she thinks the rapid growth of Barrhaven merits the expansion.

"People are paying taxes and then having their children go to school in portables or having their kids bused to a school that isn't in their community," she said. "Something needs to be done about that."

Lauralee Comeau, the other co-chair on the school's parent council, said the petition would be made available to the community throughout the campaign and volunteers would be staffing a table with the petition at Ross' Your Independent Grocer, 3777 Strandherd Dr., on Feb. 18.

During the Feb. 9 launch, students and parents arrived in large numbers to add their signatures to the petition that will be read in the legislature - filling an entire page of the document in about 30 minutes.