Western Pictou Elementary Schools Engagement

Introduction

CCRCE recognizes the elementary  school catchment areas in Western Pictou County are not clearly defined. This has caused confusion and frustration for families. The current catchment areas of West Pictou Consolidated, Salt Springs Elementary, and Scotsburn Elementary overlap, causing inefficient bus routes, and limit CCRCE’s ability to roll out Bus Planner, an online bus information system that would improve service to Pictou County.

In addition, West Pictou Consolidated is currently the only elementary school in Pictou County which does not house a pre-primary program at the school site. Instead, the pre-primary children attend the Scotsburn or Salt Springs Pre-primary site and return to West Pictou for their primary year. The boundary realignment conversation will also provide the opportunity to explore the possibility of housing pre-primary at West Pictou Consolidated

We want to establish clear catchment area boundaries for the 2023-24 school year. We feel it is important to hear from you as you play an important role in our school community.

It is important to note three things:

• Current students will not be required to move to a different school.
• This is not about reviewing schools to close a building.
• All input shared by families and community members will be taken into consideration.

Western Pictou Elementary Schools Finalized Map & Next Steps

We began this process to address the confusion of overlapping elementary school catchment areas in Western Pictou County that were not clearly defined. This has been a source of confusion and frustration for families and has prevented us from effectively solving inefficient bus routes.

After weeks of gathering your feedback on draft maps, we have taken your thoughts and insights into consideration to finalize the map for the Western Pictou Elementary schools.

What we heard from you

Throughout the engagement we were reviewing your original insights on what’s important to you and your feedback on the draft proposed catchment maps. Here’s what we heard as the top themes of what families want:

• Shorter bus rides for students and reduce the number of bus transfers.
• Pre-Primary site housed at West Pictou Consolidated
• A transition plan to allow current students whose catchment area has changed within this process to remain at their original school, and a plan for their upcoming siblings to also continue at their original school site.

We also heard throughout the process a desire to shift the catchment boundary in specific locations on the map. We looked extensively at all these requests and tried to adjust where possible based on school enrolment, school space capacity, and the length of bus rides.

Using your feedback as a guiding principle, while keeping the goal of eliminating overlapping boundaries, we have a finalized map and plan to move forward.

The Final Catchment Areas

Based on your feedback, we are able to share the final catchment map for Salt Springs Elementary, Scotsburn Elementary, and West Pictou Consolidated.

To enlarge the map, please click here.

For a full list of street addresses associated with their new catchment area school, please click here.

We are also pleased to share that we are adding a Pre-Primary site at West Pictou Consolidated. To achieve this, grade six students will stay at Salt Springs Elementary and Scotsburn Elementary and transition to West Pictou Consolidated for grade seven.

Next Steps

There is still lots of work to do before September 2023.

Families who have been impacted by the adjusted catchment areas

We are committed to giving current students (and their upcoming siblings) the choice to remain at their original school or attend their new catchment area school.
We understand that many decisions will be made based on availability of a bus. As there are grade 7/8 students from all three catchment areas who attend West Pictou Consolidated, there will still be buses routed from all elementary schools towards West Pictou. Although we anticipate available seats to be accessible, confirmation of available seats will need to occur once the bus re-routing has occurred. We will be sending an email to those families with a link to a form to share your preferences with us, and more details about the next steps in the process. You can expect this follow up email in the next week.

New Bus Routes for families not impacted by the adjusted catchments

We are now working on updated bus routes based on the new catchment areas with the goal of reducing ride times and creating more efficient routes. Details regarding next year’s bus stops and times will be shared by mid-August 2023 through the online bus information platform, BusPlanner.

Pre-Primary

Pre-primary registration for West Pictou Consolidated will open early next week on our website.

Incoming Pre-Primary and Primary students new to our schools

If you have already registered, but think you are now in a different catchment area school, we will contact you by email to confirm your school registration.
If you have not registered yet and can’t find your street address on the list, please contact the school as indicated by the finalized catchment map.

More information will be shared with you as we work through additional details over the next few weeks. In the meantime, please reach out if you have any questions at [email protected] We will continue to update our website with answers to your questions as new information becomes available.

THANK YOU!

We want to say a huge thank you to all families and community members for your participation in the ThoughtExchange, your voicemails and emails. There was much we discovered and were able to consider throughout this process because of you!

Messages to Families