Two students from Sacred Heart Catholic school travelled to St. Paul’s School to visit their new school come next September, when the two schools merge to create Pope Francis Catholic School.
A ceremony involving two student emissaries from Sacred Heart, who arrived with principal Darren Berthier on Thursday morning, to present a banner signed by the 150 pupils from Sacred Heart to two St. Paul’s students who accepted the banner and welcomed each other as schoolmates in the new Pope Francis Catholic Elementary school.
Then the banner was unfurled and the St. Paul’s students assembled in the gym signed their names to the banner signifying the merging of the pupils from two schools into Pope Francis Catholic.
Come September 2017 Sacred Heart will close and eventually be sold.
The building now housing St. Paul’s Elementary will remain, be expanded and upgraded and be renamed Pope Francis ready for the blended students from the two former schools in September.
Rhylan Wietesk, a grade three student from Sacred Heart, and one of the students who brought the signed banner said she was really excited about coming to the newly named Pope Francis Catholic School.
“I am very excited about making new friends,” she said. “And it will be a new experience for me.”
“I am also glad we came here today to have a chance to meet the students here,” she added. “It makes us more comfortable for when we do come here next September. We are projecting for over 300 students,” said Weltz.
“We are going to start renovations as soon as school is out in June and then we will start on a two story addition, the addition won’t be completed until 2018,” she said.
Andrew Marks community relations officer tor for NCDSexplained why the two schools were being merged and Pope Francis school created.
“There is extra room at St. Paul’s and we have less at Sacred Heart, so we are filling the capacity by merging the two schools from the kindergarten to Grade 4 level,” Marks explained. “The Grade 5 to Grade 8 will be merged with O’Gorman Intermediate school.”
“The new school will have both an English stream and French stream school,” he added.
The decision to merge St. Paul’s and Sacred Heart was made after an intense Pupil Accommodation Review exercise.
After discussing several options, the NCDSB voted to close Sacred Heart.
The St. Paul’s location was chosen because it also had a larger land area to accommodate future expansion.
The two schools combined will have increased capacity and there will be cost savings because the school board will not be paying duplicate utility costs.
After the merger, Principal Betty Pichette, current principal from St, Paul’s, will move to O’Gorman Intermediate.
Principle Daniel Berthier from Sacred Heart becomes the principal of Pope Francis.
Erica Raymond the current vice principal of St. Paul’s will remain as the vice principal at the new Pope Francis school.
Raymond said the name Pope Francis was chosen because the students overwhelmingly favoured the school be name after the highly likeable current Pope from Argentina.
The students came up with five names and then voted by secret ballot and chose Pope Francis.
“He is such a personable pope — he’s a pope for the people,” said Raymond.
But the parents and the community also had a say added Tricia Weltz, superintendent of education for the NCDSB
Vice principal Raymond believes this may be the first school in Canada that is named after Pope Francis.
“The kids were saying wouldn’t be great to write a letter to the Vatican and invite him to visit the school named after him.”
During the summer, work will begin on building a new two-storey addition with eight new classrooms.
The addition won’t be completed until February, 2018.
“And there will also be a general facelift to the rest of the school as you can see it is an older school, and it needs some brightening up,” said Raymond.
The population of students from kindergarten to grade four at St. Paul’s is about 200 and there will be an additional 100 plus moving in from Sacred Heart to the new St. Francis from Sacred Heart.
“But we still do have enough space to house all the students come September,” said Tricia Weltz, Superintendent of Education for the NCDSB.
The school which used to be the English stream while Sacred heart was the French immersion now will be under one roof.
“I think it will be the start of an exciting and vibrant school community,” said Weltz. “This is a great opportunity to celebrate the distinct nature of our country being bilingual.”
But alas, a quick internet search indicates that there are two other schools also named Pope Francis. One in Toronto and the other is in Kleinburg, Ontario.
