Parents meet face-to-face with school board over Elizabeth Ziegler Public School

Nearly one month ago, a large concrete slab fell from the facade of Elizabeth Ziegler Public School, a heritage building in Waterloo. That event set in motion a chain reaction that led to the school closing, forcing the school board to find alternate options for students.

The Waterloo Region District School Board held a public meeting on Wednesday night to meet face-to-face with parents who are, understandably, concerned for the future of their children’s education.

Plans are still being tweaked as all of Elizabeth Ziegler’s more-than 500 students will be learning in a different location than what they’ve become accustomed to for the remainder of the 2024/2025 school year.

As engineers continue to unearth structural and electrical concerns, the future of the nearly 100-year-old building is uncertain, and the board hasn’t ruled out the possibility of having to completely tear down the building and start from scratch.

The timeline

On Feb. 28, a member of staff found a large piece of concrete that had fallen from the facade of the nearly-100-year-old school, prompting a full closure of the school and an investigation from facilities staff and contractors.

The students at Elizabeth Ziegler moved to remote learning, with the school board providing Chromebook devices for students who didn’t already have access to tablets or laptops.

By March 11, the school board announced that remote learning would continue until the end of the month, with staff exploring options to return to in-person learning as soon as possible.

On March 14, it was announced that students would be unable to return to Elizabeth Ziegler for the remainder of the school year, and that the school board was exploring options to get students back in class, in some capacity, by April 1.

The plan to bring in portable classrooms and move some classes to other schools around Waterloo Region was announced on March 17, and parents were invited to attend a public meeting, held at Macgregor Publics School, on Wednesday night.

The concerns

Many parents who attended the public meeting on Wednesday were concerned about how the structural shortcoming of the heritage building weren’t known or caught before a slab of concrete fell from the facade.

In response, Director of Education Scott Miller and other members of the WRDSB explained that the board and Ministry of Education perform walkthroughs of schools once per year, but that the extent to how much they can learn from a visual scan of the buildings is limited. Additionally, Miller noted that the ministry has stopped performing those walkthroughs since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Miller noted that the board needs to develop a strategy to inspect some of the older buildings within the WRDSB to ensure that structural shortcomings can be caught before they become dangerous, and that this issue extends to many school boards across Ontario.

Parents are also worried about how their children will handle their ever-changing learning environment.

About half of the student population will be using portable classrooms set up on school property for the remainder of the school year. Twelve portable classrooms are being set up, which is the limit allowed by the City of Waterloo.

Those portables will be watched by security crews overnight and throughout weekends to ensure the safety of students and staff, and the school board is informing the Waterloo Regional Police Service of their layout so that they can respond to any emergency situations that may arise.

The other half of the student population, French immersion students and congregated classes, will be attending alternate schools, operating as a “school-within-a-school”.

The school board is still working out the details of how that plan will operate on a day-to-day basis, but is looking to ensure the impact on student learning and wellbeing is as minimal as possible.

Next steps

The engineering firm in charge of the school’s inspection, Witzel Dyce Engineering Inc., is set to provide the WRDSB with an update on the state of Elizabeth Ziegler at the end of this week.

The board says it will will collaborate to understand and pull the most pertinent information from the engineering report in order to pass that information along to parents and the public.

Miller said that information is set to be shared by the middle of next week.