The EIPS Board of Trustees has decided in favor of renaming the Wye replacement school.

The Board has said that the renaming of the school was based on the results of a survey that was done throughout October and November of 2018 where 67% of the 286 respondents voted in favor of the change. If this is the case, we ask that the Board reconsider this decision, as it has come to light that many parents and community members were not aware of critically important factors when responding to this survey. A number of these factors are listed below:

1.  Cost for the school- All paraphernalia with the old logo/name will have to be discarded and re-purchased. Examples of these would be, signage, hallway banners and decore, letterhead, envelopes, ‘property of Wye School’ stickers, etc.. While some of these costs are small, some are quite expensive. This will cost EIPS, the province and taxpayers unnecessary money.

2.  Cost to the parents- The Fundraising Association for Wye School is a parent-lead fundraising group. Any financial impact with the name change of the school to this Association will not come from the school board, it will come from the money fundraised by parents instead of that money going directly to the school and/or school related programs.  In addition, all Wye School clothing, that was made available this year, will be wasted.

3.   Time- On top of the time that is already necessary to organize the transition, a mass of extra time will be added to staff and volunteers to change the name. For example, every book that currently has a ‘property of Wye School’ label will have to be re-labeled. This is days worth of work after the school has just created a new literacy program and added hundreds of freshly labeled books to its inventory.

4.  Environmental Impact- With a recent focus on recycling changes in Strathcona County, it is important to lead by example when teaching our children to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Simply discarding the previous logo’d items in the school due to a name change does not seem like the environmental option.

While there are many emotional arguments for and against a name change, we ask the Board of Trustees to reconsider the name change based more on the factors listed above and the fact that parents and community members may have been largely unaware of these factors when responding to the supplied survey.