By Tommy Osborne

Giscome School Closure

“We’re quite sad:” local reaction to Giscome Elementary School closure

Apr 24, 2025 | 5:39 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – School District 57 has announced Giscome Elementary School will be closed at the end of the school year on June 30, 2025. This decision was due to the fact that Giscome Elementary School only has ten students this year, and projections show this will drop in the coming years.

“We’re quite sad. I was hoping that we’d get more students, but we have less and less students over the last few years,” said Kevin Dunphy, Regional District of Fraser Fort George Director of Electoral Area F (Willow River – Upper Fraser Valley).

Giscome students will now fall under the Blackburn Elementary School catchment, and SD57 Superintendent Jameel Aziz says this will lead to a far greater educational experience for students.

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“The driver was around the fact that we did not feel that we were offering an equitable education program to those students, based on multi-grade classroom and really not having the same peer or other educational opportunities that students in other areas have,” Aziz said.

Aziz says during the consultation and community feedback processes he was surprised to hear that most parents were on board with the idea, as Aziz says these parents agreed that their children would receive better opportunities at a bigger school.

“We heard from one family who has three boys currently at Giscome, and those three boys are all in the same classroom. They want to have peer connections, they want to have the opportunity to make friends outside of their family group, they want the opportunity to play sports and be involved in different school activities that probably are much harder to do when you only have 1 or 2 children in a particular grade at a particular school.” Aziz said.

“The social connection, the peer opportunities, the sports connections, and probably a little bit more focused curricular attention, really were the benefits of the change and moving to a new school structure,” he continued.

While the benefits of this move are expected to have a large positive impact for the Giscome students, Dunphy adds there are still some concerns regarding the distance, particularly for the winter.

“That’ll be a long bus trip, especially for the people out east of here, Upper Fraser and Sinclair Mills and these areas,” Dunphy said.

There are cost savings associated with closing the school, as Aziz says $325,000 will be saved next year and then $150,000 in annual savings after that. However, Aziz adds money was not a factor at all in the decision to close the school.

“We would not have closed the school program at this time based on economic factors. It was not the driver at all, but the reality is there are some savings to be had in closing Giscome Elementary, but it was not the motivation for having the conversation,” Aziz says.

Even though the school will be closed, the building will still be accessible as a community hall and gathering space, and Dunphy says work will begin to figure out the specifics of this change.

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