Whistler's council will attend to a wave of correspondence relating to a controversial, closed-door decision next week.
The letters in the July 9 council package pertain to the decision to end a 23-year temporary lease of municipal lands to a local private school.
On June 25, council directed staff to write up a final lease extension for the Whistler Waldorf School, which operates on municipal lands in Spruce Grove.
The lease would go to June 30, 2025, at which point there would be no further extension—according to the current direction to staff.
The school has previously operated on year-to-year leases, but the decision to extend it a final time came as a shock, according to the school itself.
“This decision will likely have a profound negative impact, displacing 170 K-12 students from 134 enroled families, closing 45 to 50 daycare spots, and the loss of 45 jobs,” reads the letter to council from the Whistler Waldorf School Society in response to the news.
The June 25 decision came to public attention earlier this week, with the school reaching out to alert parents and employees. A school board trustee member told Pique in an interview the direction from council to staff caused “quite a stir,” adding the school was seeking clarity and confirmation.
The school’s letter to the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) is one of 90 the municipality has received on the topic so far. Each letter can be read in the RMOW regular council meeting agenda package for July 9. While the deadline for letters for that meeting has already passed (at noon Wednesday, July 3), typically, letters are also included in late correspondence to council in a separate package on the day of the meeting.
The letters come from the school itself, board members, staff, parents and family members affected by the decision—and all 90 of them are opposed, with writers using a vast array of adjectives to describe their reactions to the news ranging from “concerned” to “devastated” and “furious.”
The general thrust of all the letters is the wider Waldorf community is shocked by the development, and scrambling for answers with many describing the school as important to their family lives, and their being in Whistler in the first place.
All implore the municipality to reconsider its direction to terminate the lease.
The letters will be discussed on Tuesday, July 9 at the regular council meeting. On the same day, council will also hold another closed meeting in the morning. Generally speaking, items of land, legal, and labour are pulled into closed meetings. The agenda of that closed meeting is not public information.
The RMOW confirmed the development in a statement to Pique, with a communications official saying the decision was not made lightly, but the municipal lands were not intended to be a long-term location for a private school.
“Community demand for parkland is high and available indoor bookable spaces are very limited in our community,” the official said.
While staff were directed to write up a final lease extension, Pique understands it has not yet been enacted.
The decision was made by only five of the seven elected officials, as both Mayor Jack Crompton and Councillor Jessie Morden recused themselves, as their children are enroled at the school. How the remaining councillors voted is not known, but a majority of three of the five would have been required to support extending the lease by only 12 months.
For the July 9 regular meeting, both Crompton and Morden will again have to be recused from any decision-making on the future of the school. The acting mayor in case of recusals or absence for July 2024 is Coun. Cathy Jewett.
