Moira Secondary School gets a new name amid controversy

Moira Secondary School will be renamed Meyers Creek Secondary School this fall. Photo by Olivia Timm, QNet News

By Olivia Timm

BELLEVILLE – Moira Secondary School will be known as Meyers Creek Secondary School when students from Moira and Quinte Secondary begin class together there this September.

The Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board voted unanimously in favour of the name change at a meeting Monday afternoon.

The school board put together a list of five name options based on public input. They were Belleville East Secondary School, East Hill Secondary School, East Side High School, Gord Downie Secondary School and Meyers Creek Secondary School.  The school board then chose Meyers Creek.

Quinte Secondary School will be closing at the end of this school year. Of the 590 Quinte students, 390 will attend Meyers Creek. The remaining 200 will attend Centennial Secondary.

School-board spokesperson Kerry Donnell says the cost of the rebranding project has not yet been determined but “no funding that is intended for the classroom or for resources or for employees would be used for the rebranding purpose.”

There has been opposition to the name change, and a petition against it gathered 2,500 signatures. Opponents had complained about education money being spent on costs associated with the name change.

Back in June, the accommodation review put forward that Moira would be the consolidated school rather than Centennial, and that when the project was sent to the Ministry of Education for approval, it was to either rename and add an addition to Moira or to build an entirely new school.

One Moira student’s guardian is against the rebranding project. Kathryn Brown, a local businesswoman, takes care of a young man who attends Moira Secondary. She says the decision to rebrand now is unreasonable.

“I have been very vocal that I felt that the rebranding at this time was unnecessary. I don’t think it’s an expense that we need to spending when there’s a possibility in the not-too-distant future that the Ministry [of Education] will approve a rebuild of a completely new site,” she said. “So why go through the expense of money that could be better used on student resources or EAs or support staff or custodians or any number of other things that could assist with the transition?”

Brown says she supports the idea of rebranding Moira down the road, but does not see it as an appropriate decision at this time.

“I have always been of the position ‘not now.’ If and when the ministry decides that a new school will be built, then it makes perfect sense to use that opportunity and rebrand and rename. Until such time that the ministry makes that decision, I see no reason why it couldn’t have continued as Moira,” she said.

Dave Patterson, school-board trustee, has the opposite view as Brown.

“There are voices that say ‘Wait until the new build,’ for what purpose? Because we are starting a new population of students – a population of students made up of students from Quinte and Moira who will establish their own history and their own record going forward to be proud of it,” he said. “A name is a name, it’s what the students make of it that will make history.”

“There is always emotion when it comes to school closures, school openings even, or any changes because schools are really the heart of the community,” Donnell said. “Now that they have come up with Meyers Creek Secondary School, it opens the door for all of next steps to start to take place.”