A parents’ group that has been voicing concerns regarding the administration at Waterloo Elementary School over the past year has opted to take a new approach by organizing an extracurricular tutoring program for the school’s 17 sixth-grade students. “We decided to do something constructive,” said David Proulx, one of the parents involved with the group, explaining that three licensed teachers have been hired to offer after-school support for students out of the Waterloo Legion. Proulx shared that one of the three teachers involved in the project is Timothy Croteau, the teacher who was transferred out of the students’ class by the board earlier this school year. At the time of the transfer, the board stated that the decision was made in order to ‘improve the atmosphere of the school.’ Although the concerns voiced by the group over the last year have been many, Proulx said that there was a great deal of worry that the graduating students would not be adequately prepared for high school by the end of the year because of massive turnover in teaching staff. According to the parents’ accounting, the sixth-grade class had over 20 different teachers during the 2020-21 school year, and has had 18 so far in 2021-22 as a result of “transfers, sicknesses and other reasons.”
The group has previously engaged in active protest outside of the Eastern Townships School Board (ETSB) offices in Magog and Proulx said that they are currently waiting on an access to information request to the board to find out just what the action plan for addressing the situation at the school might be. In the meantime, he said the students “could see Sec. 1 coming and knew they weren’t prepared.”
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