The future of Robert Bateman High School in Burlington is starting to become more clear, as the city looks to finalize the acquisition of the property.
Right now, the most recent proposal would see Brock University share the space with a library, TechPlace, and the Halton District School Board (HDSB), which is retaining 45,000 sq. ft. of space.
Robert Bateman H.S. closed in June of 2020 after the HDSB voted for the closure in 2017, along with Lester B. Pearson High School, which closed the following year.
Bateman was the result of the combination of Lord Elgin and General Brock high schools at the Lord Elgin building in 2004 and was named after Robert Bateman, acclaimed artist, naturalist, and former teacher at Lord Elgin.
The building boasts more than 200,000 sq. ft. of space on just under 13 acres of land.
After the closure, the remaining students were transferred to nearby Nelson High School.
Robert Bateman was set to close in 2019. However, because of the number of renovations that needed to be done at Nelson, Central, and M.M. Robinson high schools (other schools accommodating student overflow), HDSB trustee for Ward 5 Amy Collard asked for an additional year before closing down.
“I didn’t have a crystal ball. I didn’t know we were going to have a pandemic,” Collard said. “But it turned out that we really did need that extra year. And so I was very glad that I asked for the extra year because I don’t think we could possibly have done the work in the two-year timeframe.”
Some citizens were not as pleased with the board’s decision to renovate other high schools, arguing the money didn’t need to be spent.
“Taxpayers should be outraged at this spending. Frontenac yes, but Bateman had major upgrades and was fully equipped. What a waste of taxpayer’s money,” said Maureen Gilvan on a Facebook post by HDSB outlining how much would be given to each school for renovations.
Declining enrolment was the reason for the closure, and the Ontario government had a protocol in place (now in abeyance, according to Collard) of closing schools when there are too many empty spaces.
To Collard, the most important part of her job with respect to the closure was getting the students what they needed.
“Once the trustees voted, and the closure was happening, I felt it was my job to ensure that the students from that area and the students from outside that area who attended programs at Bateman were going to be well-served in their new schools,” she said.
There was a lot of pushback against the closure, from parents to students to other advocates, but it was all for naught, and a year after the closure, the board declared the building surplus.
After a building is declared surplus, there is a 90-day period where interested parties can make offers to purchase the facility to the board.
The City of Burlington immediately expressed interest in purchasing the property, wanting to move Brock University’s Faculty of Education and the Appleby branch of the Burlington Public Library to the former high school.
That was met with mostly positive responses from the community when the city expressed interest in June, with hopes it would be repurposed.
The city respected wishes to reuse the building when it announced the latest plans near the end of 2021.
“This will be a significant achievement benefitting the community and people across the city, with access to new community space, and with additional community uses that will also benefit residents through the partner organizations that are looking to take space on the site,” the mayor’s office said in a post on her website in November.
“The university, the library, the pool all in one location, brilliant!” said Cathy Evans on the city’s Facebook post.
Brock University has been looking for a new spot for the Faculty of Education for a while now, having sold their current building in Hamilton in September, though they are still able to operate there until August of this year.
They hope to be in their new digs by the following month.
Burlington Ward 5 Councillor Paul Sharman says that moving Brock to the vacant school is a great fit.
“Brock has been looking for space in Burlington for probably the last five years. And they’ve been working with our economic development corporation all that time,” Sharman said. “And at the same time, they wanted to move out of the property they had in Hamilton, so it got to the point where as a development corporation was talking to Brock, the probability of the city acquiring Bateman arose, and we have the top floor of Bateman, which was really very suitable for Brock. So it just became a match.”
As for the space that the HDSB is retaining, the plan is to relocate the Gary Allan Learning Centre, which houses their adult learning programs, to the Bateman building.
This was a move that was prompted by Collard herself once it became clear to her that Bateman was indeed going to close.
She spoke with Gary Allan’s director at the time and said that Bateman would be a good spot to house the learning centre because of all the tech shops and the proximity to daycare, as there was a YMCA daycare in the school at the time.
Not much more is known about the move at this time in terms of costs and any repairs that may need to happen on a school that’s been around since the ‘70s, as the sale isn’t final and negotiations are still ongoing.
Sharman is confident that the sale and acquisition should happen within the next month and says that it’s the right thing for the city to do and that it is good for the community.
“It retains an important historic property within the community and will be good for the citizens. So we’re happy to make that happen,” he said.
For Collard, she thinks it is a great opportunity for the Brock students to see a high school within their university and to see firsthand what a high school is like that provides alternative learning.
But most of all, she is happy that the city will continue to use the building to provide education.
“I’m just really pleased that we’re going to have a secondary presence continuing in southeast Burlington. I think it’s wonderful that the Bateman facility is going to continue to serve the community and to serve education.”
