Vaudreuil-Dorion keeps growing, but its schools are full

Vaudreuil-Dorion has been booming for the past decade and a half, being marketed to young families as a quiet place to live that is outside the city, with room for them to grow and affordable property taxes.

The population grew 14.4 per cent between the 2011 and 2016 census, a rate more than four times that of the provincial average.

But while more new developments go up, the suburb'sschools are full and many local childrenmust take hour-long bus rides to attend schools in neighbouring cities such as Saint-Lazare.

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Nancy Ct and her husband moved to Vaudreuil, west of Montreal's West Island, nearly 10 years ago and now have two young boys. Their eldest, Vincent, 8, went to kindergarten and Grade 1 at a school two kilometres from the family's home.

"We thought everything was normal, everything was safe. Everybody in the area was going to that school,"Ctsaid.

The school, l'Hymne-au-Printemps,which recently celebrated its fifth year, was already full by the end of Vincent's second year there.

After asking parents to volunteer to transfer their kids to another school to make space, the school randomly chose a number of students to transfer.

Vincent came home one afternoonwith a letter from the school saying he was one of them.

A stressful and unexpected school transfer

"We were really upset at first," Cttold CBCNews. "They told the kids before telling us, so a lot of kids in the classroom started panicking; some were crying."

On Thursday, Vincent started Grade 3, his second year at coleDestriersin Saint-Lazare. Next year, Ct's other son, Justin, 4,starts school and she's still not sure where he will go.

cole Des triers is also in a growing neighbourhood and filling up fast. Sending Justin there to be with his brother would mean having to ask special permission every year because it's outside of his school zoning area.

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Separating young siblings

KellySayarinh'schildren are already being separated.Sayarinhand her husband bought a home inVaudreuil10 years ago, but moved to Ontario for work. They rented out the home during that time and recently moved back.

Sayarinh says she assumed the city and Ministry of Education would have planned for all the families who've grown or moved to the city in the meantime.

She desperately tried to find a school nearby in French or English that would take her two children, one just started kindergarten and the other, Grade 1.

The children, who speak almost exclusively English, now attend French schools in two different cities, Vaudreuil-Dorion and Saint-Lazare. Sayarinhsays she only received a final answer about where they could go on Monday, days before school started.

"It's going to be difficult. They're only a year apart in school, so they're very close in age and they are very close together as well," she told CBCMontreal's Daybreak Wednesday morning.

"There needs to be a proper plan."

Mayor blames province for poor planning

But Vaudreuil'smayor, Guy Pilon, says the lack of schools has nothing to do with the city.

He blames the poor planning on the provincial Ministry of Education, which he says won't build a new school if another one in a 20-kilometre radius can accept more children.

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"It's completely sorry stupid, their way of doing things," Pilon said of the ministry onDaybreak. "Instead of building a big school, they built only two little schools. So I told them, 'Why don't you build a third level?' The answer's always the same: they follow the rules."

At the end of July, the city sent a press release, advertising its ranking in a "best places to live" list in the Canadian magazineMoneySense, placing fourth for offering "some of the best conditions for raising kids."

Pilon says he can only help the ministry find land for schools. When residents complain to him,he says he tells them,"You have to go to the right door and the right door is the provincial government."

In response to a request for comment, an Education Ministry spokesperson said it had not received a request from the English-language Lester B. Peason School Board to build new schools in the area.

There is only one English school in Vaudreuil Pierre Elliott Trudeau Elementary.

The ministry spokesperson did not say whether the local French-language school board,Commission scolaire des Trois-Lacs, has made a similar request.

- With files from CBCreporters Matt D'Amours, Shari Okeke and CBC Montreal's Daybreak