Board mulls future of all-girls high school

The closing of a convent has cast a dark cloud over Holy Angels High School in Sydney, Atlantic Canada's only all-girls public high school.

The Congregation of Notre Dame will close its convent and the adjoining building that houses the school by the summer of 2011.

The Nova Scotia school board that runs Holy Angels High will now have to decide what to do with it.

"It'll be up to the board to negotiate with the CND, of how we might go to retaining the idea of a gender school or to have the gender school fold into other schools," said Ed Davis, superintendent of the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board, which rents the building.

Holy Angels High School was founded in 1885 as a way of helping young women develop their faith, poise and self-worth.

But there are fewer sisters living at the convent, and the Congregation of Notre Dame says it can no longer afford to keep both the convent and the school open.

"There is certainly a sense of sadness in all of this," said Sister Donna Egan, a spokeswoman. "We have been talking with the sisters for the last three years to our long-range planning, and so they knew that this would be inevitable. Yet there are many mixed emotions."

Egan said the remaining 15 nuns all over the age of 70 will be moved to other convents in the area. She doesn't know what will happen to the building itself.

Davis said the school board will discuss the future of Holy Angels High School at a meeting next week.