This month parents and staff at Capilano elementary toasted their latest victory, having just secured candidacy status for an International Baccalaureate program.

With the curriculum in place, the teachers trained up in the IB teaching styles, and the parent community on board, designates from the New York IB education office will visit the school next spring. If they like what they see, then Capilano will be the first elementary school in the North Van school district to be granted the IB program – the other two IB programs are at Carson Graham (Grades 11-12) and Balmoral (Grades 8-10).

Phil Marshall, the principal at Capilano, says the school is “bursting at the seams” as parents flock from around the district to enroll their kids in the program. He says the school has added a fourth kindergarten class and the ranks have swelled from 260 kids in September 2007 to what looks like 360 enrolments in September 2009.

“The school board officially says we don’t keep waiting lists,” explains Marshall, but the primary grades are full. He says they expect the school will be completely full in four years.

Less than two years ago, the future looked grim for Capilano.

A report – well-known to parents and staff in the district – by Matrix Planning Associates targeted Capilano for closure along with eight other schools in the district. With only 214 kids enrolled, the elementary school was only using 45 per cent of its seats, a major weakness in the district’s long term plan to build new schools and adapt to what looked like at least 1,100 seats that would open up in North Van public schools by 2022. “That (2007) Matrix report took us sideways,” says Mary Charleson, PAC chair.

According to Charleson and Marshall, the school community at Capilano decided to scrap for survival. They had started talking about IB a few months before the report, says Charleson, but the prospect of closure spurred the parents to act quickly.

“Nobody wants to close a school in the neighbourhood. It’s not pretty. It’s emotional.”

Marshall surveyed his teachers. Charleson surveyed the parents. After a few months of strategy sessions and info nights, the teachers at the school voted unanimously to pursue a PYP program for the school. Parents voted 98 per cent, say Charleson and Marshall.

“I think it has to be noted this (IB) isn’t a better education,” adds Marshall, “It’s a different approach.”

Marshall and Charleson both say the shift to IB wasn’t about “elitism” or stronger academics for the school.

“There’s some quite affluent houses here (in the Capilano catchment). There’s also some rental accommodation. We span the gamut,” adds Charleson. “And now we’re the only other (North Shore) public PYP other than West Bay (elementary in West Van).”

Marshall adds, “When I was first approached (about IB) I was reluctant. I didn’t want to create an elitist thing.” But Marshall says the primary years IB is not “a university fast track,” but a means to “give the kids perspective on global issues ... the understanding is deeper. They’re making connections through several parts of the curriculum.”

The program uses six key themes: who we are; where we are in place and time; how we express ourselves; how the world works; how we organize ourselves; sharing the planet. The teachers at Capilano use the provincial curriculum to meet ministry targets while applying those themes.

Marshall says the goal is to encourage kids to ask their own questions and seek out answers in self-directed study and to help kids make “trans-disciplinary connections.”

The IB “units of inquiry” combine ideas, he says. If students study how climate change will affect the environment, then they will cover “condensation, transpiration, biomes, but at the same time the kids might be writing poetry.” Marshal says the approach brings “a deeper understanding of the subject, and at the same time kids start asking questions and kids answer those questions ... they become interested in topics and chase it down.”

In tandem with the push for IB, parents organized fundraising campaigns to bolster the school. Since 2007, Charleson estimates parents have raised upward of $60,000 to fund new laptops for classrooms and a new iMac lab, supplements for the library and this year to resurface the hockey and tennis courts in the school yard.

“Everybody wants a healthy community school in the neighbourhood,” Charleson says. “We had exactly the right resources we needed at the right time.”