The Coast Mountains School District took several cube vans full of chairs and desks to the Terrace landfill last month after officials said they did all they could to find a use for them first.
In all, three cube vans of furniture were taken to the landfill during a two-week period.
The furniture was declared either unsafe or unusable, said Coast Mountains school superintendent Katherine McIntosh.
“Our facilities department uses thorough due diligence in their process in relation to furniture items that are no longer needed,” said McIntosh. “These particular desks were from our former ET Kenney School.”
ET Kenney was closed after the 2009-2010 school year to help save costs after enrolment dropped. Its kindergarten to Grade 3 students were moved to the next-door Clarence Michiel school building, which up until then had only Grade 4 to 7 students. The Clarence Michiel building is now called the Suwilaawks Community School.
“When the school first closed, many items were given to other schools in our district and other neighbouring school districts who were invited to tour the closed site,” said McIntosh of the ET Kenney building. “A publicly advertised garage sale was held at the school where many of the remaining items were sold.”
Garage sale information went out to all employees in the district and parent advisory council chairs. After the garage sale, non-profit groups had the opportunity to take any items they were interested in and then any items that could be recycled were recycled, she added.
“Following this process, items that had no remaining value, or [were] deemed unsafe for use, were disposed of,” said McIntosh.
Several desks and chairs were salvaged from the landfill by local residents.
Danielle Morris and Angela MacDonald said they were looking for items they could fix up and keep or sell.
They picked out several desks and chairs that appeared to be usable, saying fixing up and recycling items that had been thrown out was a hobby of theirs.