T °AKV'^ £ r % %The Oakville Beave p v ttp Bulk Foods Now Available / / l i r a fo o d & d m g Upper Middle/8th Line A Metroland Publication Vol.37 No. 36 Students in Newspapers ~ '" ^ § f P a g e 19 Look on page 3 in today's O akville Beaver for yo u r coupon! FRIDAY, MARCH 26,1999 48Pages 75 Cents (Pb&GST) Setback for Oakwood boosters By Dennis Smith SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER The Halton District School Board's accommodation committee has rec ommended closing Oakville's Oakwood Public School, but the school's supporters haven't given up hope, yet. The committee voted Tuesday night to close Oakwood, along with Burlington's Fairfield Public School. The recommendation was made with a 5-4 vote, but Oakville trustee Lynn Roberts, who has voiced support for keeping Oakwood open, was not at the meeting. She will be present when the recom mendation is presented to the April 7th board meeting, and supporters believe her vote will tip the scales in favour of keeping the Bartos Drive school open. "They could still vote to keep it open; we're fairly confident," said Oakwood supporter Erin Redshaw. "We have a lot of faith in how people will be voting then." She said Oakwood has a high number of students (43) already registered for kindergarten. "You can't track rejuvena tion of older areas and our enrolment numbers are going up," noted Redshaw. She also noted Oakwood students would be going through busy traffic areas if transferred to W.H. Morden. Currently, school enrollment at Oakwood stands at 182 (school capacity is 284) with 40 children bussed in from the West Oak Trails area. If Oakwood closes, students would be bussed to W. H. Morden (at Morden Road and Rebecca Street). Oakwood offers students a breakfast program, remedial reading program, horticultural program and involvement (See 'Committee' page 11) UNIQUE AWARD: Drew Nener, second year stu dent with Sheridan College's furniture studio, created one of this year's Mayor's Awards for Business and the Arts to be presented April 22nd. For complete story on the awards and nominated finalists, see page 35. Photo by Barrie Erskine W e 'r e t o p s w it h lo c a l And the survey says... nearly twice as many adults in Oakville are reading the Oakville Beaver compared to other newspapers. According to a study commissioned by Metroland Printing, Publishing and Distributing, the parent company of the Oakville Beaver, 76.8% of local resi dents read the most recent edition of the Oakville Beaver. And 82.7% of the peo ple had read at least one edition of the Beaver in the last week. By comparison, the next most-read newspaper was the Toronto Star, with 41% of local residents having read the last issue. Once they get their hands on the Oakville Beaver, the information read ers want most is local and regional news, medicine and health, entertain ment, where to eat and where to ship. More than 7,500 surveys were returned from across the communities served by Metroland. The study was conducted by Kubas Consultants. It is (See 'R eaders' page 3) BIG 16" P IZ Z A 30% LargerTh anT he Regular Large One Topping (pepperoni*) $9.99 "IwoToppings $11.69 Three Toppings $13.39 i c e n t r e i 3 3 8 - 0 3 4 4 I