The Vancouver school board has voted to permanently close Sir Guy Carleton Elementary, which has been sitting vacant for nearly a decade since it was severely damaged by a fire.

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Trustees who voted to close the school in a 5-3 decision Wednesday night said the decision was not taken lightly, but that the school has cost the district $650,000 over the last 10 years to maintain the vacant buildings.

“I will be voting in favour of closing, because I put more value on students in schools than empty buildings,” chair Victoria Jung said before the vote.

One of Vancouver’s oldest schools, Carleton elementary opened in 1896 and is included in the city’s heritage register. The six-acre site on Kingsway and Joyce Street includes three buildings that have sat unused since the August 2016 blaze.

After the fire, most students were transferred to nearby elementary schools.

School board staff recommended the permanent closure of the school, which requires about $65,000 a year to maintain and protect from vandals.

That money can be put to better use for students, said some trustees, noting that the school district had been denied multiple funding requests to repair and seismically upgrade the school.

Trustee Lois Chan-Pedley said there was no viable pathway to reopen Carleton elementary given the province’s repeated rejection of funding. She said other nearby elementary schools — Cunningham, MacCorkindale and Weir — are able to absorb students who would’ve gone to Carleton and there are no students waiting to return to Carleton.

“In other words, closure does not replace students. It recognizes a reality that has existed for years,” she said.

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Three trustees, including Suzie Mah, Preeti Faridkot and Jennifer Reddy, voted against the motion, saying new housing developments and densification plans for the Joyce-Collingwood neighbourhood means Carleton should be kept open to accommodate future growth.

Mah submitted a motion to temporarily halt the process to allow the school board to renew a request to the provincial government to fund the repair and seismic upgrades for the school, saying it was premature to make a decision until they hear back from the province.

“If we decide to go ahead and close tonight, why would the government want to give us any money?” she asked. “Whatever we’re looking at this decision tonight is going to impact the community forever.”

Closing the school to save $65,000 a year would be short-sighted, said Faridkot, adding the school district pays more than that in legal fees. “Closing a neighbourhood school in an area of growing family needs run counter to responsible planning.”

Jung said formally closing the school means the discussion could begin on alternate use for the land.

She said the decision also supported the right of minority Francophone students in B.C.

The province’s Francophone school board, the Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique (CSF), has expressed interest in the site for a secondary school to support its French-speaking students in east Vancouver.

chchan@postmedia.com