Read More About Lackner Woods Public School
Lackner Woods Public School
Greetings, and welcome to the WRX Property Group website and blog! We’re taking a look at the Top-Rated Elementary Schools in the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB). Today’s in-depth analysis will be about: Lackner Woods Public School!
Lackner Woods Public School is located in eastern Kitchener. The Grand River (and the lovely Walter Bean Grand River Trail that runs along it) is mere minutes away, and verdant swathes of wooded areas lie to both the north and the south of the school (it’s named Lackner Woods for a reason).
Slightly further south of Lackner Woods Public School is the popular Chicopee Ski and Summer Resort. You could say Lackner Woods Public School is in an active, outdoorsy part of Kitchener, and you would be right.
The official address of Lackner Woods (we’ll refer to it simply as Lackner Woods from here on out, but we are still talking about the school, rather than the woods themselves) is 151 Zeller Drive (yes, the street name has ties to the founder of Canada’s dearly departed department store Zellers; the Zeller family has roots in Kitchener-Waterloo).
Lackner Woods is a Kindergarten to Grade 6 elementary school. Its school hours are 9:15 am – 3:35 pm, with office hours from 8:00 – 4:00. The office phone number is (519) 894-1150.
The school itself was built just under 20 years ago; it officially opened on October 25th, 2001. When it was first built, this was a relatively undeveloped area of Kitchener, and open fields laid where rows of houses now stand.
Lackner Woods was and is intended to accommodate up to 450 students, but as time went by after its opening year, the school population steadily grew (this is, after all, a great area of Kitchener to live in, and as alluded to, much land was developed here in the early to mid-2000s).
Eventually, the school was overflowing, with a student population of well over 600. Thus, numerous portable units were set up around the school (adorably referred to as ‘cottages’). However, ever since Chicopee Hills Public School opened just south of Lackner Woods, it absorbed large parts of Lackner Woods’ zoning area.
At present, Lackner Woods has a much more manageable student population of just over 400. And remember: the fact that Kitchener’s population is steadily growing, and thus necessitating the consistent creation of brand new schools, is a good thing (particularly from a real estate perspective, and from a student/parent perspective).
More schools mean more reasonable class sizes, and newer facilities: a 2001 construction date, in the grand scheme of things, means Lackner Woods is still a very new school.
Lackner Woods has one of the more distinctive mascots in the pantheon of WRDSB and WCDSB (Waterloo Catholic District School Board) mascots: Lackner Louie. Lackner Louie is a giant, anthropomorphized maple leaf with beady eyes, an oval-shaped nose, and an exuberant smile accentuated with bright red lipstick.
Selecting a giant maple leaf is fitting for a school nestled among two large, prominent patches of woodland, and it’s also a nice patriotic nod to the Canadian flag (though Louie, it should be noted, is green, not red).
Dozens of small, stuffed Louie dolls made an appearance at Lackner Woods’ tenth anniversary in 2011, which itself was a fun occasion for current and former students and staff. Lackner Woods has quite a few admirable features, but few outshine Lackner Louie himself: he must be seen to be beleafed.
One of the aspects of Lackner Woods that is rightfully celebrated, by staff, students, and locals alike, is its emphasis on community. Ever since opening its doors in 2001, it’s become an integral part of the burgeoning community nestled along the Grand River in eastern Kitchener.
It hosts a wide variety of events and celebrations throughout the year, including Dance-a-Thon, family reading nights (which have, in the past, been attended by hockey players from the Kitchener Rangers), family picnics, the fun-filled tenth anniversary celebration (the twentieth is coming up!), and so much more.
One of Lackner Woods’ mottos is: “All for one and one for all” (as Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers made famous). This spirit of community is also demonstrated in Lackner Woods’ erecting of a Peace Pole near their front entrance (Peace Poles started popping up in Japan several decades ago, and now stand in over 180 countries).
Sports are an important feature of the Lackner Woods experience, as well, and students can participate in, learn about, and celebrate a variety of sports. In the 2009-10 school year, students even got to pose with the Olympic torch (this was the year Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics, and the official torch travelled all across Canada) and a pair of anthropomorphized Canadian Olympic mittens with maple leaves (Lackner Woods, if you haven’t noticed, is all about anthropomorphized maple leaves).
Rating
The Fraser Institute is a Canadian organization that offers an important service for anyone interested in Canadian schools: using publically-available data, it rates and ranks elementary schools every year, based on their performance. The data comes from the Grade 3 and Grade 6 testing conducted by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), which assesses Reading, Writing, and Math.
Lackner Woods is ranked as the top elementary school in Kitchener in both the WRDSB and the WCDSB and the fourth most highly-ranked elementary school in the entire WRDSB. It has been steady in its position as the top school in Kitchener for several years, and in fact, when the Fraser Institute first extended its rating program to elementary schools (at first it just covered secondary schools), Lackner Woods tied as the second best school in the entire Waterloo Region, on both school boards.
The Fraser Institute grades schools on a ten-point scale; schools ranked between 7.6 and 10 qualify as ‘Green.’ Lackner Woods’ score of 8.1 places it comfortably within the Green range. The cancellation of EQAO testing in elementary schools during 2015 somewhat complicates tracking a specific school’s performance over time, but it should be noted that although Lackner Woods did dip below 7.6 at one point (2014).
It climbed back over 8 in 2016, but slipped slightly downward to its current score of 8.1 between 2016 and 2017. We’ll wait a little while to see the outcome of 2018, but whatever that may be, Lackner Woods should still be seen as a reputable school with great academic opportunities for its students.
See Homes for Sale Near Lackner Woods Public School
Conclusion
Lackner Woods Public School is still a fairly new addition to the WRDSB family. It lies in a beautiful, forested area with great access to the Grand River, and although we highlighted it for its high ranking in academic performance, it truly offers so much more.
Once you take a look at it, you might be like Lackner Louie and fall for it completely.
Written by Will Kummer