MONTREAL - The English Montreal School Board will decide Wednesday evening whether it will begin public consultations on the fate of more than 20 of its schools.

The schools are part of a major re-organization of the board's properties and some may have to move or close.

The board says there are lots of factors that go into it's long-range plans for schools and final decisions won't be made until January of 2012.

Among them: Bancroft, Carlyle, James Lyng and Nesbitt, which just celebrated its centennial last year.

That has some parents already mounting extensive campaigns to save them.

Parents at Nesbit Elementary in Rosemount have upped the anti, with a Facebook page, blog and online petition.

The EMSB has lost 6000 students in the last 10 years, however, and officials say something must be done.

"We're expected to lose another 2500 more in the next couple of years," said Mike Cohen of the EMSB.

"We'd be irresponsible if we just kept the status quo. We have to look at every possible scenario. "