Saskatchewan farmer Tammy Crone does not want her kids mixing with
urban students from Moose Jaw.
She is campaigning against the amalgamation of the Moose Jaw school
division with her rural Thunder Creek division.
“City kids are different. My kids have more responsibility,” Crone said.
“I was a city kid. I see city kids are less disciplined.”
Crone has another reason for trying to stop the school merger – money.
Last year she and her husband paid $21,000 in education tax on their
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6,500 acre grain and livestock farm. Because Thunder Creek raises
enough local taxes to support its schools, it does not need to draw
grant money from the province, unlike its potential partner. After an
amalgamation, Crone thinks her tax dollars will be supporting the Moose
Jaw schools, with no appreciable difference in the programs her kids
will get. It is a subsidization she does not want to be part of.
“All our kids will gain is home economics and shops in Grade 8 instead
of one year later in high school.”
Crone and others have been mailing letters and passing around petitions
urging local ratepayers to reject the proposed amalgamation of Thunder
Creek’s 868 students and Moose Jaw’s 4,493.
But Deborah Agema thinks parents should not be afraid of school
division mergers.
The North Battleford, Sask., woman is the parent representative on the
provincial education department’s restructuring committee. Agema, who
is past-president of the Saskatchewan Association of School Councils,
said parents need to be consulted. Public meetings must be held
whenever school divisions talk about amalgamation, she added.
“Common sense has to come into play. Misinformation makes parents
militant.”
Agema said people should know the facts. More than half of
Saskatchewan’s students are in Regina and Saskatoon. The rural
population was much larger when the province’s 99 school divisions were
set up 60 to 70 years ago. Last year, however, rural areas had 2,000
fewer students, a downward trend that has been happening for a number
of years.
The pressure to either raise school taxes or close rural schools and
cut staff and programs has led to the amalgamation idea. That’s what
Agema said is the bonus of mergers – the committee’s intent is that
there be no loss of jobs or programs.
There will be fewer trustees, however.
“We’re asking people to voluntarily give up their job. The $5,000 rural
people make as trustees is viewed as off-farm income.”
Unlike Crone, Agema supports the financial equalization that comes when
a rich division pairs with a poorer one.
“If you have a mine in your backyard, everyone in Saskatchewan should
benefit.”
Some parents fear that losing their trustee will mean a loss of local
influence on a board’s decisions. Michael Klein of Wood Mountain,
Sask., is one of them. His three children travel by bus to school
because the local school was closed in 1994.
“I see amalgamation as exactly the wrong way to go,” said Klein, who is
village mayor and a former teacher.
“Ratepayers will have even less input.”
He said rural taxpayers fund more of their school costs than city
people, but have less say.
“I believe we should enhance the power of regional offices, not of
central divisions, and then you still have families involved with their
kids.”
Klein said parents and children lose interest in their school when it
is farther away. He said the quality of education for Wood Mountain
students has declined since their school closed, which is why he is
demanding $138,000 in compensation from the education department.
The department has refused to comment, other than saying 120 schools
have been closed in the province in the last 10 years and no one got
compensation for those.
School closure was the biggest fear expressed by parents when the
Buffalo Plains, Cupar and Indian Head school divisions started talking
several years ago about amalgamating. Jim Hopson, director of the
resulting Qu’Appelle Valley School Division, said the boards kept their
public informed so people weren’t blindsided.
“We said it isn’t about closure, but centralizing administration and to
ensure we can keep programs through economies of scale.”
He said parents and ratepayers, once they had the information, became
the most supportive groups the division dealt with. They saw
amalgamation as a way to keep a lid on taxes and maintain programs, he
said. It was the employees who had the biggest concerns about losing
jobs, he added.
Merger benefits can be seen in the mill rates set this spring, Hopson
said. The Buffalo Plains board was able to hold its old rate, Indian
Head dropped a mill point and Cupar raised its mill rate by 0.25
percent.
