On a bitterly cold night last week, 200 people met in the Rec Plex in Theodore, Sask., to tell the Yorkdale School Board why it should not close their school.
The board was impressed with the community’s presentation, said Conrad Raddysh, a local farmer and one of the organizers of the Jan. 23 event.
The school board wants to establish one strong school in its boundaries west of Yorkton, he said. The choice is among existing schools in Theodore, Willowbrook and Springside.
By April 28, two of those three communities will be told their school will close.
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“It’s really tough,” Raddysh said, which is why the Theodore community has recommended an independent study to assess each school’s strengths “to avoid bickering between towns.”
But just in case that doesn’t happen, Theodore supporters have printed pamphlets listing their school’s advantages. Raddysh said the school is newer than Springside’s, which was built in the 1920s and has no room for special needs students. Theodore is more central, located halfway between the district boundaries of Yorkton and Foam Lake. Raddysh also said his community isn’t dying. It has a new rink, a museum and a regional park.
Similar fights between towns are being played out across Saskatchewan as school closure notices hit the public.
A letter sent last week to the Saskatchewan education minister from the Glenavon local school board complains that its school is threatened with closure despite its steady enrolment, its record of offering more class options, and graduates who take more credits than required.
“The gun is loaded and aimed at several small schools, their communities and their cherished rural way of life,” the letter said.
The board asked the province to stop school closures as proof of its intention to revitalize rural areas.
Kelvington is another Saskatchewan community fighting a school closure. Jenny Crawford is a businessperson who moved to the town two years ago. She has no children in the elementary school, but is fighting its closure based on a need to keep her new town alive.
At a recent meeting with local trustees to prepare for a Jan. 27 meeting with the Wadena School District board, she said Kelvington residents expressed frustration with the lack of action on requested improvements to their facility.
“The divisional board has never said, ‘what do we have to do to keep this school open?’ “
Crawford said the plan appears to be to move Kelvington’s 140 elementary students into the high school, which already has 170 students. She said there will be barely enough room for them all and some course options might have to be dropped. Crawford said while Kelvington and area are losing people, it is at a slower rate than Wadena and area.
In the 1990s, Elaine Scheller was prominent in the anti-closure fight through the Saskatchewan Association of Communities and Schools. The organization is now defunct and Scheller has moved on to other battles.
The Spring Valley school she fought to save is closing this spring. The school opened in 1914 with nine students and is closing 89 years later with an enrolment of nine.
Scheller said school closures are sad and there are limits to how far young children should ride on a bus. She said the provincial government should take some responsibility for the emptying of her area. Of her three sons, two moved to Alberta and one is in British Columbia.
“Pretty soon, south of the Trans-Canada they’ll have to pay us isolation pay.”
