Marilyn Munteanu wakes her children around 7 a.m., giving them time to get ready and eat breakfast before the bus arrives at 7:35 a.m.
Then her sons, in Grades 10 and 12, and her two foster children in kindergarten and Grade 2, spend the next hour and a half en route to school.
Since the nearby school in Wood Mountain, a small town in the southwest corner of Sask-atchewan, closed in June, 1994, Munteanu’s children and their classmates have been bused to Limerick, 60 kilometres away.
“You have to make the best of the situation,” said Munteanu.
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It is a story familiar across the Prairies.
Education has been put on the same deficit diet as other government services. Coupled with shrinking student populations, it is taking its toll on rural schools.
More than 160 schools have closed in Saskat-chewan since 1980. In Manitoba, 38 rural schools closed between 1982 and 1994.
While the overall number of students in Alberta is steadily increasing, population is shifting from rural to urban, forcing school boards to close small rural schools and to build more urban schools.
It means the face of rural education is changing across the Prairies, as parents, educators and governments wage a war of words over the appropriate direction for educating rural children.
Many rural schools live year-to-year, hoping they don’t get caught in the pinch as governments tighten their belts. In some quarters, there even are doubts about whether money is saved at all by closing schools.
One school of thought is that the money issue is not key. They say the move to shut smaller schools is a good one, financial savings aside.
Although he says he is a small school supporter, the education director of the Red Coat Trail School Division, where Munteanu’s children now go, has heard all about the advantages offered by larger schools.
Ed Maksymiw said teachers are able to deliver more focused lessons if all the students in the class are in the same grade, as they are in a big school, rather than having two or three different grades sharing a classroom, as happens in many small schools.
Smaller schools also are at a disadvantage when it comes to sports. Even if every student played, there aren’t usually enough to form a team in most small schools, said Maksymiw.
He said educational choices also can be broader in larger schools, with programs in the curriculum that smaller schools can’t afford, such as industrial arts or French.
Many of the problems with small-school education might show up more when students move on to post-secondary education, he said.
It can be difficult for them to move from a class of three or four students to a class with 50 or more. “They get lost in the shuffle.”
Of course, small school supporters do not always find those arguments convincing and they challenge one of the basic drives behind school closings – financial savings.
In the Wood Mountain case and others, parents and educators now are questioning how much money really is saved.
Barry Bashutski of the Saskatchewan School Trustees Association said it is a complex question.
School boards close schools because they don’t have enough money to operate them. Then, the provincial government sends less money to the school board but has to pick up the costs of busing.
It means the school board saves money but the government and local taxpayers don’t, said Bashutski. “The money is being redistributed in different ways.”
For many fighting rural school closures, there is a larger issue as well – government moves to reduce the number of school boards.
Alberta is leading the way and proclaiming positive results.
According to Nancy Saul-Demers of Alberta Education, going from more than 180 school boards across the province in 1993 to 67 in 1995 saved the province $13 million in education spending.
In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, governments so far have been less eager to embrace that solution. School board amalgamation has been the subject of studies and debates, but not much action by the provincial education departments yet.
Three volunteer amalgamations are under way in Saskatchewan.
School divisions in Prince Albert, Melfort, Tiger Lily, Arcola and Oxbow volunteered for the pilot project.
A mock budget prepared by the Melfort-Tiger Lily school boards projected $114,000 would be saved if the two boards merged.
But in both provinces, it is a controversial solution.
In Saskatchewan, Elaine Scheller from the Saskatchewan Association of Communities and Schools said amalgamation could be the final nail in the coffin for many small schools. “There’s little enough local autonomy now.”
She suggested school divisions share administrative costs but give communities more say in what happens at their local school.
In Manitoba, Tom Mowbray of the Manitoba Small Schools Association said amalgamating Manitoba’s school boards will mean more rural schools will shut their doors.
He does not buy the argument that savings at the school division will necessarily lead to more money being spent in the schools. “Let’s not be so naive.”
Larger school divisions could mean small communities will have a weaker voice on school boards, he predicted. “The money will go into schools with representation on the boards.”
Mowbray also is skeptical that school division amalgamation will save money.
“Nowhere did the committee or the department … prove that fact by putting figures down on paper,” he said.
In Manitoba, a report by the Boundaries Review Commission in February 1995 recommended the province merge the current 57 districts into 21.
Alternative measures to cut costs
Elsewhere, education departments are looking beyond the obvious to find ways to squeeze costs out of a system facing smaller budgets.
Some school boards in Saskatchewan are looking at cutting back the school week to four longer days at rural schools, for example. This move has already been made in some Alberta school divisions.
But beyond the bureaucracy, the budget numbers and the political arguments, real people face real problems because of the changes and uncertainty in rural education.
For Scheller there is resigned optimism that the worst is over and remaining schools have a future.
“I’d like to think we’ve hit the limit,” she said.
But for Munteanu, who already has lost her local school, that is cold comfort. She worries about her foster children, the youngest in kindergarten. They don’t nap at school and have fallen asleep on the bus ride home.
When her boys wanted to play volleyball, as they did at Wood Mountain, she thought about the long drive from Limerick. In the winter the drive could be treacherous.
She waits and worries until they get home.
