About 150 parents and children marched in front of the Saskatchewan Legislative Building last week to protest their rural school board’s plans to close schools.
Two days later the board of Regina East School Division went ahead, passing a motion to consider closing schools in Windthorst and Glenavon next June.
Keith McClinton, of the Francis-Sedley Save Our Schools action committee, said at one time the plan also included possible closures in Odessa in 1999 and Sedley in 2000.
“We want them to stop and hold off until we get a new board in,” he said, referring to province-wide school board elections in October.
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Wayne Neudorf, director of education for the division, said provincial legislation requires boards to deliberate motions for school closures for at least three months after a public meeting, he said.
Those are planned for Aug. 20 in Glenavon and Aug. 21 in Windthorst, and the election will be held before the three-month period is up.
“This board can initiate the process of discussion and it will be up to a new board to make a decision on it,” Neudorf said.
Enrolments down
A motion has not yet been passed regarding Odessa and Sedley.
He said enrolments at some schools are “dropping like a stone,” and projections show zero enrolment in kindergarten in some years.
“If you’re going to have a class size of 18 kids you could have five or six grades,” he said. “Nowadays, I think the public expects more from education than they did in the Forties.”
But McClinton said those projections won’t necessarily materialize: “In the last two months we (Sedley) have had two families move into town with six kids and all of those will be within kindergarten within the next three years.”
Find alternatives
McClinton also said if the board is concerned about finances, it should look at alternatives like dipping into its reserve fund, using itinerant teachers or a four-day school week.
The neighboring school division, Scenic Valley, tried a four-day week last year and will continue the experiment this year.
A report on the pilot project by retired university professor Orrison Burgess is expected to be completed this week.
Education minister Pat Atkinson was not at the Legislature during the protest.
“When it comes right down to it, kids are not showing up,” said Neudorf of the school board. “When we get emotional about this, we should focus on the cause. Why would that be?”
Families are smaller, farms are larger and farmers are older. If bigger is better for farmers, why should smaller be better for schools, he said.
