SASKATOON – No school boards should be forced to merge with others, says the president of the Concerned Rural School Trustees.
The Saskatchewan government may be rushing divisions before they’re ready, said Larry Caswell, a farmer and three-term trustee in the Swift Current, Sask. area. Voluntary amalgamations are fine, but public consultations that end in October may be encouraging some into rash action.
Caswell said three pilot projects involving school division mergers are just starting in the province. He wants to see the results from those experiments to really understand the positives and negatives of mergers.
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“I don’t understand the logic of hurrying up before it’s done to you,” he said.
The three-year-old rural trustees group sent a letter in mid-June to education minister Pat Atkinson asking her to wait for the data from the pilot projects. The group also noted the department’s June to October schedule of public meetings comes at a busy time for farmers.
In an interview Atkinson said the government has had “some pressure” to provide guidance for amalgamations.
“We could wait until the pilots are done but there’s lots of pressure now. There are boards that want some criteria from government.
“What I want to know is what other parts of the province think.”
Several options to consider
That’s why the department is holding meetings to gather opinions from the public about four options for the future of school boards. These range from no change, to division amalgamation, to a partnership approach with business and other community agencies, to regional learning authorities that group all learning agencies under one board.
Atkinson said 4,000 people attended the department’s meetings in June. In answering the concern about bad timing for farmers, she said: “I would argue (that) people are turning out.”
Education department staff say the pro-vince does not have a particular plan waiting but will react to feedback from the public at the meetings. However, the intent is to have whatever change is recommended ready for the school board elections to be held across the province in October 1997.
The department’s discussion paper for the meetings notes school divisions have not changed substantially from the 119 formed over 50 years ago. There are a third fewer students in rural Saskatchewan than 25 years ago and depopulation is continuing.
Cap on travel time
The rural trustees group acknowledges that but is urging a slower pace to determine how to keep rural school bus rides to the 45 to 60 minutes that are the average now.
Caswell lists the problems with “forced marriages.” He said what seems to happen in divisions that have enlarged is a move from “a single layer of bureaucracy to a multi-tiered one” making it hard to find who is accountable for policies.
“I feel accountable to the people I represent because I couldn’t get away from them,” said Caswell. But when larger divisions form, the local school trustees will disappear or be outnumbered. The decisions to close schools will be made “by someone way over the horizon.”
So what’s the solution according to the Concerned Rural School Trustees?
The group suggests redrawing school boundaries to double or triple their current size as urged by the Saskatchewan School Tustees Association. Then let those who want to merge, do it, and allow others to opt in when they see the benefits.
For the “poor sisters” who are too expensive or too sparsely settled for anyone to want to match with, the Concerned Rural Trustees urges the province to regulate the system.
“Then it’s the role of government to see that the funding is fair.”
Atkinson said she would be sensitive to regions that have distance and demographic problems. “I’m not that stupid” as to allow the formation of a huge school division just to meet a required number of students, she said.
Her department’s document stresses the need to ensure children with learning disabilities and special needs don’t get lost in the system.
It was suggested that several rural school divisions band together to hire specialists. But Caswell said, “our school division is 100 miles across now. Under the proposal it would be 200 miles across. You’d be paying for a lot of highway driving of your $50,000-$60,000 specialist.”
