OSOYOOS TIMES-December 8, 2010

By Paul Everest – Osoyoos Times

Instead of complaining about the possibility of losing their school, teachers from Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS) turned a recent meeting with their union representative into a “problem-solving session” to explore ideas on how to keep the school open.
Ronald Rachinski, president of the South Okanagan-Similkameen Teachers Union, said he met with teachers from the school on Dec. 1 to discuss an option included in School District 53’s new five-year capital plan report that OSS be closed to save $725,088.
The district’s board of trustees was presented with the recommendation at their Nov. 24 meeting, along with options to close Oliver’s Tuc-El-Nuit Elementary School, move Grade 4 students from Cawston Elementary School to Similkameen Elementary Secondary School or renovate the Osoyoos bus garage near the Sonora Community Centre to house the Osoyoos YouLearn.ca learning centre.
Since district superintendent Juleen McElgunn has announced that she is retiring in February, the board decided to hold off on any discussion of the four options until a new superintendent is hired.
Part of the reason the board is faced with looking at the possibility of closing a school is because the district is facing increasing operational costs and scaled-back funding from the province.
Most of the district’s schools are operating under capacity and student enrolment throughout the district is down.
The enrolment decline is a serious problem since the school depends on per-student funding from the provincial government.
Rachinski said teachers at OSS know the board is faced with difficult choices.
“They understand the budgetary constraints that the district is under right now,” he said. “It’s difficult for districts to do their job with the level of funding that they have right now.
“Many of the teachers that are there have been there for years and it hits them hard in the heart of hearts that their school may be closing.”
Some of the ideas the teachers explored at the Dec. 1 meeting that could be suggested to the board as cost-saving measures include moving the district administration’s office from its current location on 101st Street in Oliver into Oliver’s Southern Okanagan Secondary School (SOSS) or combining the YouLearn centres with the high schools in Osoyoos and Oliver, Rachinski said.
Another option was for the district to consider amalgamating with another school district such as Penticton’s School District 67 or School District 51, which serves the Boundary area.
If OSS was to close, the school’s students would end up going to SOSS and several positions could be cut including one principal, one vice-principal, two clerical positions and as many as four teaching positions.
Rachinski said the teachers did not get a chance to discuss the possibility of jobs being lost but he added that if OSS should close, it’s hoped pending retirements would mean that no teachers would be laid off.
The union represents 17 teachers at the school as well as the principal and vice-principal, who also teach as part of their duties.
Once he meets with teachers from Tuc-El-Nuit and Cawston Primary schools, Rachinski said he plans to bring some of the cost-saving ideas to the board’s attention.
Meanwhile, Osoyoos council has also been looking at ways to prevent OSS from being shuttered.
At their Dec. 6 committee of the whole meeting, councillors discussed the proposed closure and suggested several courses of action of how to deal with it.
Coun. CJ Rhodes said he wants to write a letter to the board on council’s position about OSS including a line that says “Do not close our high school.”
Coun. Margaret Chadsey said there is a need to find better ways of utilizing the school and Coun. Ted Cronmiller said the Town of Osoyoos needs to lobby Osoyoos’s trustees on the board to convince them not to vote in favour of closing the school.
Coun. Michael Ryan brought up the idea of holding college classes at the school.
In an interview on Dec. 2, Mayor Stu Wells, who served on the district’s board from 1988 to 1999, said the community has to accept the fact that the school could close.
He said he is still interested in exploring the idea of the Town taking over the facility, should it close, and operating it as a “community school.”
Wells said he is speaking with an educational consultant who is familiar with community schools run by municipal governments and while the idea is “pretty far out there,” the Town could be eligible for the same provincial funding that the district gets for running schools.
He also hinted at the exploration of cutting administration costs within the district to take school closure options off the table.
The school could even be used as an “adjustment training centre” for Sri Lankan migrants that arrived in B.C. last summer, he said.
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