The shocking decision by the board of School District 53 to put the problem of declining enrolments and declining budgets entirely on the shoulders of Osoyoos has got many parents up in arms.
The district proposes to close either Osoyoos Secondary School or Osoyoos Elementary School after public consultations that may simply be pro forma.
The only hope of preventing this blow to our community lies in organizing. Many parents and other citizens are doing exactly that.
But venting and signing petitions won’t be enough. Only by doing their homework and applying political pressure in the right places can parents hope to reverse this unfortunate decision.
The decision of the school board was a recommendation by school district staff. The trustees, who are elected or acclaimed to represent their communities, simply approved the recommendations with few questions and without any solid figures on cost savings in front of them.
While the trustees may consider the interests of the district as a whole, their ultimate loyalties are to their own communities. And on this board, Osoyoos has only two representatives – June Harrington and Marieze Tarr.
Harrington was the only trustee to vote against the proposal, so she is already onside.
Tarr is chair of the board and normally doesn’t vote except to break a tie. Even convincing her to oppose the proposal won’t be enough. Osoyoos is still outnumbered on the board and the other trustees are no doubt breathing deep sighs of relief that it wasn’t their communities taking the hit.
While there is logic in amalgamating the Oliver elementary schools – at least all children are kept in their own communities – pushing this option is hardly likely to win support from the Oliver trustees. Even Tarr doesn’t see this as an option.
Declining enrolment is of course the reason why the school district is experiencing reductions in provincial funding. Grants are paid on a per-student basis so fewer students means less in grants.
But there are other factors.
Most of the schools in the district have long exceeded their best-before dates. Some should have been torn down and replaced long ago. Similkameen Elementary/Secondary School in Keremeos for example is 65 years old and is in “very poor” condition meaning its parts are often unobtainable and systems are at a high risk of failure.
By pouring money into maintaining these dinosaurs, the school district is throwing good money after bad. But without funds for new schools, it has little choice.
Which brings us to the real source of the problem – the provincial government is underfunding K-12 schools and the grant system it imposed in 2002 encourages districts to respond by closing schools.
Provincial politicians will take the line that the decisions on closing schools and managing budgets lie with the school districts. And that appears to be the position that MLA Linda Larson has taken.
But the problem of underfunding and school closures is province wide. The provincial government must address it.
An all-party report on the 2016 provincial budget consultations by the select standing committee on finance identifies K-12 education as the number one priority of British Columbians and it calls on the government to address inadequate funding levels.
So this government may yet decide to act in the next budget. If not, there is a provincial election in 2017.
The best that Osoyoos parents may be able to do is to buy time by finding innovative ideas to stave off the present funding crisis.
Buying time gives a chance to reverse declining enrolments and hopefully see a government in Victoria, of either party, that is more responsive to the needs of public education.
