Armed with information she’s gathered, Brenda Dorosz, chair of Save Our Schools (SOS), spoke to members of her group at a meeting last Thursday. (Richard McGuire photo)
More than 3,300 signatures have been gathered on paper and online petitions opposing the closure of Osoyoos schools – and not all have been picked up yet.
Brenda Dorosz, chair of Save Our Schools (SOS), made the announcement in a Facebook post on Sunday as she urged local residents to turn out in large numbers Tuesday night for a public consultation meeting on the proposed closures.
That meeting, organized by School District 53, was scheduled for 7 p.m. Feb. 9 in the gymnasium at Osoyoos Secondary School. The meeting time is after the Osoyoos Times goes to press.
It is expected the facility will be too small to accommodate all the people in Osoyoos who oppose the school district’s proposal to close either OSS or Osoyoos Elementary School (OSE).
The school district last Thursday sent out slides it planned to present at Tuesday’s meeting giving the enrolment and financial numbers that led the board to make its decision at a Jan. 13 special meeting.
It asked members of the public to limit their comments to two minutes each.
Among those planning to speak were Kuldeep Rai, a mother of two, who collected about 500 signatures on a Punjabi-language petition from members of the Indo-Canadian communities in Osoyoos and Oliver opposing the closures.
“This school is our identity,” she said, referring to OSS where her daughter is graduating this year and where her son graduated last year. “We would like to keep it open. If this school is going to close, it’s going to affect everyone.”
Rai said the Indo-Canadian community is engaged in the issue because Indo-Canadians make up a large percentage of students at OSS.
Her petition was circulated at the Sikh gurdwara in Oliver, where many Oliver residents also signed in solidarity with Osoyoos, she said.
Rai said families who own vineyards and wineries can’t easily sell their properties and move. She thinks some students will choose to discontinue their schooling rather than being bused to Oliver, as the school district is proposing.
“They would rather stay home and be uneducated,” she said.
Rai said the closure won’t directly affect her two children because they will have both graduated, but she cares about the issue as a member of the community and a business person – she owns Mami’s Pizza.
Businesses, she said, will be severely impacted by a school closure.
Osoyoos town councillor Mike Campol said council decided to let Mayor Sue McKortoff speak for council at the public meeting, but he would raise his concerns in a separate meeting between the school district and council at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Campol said he wants to understand how the school district arrived at its decision and whether alternatives have been adequately considered.
He hopes there is a way to deal with the district’s current shortfall to give the district another year to come up with alternatives.
“We want to understand the process up to this point because we were completely out of the loop,” he said. “Consultation never took place with anybody from the town – the mayor and council or the community – so we felt we were blindsided by the vote that took place at that (Jan. 13 school board) meeting. We weren’t left with the opportunity to do our due diligence and look for some potential solutions.”
Campol said his young family is especially affected because he has a child with special needs. But the impact, he said, goes beyond young families.
“There is a trickle-down effect from retail to recreational activities, right across the board,” he said. “One of the things I discussed when I was campaigning for council was targeting specific industries to bring young families to the area.”
Families, he said, look first at the availability of health care and then at education before uprooting to come here.
“The threat here is that we will become a retirement community that has tourism for a few months in the summer,” said Campol. “That’s not what I want to see here and it’s not what our constituents want to see here. So I think we really cripple ourselves.”
Already the hospitality industry has difficulties recruiting for year-round positions in upper management, said Campol, who works in that industry.
“These are generally people with families,” he said. “It’s challenging as it is for all of us in the industry right now. That’s going to make it even more challenging.”
Randy Bedard, owner of the Osoyoos Coyotes hockey team, said he was considering speaking at the consultation meeting if there was an opportunity.
If OSS closes, he said, he would be unable to recruit 16 and 17-year-olds to the Coyotes and would be limited to recruiting those 18 to 20 instead.
“A third of our players are actually in high school here,” he said. “That wouldn’t happen because it wouldn’t be attractive to players or their families that the kids would have to be bused.”
Secondly, those attending school in Oliver wouldn’t be able to make it back in time for afternoon practices.
The Kootenay International Junior Hockey League is a developmental league, he said. They like to watch younger players move forward.
Bedard believes the closure of OSS would hurt businesses in the community more generally because without a school here, the town’s demographic would become older. And suffering businesses would affect the Coyotes.
“We rely primarily on the support of businesses through corporate sponsorships,” he said, noting that this is much more important to the team than gate receipts. “They wouldn’t have the money to spend.”
Bedard said when he worked in radio, they targeted a “spending demographic” of people about 18 to 54. As people age and their children move away, they tend to spend less.
“I think you would end up with everybody hurting and they would feel the effect of fewer dollars that would be spent in town,” he said.
Bedard said the school closure might not immediately affect the ability of the Coyotes to stay in Osoyoos, but it could in the future.
Dorosz, the SOS chair, said she planned to speak Tuesday night, but because speaking time is limited, her group would also be preparing written information for the school trustees.
She plans to report on figures she received from ICBC suggesting that there could be more serious accidents and fatalities if young drivers have to take to the roads to get to school.
In 2013 there were seven traffic-related fatalities throughout the region involving youth, she learned.
“If we’re putting more teenagers on the road driving to school in Oliver, those numbers are absolutely going to go up,” she said.
Young people are particularly at risk as drivers and are more likely to be involved in distracted driving, she said.
Dorosz noted that there is already considerable anxiety among younger children about not having a school here and possibly having to change schools.
“There’s a huge dynamic of special needs kids that hasn’t been addressed,” she said. “Special needs being anything from a child that has anxiety to severe physical or mental disabilities.”
She’s also been tabulating survey responses from businesses, more than half of whom saying a school closure would drastically affect them, she said.
“Every business is talking about how this will drastically affect Osoyoos,” she said. “There’s so many people worried about this financial aspect to our town.”
Michelle Nehring, president of the OSS parent advisory council (PAC), said there should be an elementary school and a high school in both Osoyoos and Oliver.
“I really think that having these meetings and making a decision so fast by April is a bit rushed,” she said. “I think that we should take a bit more time to explore some other solutions before we make a decision.”
The solutions should be for the whole district because it’s not just an Osoyoos problem, she said.
“We have to look at how to deliver education so that nobody has to be faced with closing schools,” she added.
Mayor McKortoff said she also plans to ask the school district to delay the decision so there is time to explore other options.
“My bottom line is that the social and economic impacts of closing a school are going to be profound,” she said. “I think they have to look past the fact of balancing the budget. I know that’s important. You can’t be fiscally irresponsible, but I think there have to be other issues looked at. Closing the school should be your absolute last resort.”
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
Lauren Schell (left) and Sarah Launier were among those making up posters and signs Monday evening to support keeping Osoyoos schools open. J.F. Launier, in background, offered up his JF Kustoms garage for the sign-making blitz in preparation for Tuesday’s public consultation meeting with School District 53. (Richard McGuire photo)
Sharlene Fernandes (left) and Patricia Pearson worked on signs in an effort to keep schools open while Brenda Dorosz (right) reviews some notes. Dorosz chairs the Save Our Schools (SOS) committee, which plans to show a presence at a public consultation Tuesday night at 7 p.m. at Osoyoos Secondary School. The signmaking activities were underway Monday evening at JF Kustoms garage, which owner J.F. Launier made available. (Richard McGuire photo)
Brenda Dorosz (left), chair of Save Our Schools (SOS), spoke to members of her committee last Thursday about new information she’d obtained in an effort to keep Osoyoos schools open. (Richard McGuire photo)
