Marieze Tarr, school board chair, said School District 53 rejected the Town of Osoyoos’ offer of more than $1 million to keep Osoyoos Secondary School open because this would not ensure “equal access.” (Richard McGuire file photo)
When Mayor Sue McKortoff released an offer last week to provide more than $1 million in funding to School District 53 to keep Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS) open, many people were incredulous.
How could the school board possibly turn down such an offer?
Once again, there was an air of optimism that an agreement could be reached if only the school district would bend half as far as the town has.
Others of us were less optimistic, and perhaps more cynical. The offer appeared to be more of a poker move intended to call the school board’s bluff.
The school district’s plan all along has been to close OSS and consolidate high schooling at Southern Okanagan Secondary School (SOSS) in Oliver, which was vastly overbuilt beyond required capacity to have room for the OSS students.
The town’s offer was inconvenient to this plan, since it showed that the board’s claim that OSS needed to close for financial reasons was nothing but a pretext all along.
On Tuesday morning, school board chair Marieze Tarr formally rejected the town’s offer in a letter that’s tone was characteristic.
She argued that to accept the town’s money, though not illegal, would not be consistent “with the spirit and intent of the School Act funding provisions which are aimed at providing equal access to educational programs for all students.”
Her concern for “equal access” is rich at best. Is it “equal access” to force Osoyoos students, including those who are vulnerable, to spend an hour or more a day riding a bus and giving up after-school work or activities?
Is it “equal access” that the school district receives about $500,000 in special funding to keep aging schools in Cawston and Keremeos open, while OSS is denied special geographic funding because it is a few kilometres too close to SOSS?
The system is riddled with inequality, yet Tarr and her colleagues are unprepared to let the Town of Osoyoos temporarily level the playing field until a long-term solution can be found.
It now appears certain that SD 53 will push forward with its original plan to close OSS.
Of course the charade of “public consultations” was a complete farce that we can only hope will now be publicly exposed in a court process, whether or not such a process succeeds in keeping OSS open.
Osoyoos town council has done everything possible to keep OSS open and their efforts deserve the community’s recognition. Countless hours have been spent trying to deal with this intransigent school board. Council has bent over backwards to appeal through provincial channels and even to accelerate a housing project that promises to boost school enrolment.
Meanwhile, parents in the community wasted no time pushing forward with “Plan B,” the formation of an independent school.
There will be challenges with this idea, and some supporters of a public system may be hesitant about it, but we’re convinced there is the will and the talent in Osoyoos to pull it off.
Concurrently with establishing an independent school, one other option must be explored – pulling Osoyoos out of School District 53 and joining School District 51, Boundary, instead.
This process may take too long to save OSS by this fall, but it is important to the long-term success of schooling in Osoyoos that examination of the process begin, with an eye to removing Osoyoos Elementary School and its accompanying funding from a school district that doesn’t represent our interests and has made a mockery of democratic process.
