Good Shepherd Christian School is closing and will not reopen in September. (Keith Lacey photo)
There will be a school closing in Osoyoos after all as it has been confirmed Good Shepherd Christian School will cease operating and won’t be accepting students for the 2016-17 school year.
The school, which has operated under the auspices of Grace Lutheran Church in Osoyoos since 1990, has been forced to close due to financial reasons, said Ted Cronmiller, a longtime church member, a member of the congregational voters and former Town of Osoyoos councillor.
The decision to close Good Shepherd was made by a majority of congregational voters last week who voted by a large majority in favour of closure, said Cronmiller.
“There were 23 congregational voters at the meeting … and there wasn’t a recorded vote, but the majority were clearly in favour of closing,” he said.
The reason for closing the school is strictly financial and rather complicated, said Cronmiller.
“We were put in this awkward position because there is a large fund that is operated by the Lutheran Church of Canada for churches in Alberta and B.C.” said Cronmiller. “We had to access significant money from that fund every year to operate our schools … and that fund has gone into receivership.
“Without access to that funding, we were put in a tremendous financial bind and the decision was made that we could no longer operate the school here in Osoyoos. We’re (Grace Lutheran Church) going to be tied up for years trying to get back whatever money we can, but what we call the Church Extension Fund that has been used to fund our schools is in receivership.”
Longtime school principal Angela Westcott, who has done a magnificent job as a teacher and administrator at Good Shepherd, is going to lose her job as well as one other full-time teacher, said Cronmiller.
“It’s just very sad for Angela … she has been fantastic,” he said.
Westcott said she is going to miss her job immensely.
“It’s just very sad that the school will be closing,” she said. “I loved working and teaching there for the past 14 years.”
There were about a dozen students attending Good Shepherd during the past school year that just wrapped up in late June, he said.
Over the past 25 years, Good Shepherd has provided quality Christian education to hundreds of students in Osoyoos and the congregation at the church is very proud of the lasting legacy that will be left behind, said Cronmiller.
“We’ve had hundreds of kids come through the school and we’ve always been very proud at the quality of Christian education they’ve received,” he said.
As most local residents know, there were lengthy meetings between the proponents for an independent school in Osoyoos and Good Shepherd over several weeks when the fate of Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS) was still up in the air.
However, when the trustees with School District 53 voted to rescind the bylaw to close OSS after the provincial government provided almost $500,000 in funding through the Rural Education Enhancement Fund in late June, those talks broke off.
“There’s no doubt that working with the independent school would have given us an opportunity to keep our school open,” he said. “But that fell through and we were put back in a position of instability of trying to run on our own. The lack of money is really the bottom line.”
While small private schools like Good Shepherd did receive some funding from the provincial government, the vast majority of funding has come from parishioners locally and provincially, he said.
When the fund used to provide money to schools like Good Shepherd went into receivership, the lack of funding combined with very low enrolment sounded the death knell for the school, he said.
“Like all other schools in the province, low enrolment has become a real problem,” he said. “We were put in a position of not having access to any funding from this school fund and had no other choice but to vote to close the school.
“No one really wanted to close the school, but we were put in a position where we really had no other choice.”
During its peak years in the mid-1990s, there were between 30 and 40 students attending Good Shepherd Christian School in Osoyoos, he said.
The mission of Good Shepherd Christian School is to provide families with Christian education in which God’s Word is taught, excellence in academic, social, emotional, artistic, and physical development is nurtured, and salvation through Jesus Christ is proclaimed.
You can find out more about the history of Grace Lutheran Church and Good Shepherd Christian School in Osoyoos by visiting the website at www.osoyooslutheranchurch.com.
KEITH LACEY
Osoyoos Times
