The drastic measure to close Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS) would save School District 53 only $387,300 dollars in annual operating costs.

That figure was revealed last week when the school district released a slide deck it planned to show at Tuesday night’s public “consultation” meeting at OSS.

Let’s put that figure in perspective.

A few weeks ago, BC Assessment said the value of one typical home in Osoyoos is $377,700. One home.

For that meager savings, a school board that nobody in Osoyoos elected is prepared to inflict multi-millions of dollars of economic devastation on this community. Multi-millions.

The median age in Osoyoos is 60.3, according to the 2011 census. We are increasingly becoming a retirement community.

Many of the seniors who settle here – whether year-round or seasonally – are well off. Others are not.

Critically though, it is a younger demographic – growing families – that make the biggest economic impact on a community. They spend more and they are more active in the labour force.

How many younger families will want to come to a town that has to ship its high school students off on a bus every day to another community?

The spinoffs from a younger population are enormous.

Many current businesses will cease to be viable, if not immediately, at least in the longer term. We won’t attract the year-round labour force necessary to sustain the investment in new industries that we need.

As we’ve noted here before, the school board has no mandate to look at the bigger picture.

Its trustees, mostly representing other communities, are narrowly tasked with providing education within a budget determined by provincial funding.

Indeed, trustees from other communities benefit by making Osoyoos alone pay for the district-wide problem of declining enrolments. They save their own schools.

Former Mayor Stu Wells is absolutely right that the decision to close an Osoyoos school is far too big to leave in the hands of a school board that doesn’t represent Osoyoos.

It should, he argues, be a decision of the provincial government. And if that government chooses to go ahead with the closure, Premier Christy Clark should come here to face the residents of Osoyoos.

It doesn’t help that our MLA Linda Larson, as usual, has been missing in action. She’s avoided the media and until the pressure became too much, she avoided returning calls to parents.

More recently, she’s given moral support to the Save Our Schools group, but she’s maintained her hard line that this is entirely a school board issue that has nothing to do with the provincial government.

The school district’s decision was sprung on this community suddenly, blindsiding our elected town council. The tight timeframe of an April decision makes it virtually impossible to implement solutions.

Once the school is closed, re-opening it would be like reassembling the shell fragments of Humpty Dumpty.

We need more time, but unlike in 2011, this should not be the time to become complacent.

While the school board needs to find savings through innovation – possibly including a four-day school week – as a community we need to address the larger challenge of building a year-round economy and attracting a younger demographic.

Making that happen in a short timeframe to raise school enrolments won’t be easy, but some of the solutions are already known.

We need affordable housing to attract younger families to live here year round.

Tourism must be turned into a year-round industry, drawing more people here in the winter and shoulder months.

We need to attract job-creating industry that is compatible with our resort status, and this means resolving the deadlock over the airport.

The school closure threat is our biggest challenge in years. Hopefully it will be the impetus to addressing some larger issues.