Bailey Toepfer (left) and Janessa Silva, Osoyoos Secondary School students, both say they are disappointed and shocked to learn that their school may be closing. Silva said having to be bused would mean she couldn’t get back to Osoyoos in time for her dance classes. Toepfer said she would not like to go to a bigger school because she knows the teachers and students at OSS. (Richard McGuire photo)
The blow to Osoyoos will be devastating if School District 53 proceeds with a proposal to shut down Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS), say community leaders.
At a school board meeting last Wednesday, trustees voted to make Osoyoos the only community being considered for school closures as the board grapples with a predicted structural deficit of $530,000.
The impact on Osoyoos would be “devastating,” said Osoyoos trustee June Harrington, the only trustee to vote against motions to move forward with consultations on closing either OSS or Osoyoos Elementary School.
“What’s more important even is the impact on students would be devastating,” Harrington said.
The other Osoyoos trustee, Marieze Tarr, chaired the meeting and didn’t vote.
Mayor Sue McKortoff was blindsided by the decision, saying she only learned at the last minute that the situation was serious enough she should be at meeting. Neither trustee tipped her off to what was coming, she said.
Harrington said she thought a report from staff outlining options would be discussed, but she had no idea ahead of time it would go to a vote.
There was no earlier in-camera discussion, there were only a few questions at the board meeting and trustees were not given figures on the comparative cost savings of closing different schools, she said.
McKortoff, clearly shaken as she discussed the decision with the Osoyoos Times last Thursday, said she wants school officials to come to Osoyoos “and explain to the citizens of Osoyoos where this all came from and why they’ve come up with this plan.”
The school district does plan a community consultation meeting in Osoyoos on Feb. 9 to discuss the implications and seek public feedback. A further meeting is planned for March 8.
Motions passed by the school board last Wednesday recommend that the board proceed with a consultation process to consider two options:
• Close OSS and bus students to Southern Okanagan Secondary School (SOSS) in Oliver;
• Close Osoyoos Elementary School (OSE) and renovate OSS to become a school for Kindergarten to Grade 9, busing students in grades 10 to 12 to SOSS.
The board decided not to consider any of the other options discussed in a consultants’ report prepared by Matrix Planning Consultants in 2010. These included closure of Cawston Primary, Okanagan Falls Elementary and possibly Tuc-el-Nuit Elementary.
“I can’t support either one of these options,” said McKortoff, a retired teacher. “I don’t even know where to begin. It’s too soon. I’m trying not to jump and yell and scream because we’ve got to think this through clearly and look at some options.”
Less restrained was former Osoyoos mayor Stu Wells, who called the Osoyoos Times from Mexico, where he is on vacation, to express his reaction.
“I think it’s devastating,” said Wells, who served as a school trustee before sitting on town council. “It’s a really retrogressive step… It’s devastating to the town. It’s devastating to the community. There are a lot of spinoffs there.”
Wells said the impact on Osoyoos would be “huge,” with many families choosing not to move here without a high school.
“I think people would be reluctant,” he said. “New families moving in – be it a customs officer or an RCMP officer – I don’t think that they would be relocating here to have their children bused.”
Wells believes it would be easier for such families to live in Oliver and have the parents drive to work rather than have the children need to be bused to school.
“You lose that whole interaction with our young people,” he said. “It would truly become an old fogeys town. We’re already a retirement town, but now without those students, you wouldn’t even see them on the streets. You remove that whole segment of our society.”
He wonders about the impact an OSS closure would have on the ability of the Osoyoos Coyotes hockey team to remain in Osoyoos if players can’t attend school here.
Randy Bedard, owner of the Coyotes, said the closure would definitely have an impact, but it wouldn’t cause the team to pull out.
“It will definitely affect our program in terms of when we recruit younger players,” he said, adding that players’ families ask about schooling. “It would be very difficult for us to recruit younger players knowing that the families probably wouldn’t want them bused out to go to school.”
The current after-school practices would be difficult for players in school to attend if they need to be bused, he said.
“It would change the dynamics of it and we would probably be an older team,” said Bedard.
The team currently has players ranging in age from 16 to 20. The closure of the school would make it difficult for the 16 and 17 year olds to play on the team, he said.
Mary Ihme, an Osoyoos realtor with Re/Max, agrees with Wells that the closure of OSS would deter younger families from moving here.
“It will certainly affect families moving here with school-age children,” she said, noting that even those with elementary school children will be concerned about the future when their children reach the age of secondary school.
“To bus to Oliver is one thing, but what will happen is those kids who start getting after-school jobs won’t be able to do them anymore,” she said. “That’s a big deal.”
Ihme said prospective homebuyers often ask her about schooling.
“I’ve been noticing that we have been getting more young families coming into our community,” she said. “I don’t think they would have come if they knew there was not going to be a high school here.”
Ihme said she thinks the loss of the school would negatively affect housing prices in Osoyoos.
Janessa Silva, a Grade 10 OSS student who attends after-school dancing classes at Dance Oasis, said a closure of the school would make it impossible to make it to dance practices.
“We’d have to wait for the bus and then if the bus gets here at 3:45, we’ve already missed half our class,” she said. “For people that want to do homework or have jobs, they won’t have the time.”
Even if students decided to pursue extra-curricular activities in Oliver, they would still need to rely on parents to pick them up, she said.
Gail Scott, managing director at Destination Osoyoos, agrees the closure of OSS would have a negative impact on Osoyoos, but she said the impact won’t be as serious as the impact might be on some other communities.
“We have a neighbouring community which is only about 19 km away,” she said. “It offers an excellent facility and has the ability to take in those students.”
Michele Nehring, president of the OSS Parent Advisory Council, said putting student on buses is a waste of their time. They could be doing sports or be at a job sooner, she said.
She said the closure of OSS is not “a done deal yet.” She hopes the school board will choose another option, such as closing Tuc-el-Nuit School in Oliver and sending those students to Oliver Elementary.
This, she said, might mean some adjustments such as moving Grade 7 students to SOSS, she said. This is a better solution than either proposal to close schools in Osoyoos, she added.
Harrington, the only trustee to vote against the motions to look into closing one of the Osoyoos schools, agrees with Nehring.
“Combining the two elementary schools in Oliver is the most reasonable way to go,” said Harrington. “It has the least negative impact on the students because they are not moving out of their own community.”
Harrington said she hopes Osoyoos will pull together to support maintaining both schools here.
“I think it’s very important for the welfare of our students and for the town,” she said, “I also would like to see the estimates for cost savings. Maybe there are some other sources of funding that we can access. I think we need to really do some investigating. It’s very important and we’ve got to work together on this.”
Wells said it’s necessary to have discussions with teachers to see if they have ideas that could work.
“It may be time to be thinking outside the box,” he said. “Maybe we should be looking at some alternatives, if there are any. They should be explored before we accept that we’re going to truck our kids off to a different school.”
The issue, he said, must go beyond the school board.
“Because this affects so much, I think it falls into town council’s lap whether they want it or not,” said Wells.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
