Students at Seven Summits Centre for Learning in Rossland celebrate the end of the school year. (Caelum Scott photo)
As the Osoyoos community looks at starting an independent high school, following School District 53’s decision to close Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS), many are looking to the Town of Rossland for ideas on how this might work.
“We’ve already been contacted by people in Osoyoos,” said Ann Quarterman, operations manager at Seven Summits Centre for Learning in Rossland. “We’re happy to talk with them and give them any info we can because we really feel for where they’re at. I wish them luck.”
The independent learning centre was established by a community group in September 2013, seven months after School District 20 decided to shut down grades 10 to 12 at Rossland Secondary School and bus students to Trail, 10 kilometres away.
Quarterman said a local society called Visions for Small Schools, which operates Seven Summits, worked hard to save Kindergarten to Grade 12 in Rossland over the years.
When the school district converted the school into a Kindergarten to Grade 9, the society began work to establish Seven Summits.
“To be clear, we are a centre,” Quarterman said. “We are not a school. We partner with a school district that is an independent distributed learning school district called Self Design Learning Community. They provide our education and we provide the building.”
Unlike a true bricks and mortar independent school, which would receive 50 per cent of the provincial per-student funding that public schools get, Self Design receives just 33 per cent.
That’s because the Vancouver-based Self Design is considered distributed learning.
And the not-for-profit Seven Summits funds operation of the centre – in a former Catholic Church facility – through tuition and fundraising.
The annual facility fee for the first student in a family is $2,250 and for additional students from the same family, it’s $1,750. However, $250 of that fee is refunded as long as parents put in at least 25 hours of volunteer time, Quarterman said.
Seven Summits has 45 students and six staff, including two paid administrators. Four teachers, called “mentors,” work for Self Design, she explained.
Each learner must have a laptop computer to access the online courses and to upload their assignments for marking. Student records are kept at Self Design’s Vancouver office.
Self Design offers a wide range of courses, which students work through at their own pace. Seven Summits also holds seminars.
Some students complete a course in a semester, while others opt to complete courses faster, or take longer if they need extra time.
“There is that flexibility there,” said Quarterman.
“At a traditional school, you typically can only take eight courses in the year, whereas we can do up to 12 here,” she said. “So it works well for those really motivated students who want to do that, but it also works really well for kids who maybe need a little more time, or need more one-on-one time.”
The learning centre is small enough that no students fall through the cracks, she adds.
The flexibility and self-pacing of Seven Summits teaches students self-responsibility and self-regulation, Quarterman said.
“It really sets them up well for post secondary or the work environment, because they have those skills embedded in them by the time they finish here,” she said.
Students also receive high academic results, she added, pointing to one early graduate who has been offered places at Queens University in Kingston, Ont., University of Toronto, McGill University in Montreal and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Another received a scholarship to attend Emily Carr University in Vancouver after graduating last year.
Not all students are suited for the flexible learning environment offered by Seven Summits, Quarterman admits.
Those who want a very large social circle may feel limited at a learning centre with just 45 students. Others need a lot of structure and have a difficult time with self-regulation.
“We don’t let anyone fall through the cracks, so if they are struggling, we help them,” she said. “But they may come to realize that maybe they are better in the traditional system. We’re not saying the traditional system is bad – we’re just offering an alternative.”
The Seven Summits model has broader appeal than just Rossland, Quarterman said.
“We actually have students not from Rossland, but from Fruitvale, Warfield, Trail and from the whole area, who have chosen this model,” she said. “That’s really important to us that we’re offering an option.”
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
Ann Quarterman, operations manager, Seven Summits Centre for Learning in Rossland, B.C. (Larry Doell photo)
Mentor Jonny Coleshill (right) talks with learners at the Seven Summits Centre for Learning in Rossland. (Jennifer Margaret Photography)
