While some SOSS students agree a potential merger with Osoyoos would be a positive move, others disagree. File photo
As parents across Osoyoos fight to keep their schools open, administrators at Southern Okanagan Secondary School in Oliver are quietly preparing for the possibility of a much larger student body.
Last month, the board of School District 53 (Okanagan Similkameen) began a consultation process to consider closing Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS) or Osoyoos Elementary School (OSE).
Enrolment in the district’s schools has been dropping for years, and with funds drying up the board has been forced to consider the Osoyoos closures.
The possibility has sparked heated protests in Osoyoos, as parents push back against the plan to bus their kids to Oliver to attend SOSS.
As controversy rages down the road, SOSS Principal Marcus Toneatto and Vice-Principal Tracy Harrington have been considering what a merger would mean for their school. The outlook, it seems, is rosy.
In an interview March 4, Toneatto was clear: he is not hoping for a specific outcome. He said he recognizes that Osoyoos parents are faced with a “tough situation,” and the idea of closing a community school is a difficult one to swallow.
“We understand what the people of Osoyoos are feeling, we are sensitive to that, but if the board does have to make the decision [to close a school], we have the space here,” he said.
Should Osoyoos high schoolers be sent to Oliver, the brand new SOSS does indeed have the space to accommodate them, and Toneatto pointed out that a larger student body would mean more opportunities for every student.
“It’s just a numbers game,” he said. “There’s a number of courses that we put in our course booklet that we can’t offer because we don’t have numbers… and with more students it’s just going to create more opportunities for the kids.”
He said the school would likely be able to offer more physics courses, upper-year language courses like French and Spanish, as well as more specific shop and art courses, and a wider range of electives.
On top of that, Harrington said, more opportunities would likely open up for the school’s sports teams and extra-curricular clubs.
She said a larger student body could mean more girls basketball teams, field hockey as well as a tennis and golf team.
“That could be a very positive thing here, just providing more opportunities,” she said.
Toneatto did admit that a larger student body would probably mean less individual attention to each student, but said the wider range of student choice is a positive counterpoint.
“There is an optimal number of students, and you get too much and you start to lose [some individual attention]. But the bigger you get the more options you can provide.”
A merger would put the student body around 650 pupils, and would have no effect on the ratio of students to teachers at the school (which currently sits around 23:1).
“We wouldn’t be a big school, but it would be a nice sized school, but manageable,” Toneatto said.
Harrington and Toneatto also said they believe integrating the two student bodies would be a fairly painless task.
“Between the two of us we have some experience in what a good school looks like and what a tougher school looks like. This is by far the best culture and best environment for our kids,” Toneatto said. “They are some of the most accepting kids I’ve ever seen.”
Harrington also said she believes SOSS does a lot to address the possibility of alienation. She pointed to the Link Crew, which mentors Grade 8 students throughout the year, and the surveys the school conducts of the students to get a sense of how they feel about the school.
“The students have lots to say about where we’re headed, and we take information from those things to make our school their school as well,” she said.
Regardless of the board’s eventual decision, Toneatto said his and Harrington’s jobs will ultimately still be the same.
“Whatever decision is made we carry on, and we will work to provide the best education for our kids.”
Grade 10 student Marlyse Trampf sees the potential merger as positive, which means more students, more classes offered and more competition for sports teams.
But fellow student Trenton Kaminski doesn’t share that optimism. He thinks it won’t be good for the Osoyoos community and believes a merger will result in more rivalry among students.
But Grade 9 student Eman Bajwa believes combining schools will create more opportunities for students and more courses. “I’m excited to meet new people.”
Teacher Alison Podmorow said students seem nervous about the creation of more cliques and rivalry if a merger took place.
“The SOSS students I talked to are nervous that the Osoyoos kids will be very unhappy.”
Podmorow said the students feel bad for Osoyoos. “They would not want to lose their school.”
By Trevor Nichols
