Rural schools get shot in arm
By Paul Strickland, Prince George Citizen , Nov. 9, 2002
Rural schools in School District 57 will stay open for the indefinite future because a provincial grant earmarked for the extra expenses of operating them is guaranteed to continue, trustee Bev Christensen said Friday.
The amount of the grant is $1,054,000, said SD 57 secretary-treasurer Bryan Mix.
The guarantee of the grant's continuation as long as rural schools are kept open is embedded in a 60-page B.C. Ministry of Education document on funding policy, Christensen said. The guarantee was in an obscure brief line that has been in the document since new funding formulas were announced in February, she said.
"At the time the new funding formulas came out, this was not clearly explained," Christensen said.
During discussions with Fraser-Fort George Regional District directors about ways of keeping rural schools open, district staff went over the funding-formula document in detail and found that the brief line had considerable significance for the future funding of schools in outlying communities. "They teased out the information and saw its importance for rural and remote schools," Christensen said. "Given this new information, we're adequately funded to support these schools unless their enrolment drops to zero."
The $1.054-million sparseness grant, as it is called, is part of an overall $5.2-million funding package called a Unique Geographical Supplement that SD 57 receives from the education ministry, Mix said. The sparseness grant is over and above the small-communities grant that allocates an average of $100,000 for rural schools and was often mentioned in debates about the school budget this past spring, he said.
A grant of $700,000 is also provided to SD 57 within the Unique Geographical Supplement for costs associated with its northern climate, Mix added.
The $1,054,000 sparseness grant is specifically allocated to cover extra costs associated with 14 SD 57 schools that are more than 40 kilometres from the central SD 57 administrative offices in Prince George, Mix said.
"It addresses the fact that certain districts have a greater financial need than others because these schools are some distance from the board office," he said. The kinds of costs covered include long-distance telephone bills, bills for delivering school supplies to rural schools and expenses incurred by staff travelling to schools in outlying communities. "It takes three-and-a-half hours for staff to travel to Valemount," Mix said.
Christensen agreed. School board members, itinerant teachers and maintenance staff all incur costs travelling out to rural schools, and the $1.054-million grant specifically covers that, she said.
"It also goes to cover a rural school's share of maintaining central district office services like payroll staff, computer services, the purchasing department and the District Resource Centre," Christensen said.
"If we didn't keep all those rural and remote schools
open, our operating budget would be $1,054,000 less tha it is," she
said. "We can assure residents of rural communities that there's
no reason to close rural schools unless enrolment drops drastically."
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