© The Cariboo Advisor July 31, 2002
EDITORIAL
Education or starvation
Does Wells have a hill to die on?
For better or worse
By Judy Jenkins
Did you ever paint yourself into a corner - either literally or figuratively?
Did you ever make a decision that you thought might not be quite right, but you had made such a fight out of it at the time that changing that decision might be impossible?
Sometimes it's pride that makes people hang onto some bad stuff, revealed by the cold clear light of day or some new information to be a mistake.
Sometimes people are just downright contrary. They said it, so it must be so. Who knows - there are probably thousands of reasons it's so hard to back down.
Sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and admit you were wrong, then go ahead and look at the whole situation again.
Politicians are people whose job it is to make decisions, publicly and with conviction. A wishy-washy politicians rarely gets reelected. But the very fact of public attention can make it even harder to back down.
Have I ever been there? Sure - as seldom as I can, but it happens.
One thing that sometimes stops me from going that far is my own personal Jiminy Cricket and his advice:
"This is not a hill to die on."
I see a hill in the little town of Wells, where residents are fighting fiercely to keep their school, so their little children won't have to face an 80-kilometre bus trip twice a day, over winter roads and ice and just plain exhaustion.
An artist launched a hunger strike there, feeling she might attract some help from the province or the Quesnel school board, maybe to convince them to reconsider the closure and step down from that hill.
She felt very strong and was gaining wide support when she was forced to stop her fast to save her health. But she's still there in spirit, and so are her supporters, carrying on her fight.
They've said that if they had another year they could organize some sort of private school, but they can't work that little miracle in less than a month.
They've said the school board has made the decision and won't back down. The province has said they won't interfere unless they are asked to dismiss the board and install a trustee.
But the committee to save the school has had no response from Christy Clark, education minister, at all, and Wells Mayor Dave Hendrixson suggests (tongue in cheek) that maybe she is no longer with us.
The parents, and indeed the rest of the community, are frantic. They feel the board is not even listening, that they have not looked at the financial assistance Wells is offering, and indeed just plain don't care.
School Board Chairman Louise Scott did phone me Sunday, but unfortunately I was tied up in other matters and couldn't talk.
But wherever they are, I think the board has hit one of those crises, made one of those decisions, painted themselves into one of those corners where they could reconsider but won't.
I think it's a military expression, taken from wartime when a decision had to be made about whether the hill they were attempting could or should be attacked, or whether it was time to retreat and take another position.
So, to the Quesnel school board, and I hope they think about
it, I have to say, "This is not a hill to die on."
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