Wells Presents Resolution to UBCM Urging Rural School Grant Not Be Used to Close Schools
Monday, September 22, 2002 for immediate release

The District of Wells is presenting a resolution at this week’s Union of BC Municipalities Convention in Whistler, calling on the province not to pay school boards for closing rural schools. People in Wells are outraged that a $100,000 Small Community Supplement from the Ministry of Education was not spent on keeping their school open, despite the fact that the school generated more money than it cost to operate. Instead, the Quesnel School Board decided to close the Wells School and is using the money elsewhere in the school district. The Quesnel School Board will also receive another $200,000 for the Wells School during the next two years, for a school that no longer exists. Other school districts in the province have also closed rural schools and are diverting the Small Community Supplement to urban schools.

The District of Wells motion reads:

WHEREAS equal opportunity to education is the right of all British Columbians, and rural schools are critical to this right as well as to both the social and the economic fabric of rural communities, and
WHEREAS the Ministry of Education’s Small Community Supplement was established with the intent to assist School Districts in maintaining their rural schools and the Ministry of Education has failed to ensure that these funds be spent in support of rural education.
NOW THEREFORE, We call upon the Ministry of Education to ensure that the Small Community Supplement is used to keep rural schools open.

Appeals from Wells asking the provincial government to enforce the Small Community Supplement for its intended purpose have fallen on deaf ears.

A letter from Premier Gordon Campbell to one concerned Wells resident states: "The small communities supplement for the Wells and Barkerville region is to ensure that students in the area have access to top quality education. The grant is not attached to the school itself, nor is it dependent on the school remaining open."

"This response is patently wrong," says Wells parent Dave Jorgenson, and a spokesman for the Wells Save Our School Committee.

In a letter to the premier, Jorgenson asserts that the language and formulas used to allocate the Small Community Supplement make it clear that the grant is tied to schools, not to children in a rural area. "If the intent of the grant was to ensure access by our rural children to ‘top quality education,’ why was the funding formula set up to exclude all of our high school children as well as those high school and elementary children who live in rural settings but attend urban schools?" He also points out that there is no small community supplement for rural students whose schools were closed the previous year before the Supplement was introduced. "It is clear that this funding is targeted toward the support of rural infrastructure, not rural children in general, or the literature and the math on this subject would be different."

The District of Wells resolution to the UBCM has already garnered support from towns and cities throughout the province. In addition, Members of the District Council will be meeting with the Minister of Education to discuss rural education issues, and rural infrastructure will be one of the issues the District will also raise in sub-group discussions during the convention.

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For more information contact:
Judy Campbell Councillor, District of Wells 250 994 3349 or
Dave Jorgenson Spokesperson, Wells Save Our School Committee 250 994 2347