Hello everyone:
You may have heard the good news Wednesday: the elementary children
will be going back to their school building on April 28, under the terms
of an agreement between the District of Wells and School District 28
(Quesnel). We are all very glad that they will no longer be crowded
into a tiny classroom in the community hall, two stories above washrooms.
Finally! We've been waiting a long time for this.
It's also important that Wells has a school. Without one, it's hard to attract new workers and businesses. Schools are key elements of our economic and social infrastructure, which the provincial government seems incapable of grasping.
However, the actual terms of the agreement could set a serious precedent for the future of public education in BC. We don't want to negate the positive results for our community in having a school again, but it's important to understand the details.
Though we haven't been given the final text of the deal, apparently School District 28 will kick in just $5,000 a year for its share of the building, plus the cost of a teacher. This will be approximately $110,000 less than the revenues presently generated by the community for the school district. SD28 will continue to keep this money and Wells taxpayers will have to come up with an additional $16,000 a year to operate the school when the District of Wells assumes ownership of the school building. That's $16,000 that could help pay for other badly-needed things in a town with a tiny tax base.
We have questioned this unfair funding system for a year, and the Minister still lets it continue. It's unfortunate that Trustees who blamed the province during the November election for our school problems have failed to understand or change this.
As Dave Jorgenson, President of the Wells & District Chamber of Commerce, says, "we already pay provincial school taxes and our children generate a profit for the school board. If we pay thousands of dollars more for this school to operate, whose school or hospital will be next?"
If the government really wants to support the 'heartland' (up here we are feeling more and more like a spleen, or maybe a bad appendix!), it has to stop the downloading of costs like these to small communities that already pay their way with taxes and resources.
It also concerns us that although our deal may be a solution for Wells, albeit an expensive one, it doesn't help those fighting to save other rural schools. In fact, it may make it easier for the province and school boards to download costs and cuts onto smaller communities. And Christy Clark can go on pretending her policies aren't causing very serious problems, even though five schools or more in the Kootenay-Columbia School District may close in the fall. They may not have the options we've had here. So we are happy to have a local solution, but concerned about the bigger picture.
The District of Wells got the best deal it could, considering how little leverage it had. You may remember that back in February we proved to School Board Trustees and administrators that it would cost little or nothing to move the children back into a portion of the school building. Unfortunately, some Trustees insisted that there be a "deal" in place between the School Board and the District of Wells first. When they passed a motion linking any move back to such a deal, it left Wells with very little bargaining room. In the end, the town was willing to do whatever it would take to get the children back in their school - where they should have been all along.
We are *still* waiting for the release of the report from the Rural Education Task Force. Its chair, Jim Imrich, submitted his report to Education Minister Christy Clark back in mid-January, but she has still not released it to the public. Many submissions called for rural education monies to be spent in rural areas and not siphoned into urban school budgets to soften budget cuts. We would like to find out if these recommendations ended up in the report, and whether or not the Minister will act on them.
Please help us pressure Minister Clark to release the Report
now. You can call or fax her office:
Toll free via Enquiry BC 1-663-7867: ask for tel. 250-387-1977
or fax 387-3200; Deputy minister fax 250-356-2011
In the meantime, thanks again to so many of you who have
stuck with us for over a year now. It's been a long, hard battle, and
when we look at the bigger picture, it's not over. But we have much to
be thankful for, and we couldn't have got here without your support.
best wishes,
Bill Horne and Claire Kujundzic
Wells, BC
