Submission to the Rural
Task Force on Education
presented by Bill Horne on behalf of the Wells-Barkerville-Bowron
Save Our School Committee
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Attention: Jim Imrich, Chair
I'm sorry to say how unfortunate it is that a Task Force with this mandate is meeting in the City of Quesnel and not holding a meeting in the District of Wells, or Nazko or Narcosli. It's much like a commission into the Status of Women meeting at a men's club, or an inquiry into racism meeting in an all-white neighbourhood. A rural task force should meet in rural settings, not urban ones.
I invite you to take a couple of hours to take the drive on Highway 26 where SD28 wanted to bus our elementary-age children daily, and to see the classroom our community is paying extra for, while an empty school building sits two blocks away. I challenge you to tell us of any school in the province that has two flights of stairs between the washrooms and classroom and where the community is paying extra for this privilege. The situation in Wells makes a mockery of the concept of educational equity.
Claire Kujundzic initiated a hunger strike last summer to protest SD28's decision to award administrators a raise while closing the Wells-Barkerville School. After 12 days, she was hospitalized because of heart damage, and had to stop, but the hunger strike carried on for over 130 person-days with over 50 people participating. The Mayors of Quesnel and Wells took part, as did other people representing diverse interests and constituencies such as author Susan Musgrave, the President of the BC Federation of Labour, the Director of Naramata Centre, and the President of the BC Teachers' Federation. Letters of support and presentations at public meetings came from across the province and the political spectrum. Yet SD28 refused to budge from its decision to close our school, until a mere five days before the first day of school, when some negotiating finally took place. It's pretty obvious they had hoped our problem would just fester and die. But we wouldn't go away.
If SD28 and the Ministry of Education had ensured a meaningful decision-making process and real public accountability, citizens would not have had to resort to such drastic measures. Unfortunately, last summer's events indicate a profound refusal to listen on the part of the Trustees, Administration and the Minister. They are also indicative of a situation of "taxation without representation": decisions affecting us are made by Trustees and Administrators who live in a different municipality. This is simply undemocratic.
SD28 says in its draft brief that:
Our Board feels badly that over the course of making very hard budget decisions this past spring, one of our communities believed that the best solution for the education of its students was to lobby to remove itself from the Quesnel School District. The Board had to submit a balanced budget and attempt to do what was best for all students in the Quesnel School District in a responsible manner, both fiscally and educationally. The Board's deliberations resulted in plans to transport students from the Wells community to a neighbouring school, as the Board felt it could no longer afford to operate the Wells-Barkerville Elementary School. This was a difficult decision and one that understandably the parents and community of Wells did not appreciate. The Board felt positive that a cooperatively determined solution was ultimately achieved with the District of Wells council that enabled the students to continue to receive their schooling in their community with the support of the Wells community while still meeting the Board's objective of closing an inefficient facility.
It should be noted that people in Wells only sought to join the Prince George School District after the Quesnel School District had ignored the many letters, presentations and cost-saving proposals from our community and the region. Why Prince George? Because that School District had found a way to keep rural schools like ours open, and because the Quesnel School District didn't want to follow their model. We failed to understand why a solution that worked in the Prince George District couldn't be adopted by the Quesnel School District.
It should also be noted that although the Board "felt it could no longer afford to operate the Wells-Barkerville Elementary School", SD28 has made tens of thousands of dollars in profit from the Wells-Barkerville Elementary School over the years and continues to do so by diverting money from the Small Communities Supplement (a.k.a. Unique Geographic Factors) into other programs. In spite of this, SD28 has not invested in making the Wells-Barkerville Elementary School a more energy-efficient building. And Trustees voted to close our school who to this day seem to be unaware of our community's proposals, dating back to last spring, to make the building more efficient and cut costs.
What frustrates many people in our community further is that this entire episode could have been avoided had the Minister enforced the intent of the Small Communities Supplement. It is a mystery to many of us as to why her position on this funding policy changed from last May to the summer. It is simply untenable for the Minister to deny responsibility - in the name of "flexibility" and "choice" - for the way her Ministry's funds are spent; the semantic acrobatics she (and SD28 officials) have performed to rationalize the spending of small communities funds in other areas are just plain Orwellian.
At the provincial level, we believe adequate money for education exists. It's just hidden in the form of the tax break given to the province's wealthiest citizens, and the huge amounts of money available to promote the Olympic bid. If the government continues along its current path and refuses to prioritize province-wide equity in education, it will do so at its peril, just as it will undermine any investment in the future which children represent.
I strongly urge you to recommend that:
-Small Communities Supplement funding be linked to the school populations that bring it to their districts' budgets, and
-Rural School Districts be established to better serve rural communities.
Sincerely,
Bill Horne
November 14, 2002
On behalf of the Wells-Barkerville-Bowron Save
Our School Committee
Pictorial Summary of Wells-Barkerville-Bowron Save Our School campaign (305 kb PDF)