Dividing lines

School closure process pitting community against community

Even if it wasn’t the design of the exercise as one presenter speculated, the first meeting of the members of Accommodation Review Committees (ARC) to consider school closures in Prince Edward County featured an uncomfortable amount of community division.

A radio colleague commented, while watching the proceedings that it felt to her like an episode of the television show Survivor—nine tribes clustered together at tables—eight individuals each—a principal, teacher, two community members and a student— chosen to fight for the best outcome for the students of their school.

If one was looking to devise an effective way to sow seeds of dissent in a community, they could scarcely find a better way to do it than threaten the future of some local schools, pit community against community to fight for the survival of their school, while promising another a new school. Then mix it up a few times.

SOME BACKGROUND
Last spring, the Hastings Prince Edward District School Board announced plans to close County public schools— perhaps all seven, perhaps just four or five. It left that notion to soak in for a few weeks before trustees would vote on it. A loud outcry erupted across the County, nowhere more loudly than in Wellington where it was noted by many that the community had invested heavily into resources, programs and services at CML Snider school—specifically in its outdoor facilities including the County’s only athletics track, sun shelter and playground equipment for the younger grades and, most recently, impressive outdoor basketball facilities.

In June, the board said it would postpone the vote on the outcome of these schools until September. But that date came and went. On October 10, the board met—with only seven of ten trustees present—to consider the report on school closures, but by then the various school closure and consolidation scenarios presented in the May document had been deleted.

HPEDSB Superintendent of Education Laina Andrew, guides the ARC through the first of two formal session.

The board said it would provide its recommendations in November. With very short notice of its intentions— the board met as a committee and then as a full board on November 21. It approved a plan close Kente, Sophiasburgh, Pinecrest and Queen Elizabeth schools in Ameliasburgh, Sophiasburgh, Bloomfield and Picton. Students from Kente would be transferred to a new school in Wellington. The only schools unaffected by the recommendation were Athol in Cherry Valley and Massassauga-Rednersville on the northern shore of the County.

In order to close schools, the board is required to conduct an ARC to consider the recommendations and provide their comment. It is not a voting body, as members were reminded Thursday night, rather they may make suggestions, proposals and register concerns that will form part of the package the board considers when it rules on the recommendations in June. Only trustees can approve or change the recommendations. Another stated purpose is for ARC members to form a “conduit” of information from the board to the community they represent.

NO DOWNSIDE
The ARC, thus assembled, began with an introduction by Laina Andrew, Superintendent for Education for the board. She noted for the ARC participants that before becoming a board administrator she was a teacher—that she and other board members have the best interests of students in mind.

Andrews then recounted a story from a young man who had participated in a similar ARC meeting the evening before. Prior to moving to the Belleville region, the student had attended a kindergarten to Grade 12 school in Petawawa. Andrews recounted the student’s positive experiences in that environment—older kids as role models, a greater array of sports and facilities and such.

With that, the delegates were given an hour to discuss the pros, cons, options and alternatives each group felt should be considered by the trustees in their decision making. At the end of the hour, a delegate from each table presented their findings to the ARC.

Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the pros sounded very much like the account by the young man from Petawawa—better facilities, mentoring opportunities between age groups, more sports, more French immersion opportunities etc. Unlike that account, there were plenty of cons. Many focused on longer bus times, some prospectively waiting in the dark before 7 a.m. Others pointed to the loss of community that would result from school closure. There was widespread condemnation of a timetable that would see a decision made in June and grade school kids accommodated at PECI by September. Every table urged the board to slow down— wait a year at least to allow construction and other modifications to take place before transferring young children to the Picton high school.

But it wasn’t long—perhaps inevitably—before communities losing schools began to turn on the communities retaining schools or consolidating students. Sophiasburgh ARC member Mike Farrell said school closure recommendations were creating or exacerbating a ruralurban divide in the County.

Others worried about the impact of school closures on the County’s economic prospects.

In conversations with parents whose kids attended Pinecrest and Kente, Farrell suggested a better plan would be to close CML Snider in Wellington and Ameliasburgh while maintaining the school in Bloomfield. Ameliasburgh delegates had a different idea—close Massassauga Rednersville and CML Snider while keeping Kente open.

Farrell warned that the board could not count on Kente’s students migrating to Wellington—speculating that most parents work across the bridge in Belleville or Quinte West—that this is likely where many of these children would attend high school.

was clear none of the delegates relished the idea of targeting another community for school closure, but as the ARC process devolves further into a my-school-oryours contest, families and communities are becoming desperate. Desperate times call for desperate measures.