Rossland begins to formulate a response to school challenge

By Adrian Barnes

 On Thursday evening a group of around 40 concerned Rosslanders gathered in the cafeteria at Rossland Secondary for Responding to the Challenge, a forum/brainstorming event designed to help evolve the response or responses Rossland will give to the recently-released Planning for the Future, Part 2 document. Present at this meeting were members of the Visions for Small Schools society, trustee Gord Smith, and most of council, including Mayor Greg Granstrom, Jill Spearn, Hanne Smith, and Kathys Wallace and Moore.

After introducing everybody and setting the stage, VSS's Janis Anderson turned the stage over to Gord Smith who presented an overview of the current situation. Speaking for the board, Smith said the current problems boil down to the fact that "the cost of these facilities is what's impacting [us] right now. How are we going to reduce our ongoing operating costs? No alternatives are off the table right now."

The school board's budget, Smith explained, is set provincially and provided on a per student basis: the board is forced to budget for whatever amount of money they get.

After Smith's presentation, the floor was opened up for brainstorming. The following is a fairly representative selection of the many and varied ideas that came out and the comments that were made. Possibilities ranging from bussing our grade 10s to Trail to civil disobedience were raised during the course of an informal hour-long discussion.

• "Grad this year will be the last big grad class for a long time," said RSS PAC chief, Diana Wilkes. "That is the reality: our numbers are down."
• Stating his belief that the real problem is underfunding that tends to pit communities against each other, Mayor Greg Granstrom noted, "If we keep cutting, where are we going to go from here? One school for the province in Vancouver with all our kids bussed there. And Jill [Spearn] as the only teacher." This statement got the evening's biggest laugh.
• "We've been making concessions in good times and bad," said VSS's Janis Anderson. "I really believe if we don't push back at some point there is no bottom."
• Gord Smith: "The board is looking for alternate feedback. Written submissions. We're encouraging everyone to have that thoughtful dialogue." Smith also noted that, to date, input has overwhelmingly come from Trail and Warfield pleading their cases.
• Jill Spearn said, "We should be keeping our schools open because all the communities [around here] are unique." Spearn then raised the possibility of an inter-city council group devoted to keeping schools across School District 20 opened. Spearn also said, "The funding formula is not adequate. It is  not working for rural schools. It pits community against community. We need to work at this collectively."
• Spearn also raised the spectre of bussing Rossland seniors to Crowe as a possibly necessary step in the face of shrinking enrollment.
• "We need to look at this situation as one piece of a district-wide puzzle. What is it our communities need?" said Hanne Smith. "We've all got declining enrollment. Maybe we need to look at reconfiguring. I'd like to keep our kids here as long as possible, but maybe we need to look at what to do with our grade 10s to 12s. I don't want the younger ones moving."
• It was noted that Webster parents are going door to door counting kids. Children not born in local hospitals are not counted when school enrollments are projected. It was suggested that, given the preponderance of baby carriages in town, Rossland should consider doing the same.
• It was suggested that Rossland ought to demonstrate the benefits that RSS brings to the greater community in the region
• The possibility of starting a charter school or an independent school be looked into in the event that K-12 was under serious threat.
• It was suggested that Rossland might suggest ammending the school funding formula to reflect efforts made to become greener.
• There was a common consensus that to the same extent that Rossland wants to keep its kids in the community, Rossland should support the aspirations of Warfield to do the same for theirs.
• The idea that Rossland might decide to withhold its property taxes from the provincial government as a form of civil disobedience in protest against unfair funding was raised.

Along these last lines, Mayor Granstrom said, "A group of people in Toronto shut down the [Olympic] torch relay today. Imagine the torch coming through here in January. The statement should be, 'we want to spend'. The City of Rossland is not alone in this. Far be it from me to propose civil disobedience, but let's make a statement."

Information gathered at this meeting will be collated, researched, and used as the basis for another public meeting in early January, shortly before the scheduled public consultations later in that same month.