Saving Rossland's Schools: The City puts its money where its heart is

By Andrew Zwicker

The Neighborhoods of Learning concept, which has been touted as the best route towards maintaining a sustainable K-12 school system in Rossland, got a big boost this week. Monday evening, council voted unanimously in favour of backing the School Community Connections: Supporting Neighborhood Learning Centres grant. The city pledged to make available the $10,000 nescessary in matching funds should the Rossland NOL group be successful in applying for a $10K grant from the provincial School Community Connections program..

The City of Rossland had already budgeted $10,000 for 2010 to go towards a planning session. That money has now been earmarked for the NOL project.

The move has been criticized by some community members as well as by area politicians. On Monday night, some council members spoke to defend their actions, reaffirming their commitment to keeping K-12 in Rossland.

“There was some criticism for that ($10,000 budgeted contribution), so I just want to say and to remind the other communities around us that we have a Visions-to-Actions plan and we are entrenched in a sustainability plan that contains K-12 education in our community,” said Councilor Jill Spearn. “We are looking at it from a much broader umbrella than just a bunch of people bickering over whether our schools should be open or closed. I’m proud that our community is taking the high road and we’re moving forward in a positive way.”

Mayor Greg Granstrom echoed Spearn's sentiments, adding, “I find it almost appalling that people would somehow find fault with the City of Rossland for putting some monies in to help the school district keep our schools viable. It’s totally beyond me that other politicians in the area have asked me questions like, '$10,000? What are you guys trying to do?'"

The School Community Connections program, which is offering the grants, is a partnership project between the Ministry of Education, UBCM (Union of British Columbia Municipalities) and the BC School Trustees Association. This year the group is offering $30,000 to each school district in the province to encourage greater utilization of school spaces and the co-location of community services in existing school space. Each school district will collect, analyze and select no more than three projects with a combined value of $30,000 to submit to the School Community Connections program, which will make the final decision. 

In the event that Rossland receives an SCC grant, the City of Rossland will provide the $10,000 in matching funds. A requirement of the grant is to have a local government body sign on as a partnering agency. 

According to the grant application, “The Rossland Neighborhood Learning Centre Planning project is intended to identify and involve potential stakeholders in a Rossland Neighborhood Learning Centre project as part of an overall vision of building a resilient learning focused community that views our schools as assets, embraces education for all stages of one's life and moves our community and schools from a student focus to a student, family and community focus." 

This next step, should the group's grant application be successful, is to build on the groundwork already laid by the Rossland Neighborhoods of Learning Committee. The grant would allow the group to take initial plans a step further and actively engage community stakeholders, identify local groups that might fit into the NOL plan determination of the space available, organize stakeholder workshops, obtain commitment from some groups to occupy space, identify possible funding sources, and ultimately complete a final plan outlining the Rossland Neighborhoods of Community Learning vision.

The process will be very similar to that undertaken by the Revelstoke School District. As reported in the Telegraph, Revelstoke was one of the NOL pilot projects initiated by the provincial government. The result for Revelstoke was a 15% increase in the size of two new school projects, with the increased space occupied by community groups that now help underwrite the cost of the new facilities.

With the City’s support the completed application has now been submitted to the School District. District. Grant applications will be evaluated by SD 20 following May 24th submission deadline. Final evaluations and decisions will be made following the SCCG's deadline of June 4th.