Prince George, B.C. – Dozens of trustees from across eight northern school districts, teachers, administrators and MLAs have gathered at Duchess Park Secondary School this weekend for a forum on rural education.

“We had sessions starting last night,” says Prince George School Board vice-chair Tim Bennett. “It’s really an opportunity to both showcase what northern districts are doing.”

Prince George School Board vice-chair Tim Bennett – photo 250News

He says it’s includes discussions on what some of the challenges are, including capacity.

“How do we build capacity? How do we when the ministry has targeted 95% school capacity,” says Bennett. “How are you able to compete when the ministry is investing capital into districts that are able to meet that threshold?”

Especially when capacity at most rural communities is decreasing. “Even if you look within our district we have some schools that are bursting at the seams and some that have a capacity of 800 and are sitting at a quarter of that.”

Bennett says another challenge is recruiting qualified staff. “How do we get qualified people to choose northern, B.C.?”

But he says it’s not all doom and gloom up north.

“We have a lot of great things happening in northern B.C. Our staff does an amazing job finding innovative ways to ensure quality education whether it’s through trades programs and finding ways to shrink the gap between graduation rates of aboriginal and non-aboriginal students.”

He says districts remain underfunded though. “Our staff does an amazing job of keeping our schools clean and safe but we need the capital dollars to help. They can only put a band-aid on things for so long.”

Bennett says some of the sessions have included the participation of Education Minister Mike Bernier, Jobs Minister Shirley Bond, Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation John Rustad and MLA Mike Morris.

“These types of meetings don’t happen in every area of the province so we’re very fortunate that we’re able to have respectful conversations with our northern MLAs.”

So what’s next?

“After today there’s a lot of follow-up to do with the MLAs and it’s just to keep the conversation going,” says Bennett. “Locally it’s going to be the work of the Rural Advisory Committee and other districts are going to find ways to advocate to their MLAs.”