Children who accompanied parents to remote areas as the country was opened up in the west 150+ years ago were home schooled, then schooled in one and two room school houses and finally, as the communities grew, in schools with several classrooms, so that each grade, more or less, had a single teacher. No gymnasium, no special library, etc.

I went to grade school in urban Ontario in the fifties. No such special facilities in grades 1 to 6 and none in 7 & 8. The latter had one classroom dedicated to a library, and two rooms dedicated to metal and woodworking shops and home economics.

We have since knocked those schools down in large cities, so we do not even remember what they were like.

We now follow a model of a single school with multiple spaces and multiple teachers and bus kids for hours a day if need be.

Sure to god we can do better than that with today's technology.

Is onyone looking at creating new generation one room schools with one teacher that can accommodate teaching at least grades 1 through 6 if not beyond that? In many ways, it might actually improve the education a child gets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUji_LnUbUs

"Is onyone looking at creating new generation one room schools with one teacher that can accommodate teaching at least grades 1 through 6 if not beyond that? In many ways, it might actually improve the education a child gets."

If it is a viable idea then go ahead and make your own one room school house in Dunster or Nukko Lake. Just call it Gus' One Room Private School.

The problem is that fewer and fewer people want to life in that rural lifestyle as time goes on.

So what do you do? Are you willing to pay more taxes to keep those schools open with fewer kids? Considering the response to the HST, most would likely answer 'no'.

In a town like Mackenzie, the reason people don't move here anymore is because the jobs aren't here anymore. How can you justify keeping two Elementary schools open here if there isn't enough students to support them?

Exactly Mercenary. I wonder if this is about people's resistance to change more than anything else. We have to face up to the fact that a) people are having fewer kids and smaller families in general, and b) smaller towns and rural areas have fewer people in them mostly because there are no jobs there, or it's not as desirable a lifestyle as it once was.

Neither of these trends are looking to turn themselves around any time soon. Time for many people to face facts.

The whole issue of budgetary cuts and school closures is a big messy can of worms.
We are sacrificing up to 30 schools in order to build a monstrosity like Duchess Park. No doubt is a beautiful piece of architecture, but the administration will become a logistic nightmare.
The school board must have used a dart board and a blindfold in order to pick many of the schools they have and will close by the time this mess is over.
Fancy using John McInnis Jr. Secondary for an all French emerssion school, and moving all the Ecole and French schools into that building.
It has 15 classrooms. College Heights Ecole would take 10 of them and then there are several other school to merge into the additional five classrooms.
What do they intend to do? Build and addition to the school and spend more money?
What will they do to the Science Labs and the Home Economic rooms? Destroy them for Classrooms?
How about the adult sized Plumbing for kindergarten kids? Do they bring their own stool to stand at the sink to wash their hands.
Who is going to lift the little five year old kids to sit on the toilets, etc., etc.
These are the problems of just one school.
What do we do with all the other schools? Board them up and commit them to Vandalism? Sell them off, so they have to locate new land to build new ones if there is an upswing in student population?
On and on and on and on it goes. If it costs more money per student capita then the government has to realize that, and up it accordingly.
But if we are going to take on a project ever again in this province such as the Olympics then the government of the day had better to their GD homework before bidding for the event not after.
So may questions,so few answers!
This is a disgrace.

"The problem is that fewer and fewer people want to life in that rural lifestyle as time goes on. So what do you do? Are you willing to pay more taxes to keep those schools open with fewer kids? Considering the response to the HST, most would likely answer 'no'"

Very good post MrPG. Despite what many people seem to think, income taxes paid (as a percentage of income) have actually been on a decreasing trend for a number of years now. For that matter, PST and GST rates have also dropped from when they were both 7%. Service fees and other things like that may have gone up, but core tax rates haven't, at least on the income or consumption side. Those trends do have an impact on the ability of government to fund various services so it should come as no surpirse when those services get hit.

As for the urban vs rural issue, again, it's no surpirse that Canada is largely becoming an urban country. This has been the trend for decades. Most immigrants tend to seek out large urban centres and I think it's becoming more and more common for kids that are raised in rural areas to want to leave those settings for the opportunities and ammeneties of larger cities.

I think it is a significant generational difference that we ar starting to see. Most young boys now don't want to do what their dad did and young girls now are starting to take charge of their own career and life instead of following the boyfriend or hubby around to where he wants to go. As we become a more highly educated population (and we are seeing that we every generation), kids will leave their small rural settings to seek out employment in areas where they can find jobs that take advantage of their skills. They won't hang around and push a broom or drive truck unless they absolutely have to. It's just the reality.

Of course there is also the issue of people having fewer and fewer children. It makes little to no economic sense (especially when resources are sparse) to keep schools open if the enrollments are at too low of a level for that particular school.

I think the issue we're facing now is not only one of changing demographics and trends, but also one of fiscal responsibility. It's important to not confuse them and assume that the government has control over all of them, because they simply don't.

Great post, NMG. I think a lot of that gets lost in the passion around keeping these rural schools open.

Many of those people forget the reality of today is not the same as it was years ago. Many young parents and kids do not want to live out in the boonies anymore... there are limited opportunities, and the rural schools lose out in the end.

if the rural towns like Mackenzie turn around economically will these schools re-open or be rebuilt when the population returns-or will they just over stuff the one school left if so do the citizens of Mackenzie get reduced tax rates for only one school -I think not but I bet the lower mainland will get another school full of new technology while the rural schools will make due with the books sent from the "big city"(which are 10years old)and let me guess the school boards will get another raise for there hard work of bilking our rural children of there fair share of the education system

The below linked school is is not a rural school, but it shows what happens to schools in larger cities that are located in parts of the urban fabric that has a population that pretty well stays put rather than turning over and has younger couples moving in to replace the older ones.

I entered grade 9 in this school in 1958 when the school opened. It had 600 students from grade 9 to 13 that year. Eventually it grew to 1,143 students. It had a theatre far superior to Vanier Hall, with a fly tower and foyer off the main entrance. The gym was at the other end of the school.

By 2004 it had dropped to a population of 510. In the meantime the number of housing units in the catchement area had increased considerably with the addition of apartment buildings. The school was closed after about 46 years of operation. The building was in excellent physical shape.

For a year or so after closing, it was used to film 26 episodes of a 30 minute series on YTV, Family Biz.

The school was torn down last fall and here is what is being built there, in case people wonder what school properties can be used for. Think PGSS 10 years down the road. Think College Heights 15 years down the road. Think Lakewood 5 years down the road.

http://www.laurentianredevelopment.com

Look at the aerial view here and you can see the problem with the spread out detached single family residences built between 1957 and 1962. Many older, retired people have stayed there.

http://www.laurentianredevelopment.com/pdfs/Laurentian%20High%20School%20Presentation%20November%205.pdf

There may be a SmartCentre coming to a space near us soon!!!

Smart Growth On the Ground.

Smart Centre.

Smart Golf.

Smart Downtown.

The whole country is turning SMART .... :-)

my taxes should be going to three things,Safty(fire,police)healthcare and education.
Read the report on sd57 website for all the recomandation.
As for the rest of the BS,7 BILLION on the olympics out of our taxes.It all comes down to the mismanagement of taxes by government

Gus that is interesting reading. Don't we have our own version of a Smart Centre here in the form of the big box stores that stand on land previously owned by O'Grady High?

Wonder if that is how this Smart Centre group makes their money? Buy old school property and build retail buildings?

Ben is right about three types of schools. Unfortunately, all three of those zones voted in the BC Liberals to three consecutive terms. While it is hard to see kids suffer for adults mistakes, is it not written somewhere about the sins of the fathers being passed on to the next generation? I guess the average taxpayer in MOntreal would know about that statement paying for the Big Owelympic Stadium all those years.