I have not been following the school closure details. I will, however, make these gneral comments.

School closures are a fact of life accross much of North America due to demographihc changes that were generally foreseen at least two decades ago. There was little, if anything, done to begin to adjust to those realities.

Some of us get the Boston series of stations instead of Detroit for the time shifting of US network programming. The issue there is permanent school closures atr the moment. Here are links to Boston and Kanasa City school closing issues.

In Boston, school officials have estimated that the district has about 4,500 empty classroom seats across all grade levels. Each empty seat costs the district about $4,000, school officials have said.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/03/10/schools_chief_warns_of_closings

In Kansas City, the school board on Wednesday night narrowly approved the plan that calls for closing 29 of 61 facilities
http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/9001/10617423/Mass_school_closures_approved_in_Kansas_City_Mo

Maybe we need to look a little more closely at our own backyard and see how serious this community and its school board are about saving rural schools. How many, and which rural schools could SD57 save if it were to close DP Todd instead, if it is closable? How many if Heritage Elementary were closed?

Is that an option we would be willing to entertain? Closing one or two more urban schools and having those students have a bit of a longer distance to travel in order to save mega travel distances for those in rural situations.

I think too often we think we are the only ones that are faced with some type of hardship. Most larger urban centres in North America are surrounded by rural communities that have the types of travel distances we are facing and those communities are seeing the same demographihc and lifestyle shifts. What are they doing with similar rural schools?

Maybe we need some more information, such as a list of schools, their capacity, their actual enrolment, their location on a map, the relationship of new housing developments schould this city ever start to grow in population again.

We are watching the SD57 schoolboard as they are having to make some decisions. How much do we really know about the individual school utilization rates in this community? How much should we know? Should they be left on their own to do the job we voted them in to do?

An article from 2004 says this about BC schools: "One hundred and thirteen schools, the bulk of them rural, have closed across the province in the past two years."

http://thetyee.ca/News/2004/09/08/RuralSchoolsDontDie

So, the warning signs were there decades ago, the actual closures, as we know from our own situation at the last round of closures, did not just start to happen yesterday ....... how long does it take to sink in and come up with a rational approach to getting children educated wherever they live? What are the Boards and Administrators accross the province doing to solve the problem, and waht help is the Provincial Ministry and Government responsible doing to help them solve the problem?

Or is this one of those situations where we are supposed to apply the "ask not what the SD can do for you, but ask what you can do for your SD" concept?

While I agree that schools need to close when there is declining enrollment, what I object to is the way the board of education is doing it.

These 'consultations' were a joke - all the trustees wanted to hear was parents begging to keep their schools open. When faced with hard questions they ran away with their tails between their legs.

What confuses me is why the all of a sudden need to close 14 schools, if enrollment has been declining for years - why have they not been closing or merging schools for years. It's obvious that the school district has been 'fat' for many years, but the board of education have ignored this because they have somehow managed to balance the books every year and have taken the easy option of doing nothing.

The board of education have put us in this situation, will they learn after this year - probably not.....

Normally, I agree with most of what Mr. Meisner says, but I believe he's missed the mark on this one.

Living in a rural area is a choice, and it's a choice fewer people are making.

You make that choice presumably based on factors which will benefit your family the most.

As others have noted, the writing has been on the wall for some time that the rural schools have been faced with severely declining enrollment, which is a trend that doesn't seem to be changing any time soon. You would have to be living in a state of denial to not see this coming.

When I bought my first home, I weighed all of the factors and decided that the rural lifestyle wouldn't work for me and my family, even though there are parts of it that are appealing.

If people are making the choice to live in a rural area, they have to accept the fact that all of the services that one would expect in a heavily populated urban area won't be available to them.

Wow, it must be fun for Mrs PG, with MrPG deciding what's best for the family... Everyone loves a unilateral decision

Who said it was unilateral? MrsPG had lots of input and we came to an agreement. I'll admit I didn't communicate that very well above. Sorry if that's different than what you thought.

Mr. Meisner's point is basically well taken, but it is also true that 5km in the Lower Mainland is not the same as 5km here. They've got denser traffic so travel by vehicle takes longer. In many areas, it is more of a problem for kids to walk because of concerns about crime and/or traffic.

Hmmmmmm...is all I can say to this. The fact is like Meisner said..

"just less than 70% of the total wealth of the province is extracted from the rural areas of BC."

This includes Prince Georges Rural areas. Now if you keep moving these children closer and closer to urban settings, soon MrPG there will be no one left to bring in that "wealth". I am one of those parents that "begged" the Trustees to not close the school my son would be attending. Our community IS growing and will proceed to over the next five years. We are willing to help remove some of the burden this school is causing for the school District, I shouldn't even mention that they are technically only paying for HALF of what each student is worth right now in our school (THAT IS HALF OF WHAT THEY ARE BEING PAID BY THE GOVERNMENT FOR EACH STUDENT, I am wondering where the other half is going).....but we are still willing. If the school District does close all of its rural schools they will actually be losing money not saving. Now I just want to point something out. YES schools need to close, YES we have a decline all over North America. This is not being ignored, these Rural Families know that. NOW if you want to live in an Urban setting so be it..but expect your classes to be full to capacity. There should not be one classroom that is holding less then what the provincial standard is. Which brings me to this point! Between Hixon and Giscome there is 5 elementary schools....Buckhorn to Pineview is 6.8 km, Pineview to Blackburn is 6.4 km. Blackburn is at 60% capacity, Pineview is at 77% capacity..I do not have the figures for Buckhorn at the moment. But if the Sustainabilty Committee, would have decided instead of closing Hixon and Giscome (these students, 4 AND 5 year olds some would be riding for up to 4 hours a day once all day Kindergarten goes in to effect) would they have not considered closing one of those 3 schools (preferably Pineview) and changing the catchment areas for Hixon and Giscome (Which are closer to these schools) they could have filled these schools to capacity and kept all of these children closer to their communities.
To me the sustainability report looked lazy. What I think is SD57 should follow suit with the rest of the SD in Central and Northern BC and say no to Rural school closures. Don't get me wrong some of these schools are close to PG, and so should be considered, but some are not and the children's welfare should be considered along with what the communities are willing to do. IT IS TIME FOR THE TRUSTEES TO SAY "THE HELL WITH THESE POLICIES WE HAVE, ITS TIME FOR CHANGE IN POLICY" And its time for some new management of our School District...SORRY "SUPER PEPPER" HAS TO GO. I am curious to see the decisions the Trustees make on Tuesday, I am also very interested in seeing who will be running in the next election for School Trustees. I will definitely be paying a hell of a lot more attention this time around! And possibly willing to help campaign for any Rural Persons running!!

"just less than 70% of the total wealth of the province is extracted from the rural areas of BC."

This includes Prince Georges Rural areas. Now if you keep moving these children closer and closer to urban settings, soon MrPG there will be no one left to bring in that "wealth"

----

Sorry, but your argument is flawed. Yes, the resources are in the rural areas. There will always be people to drive or fly out to extract those resources, whether people live in downtown PG or out in the boonies.

I realize this topic brings out passionate people who do not want to see 'their' schools closed or their way of life threatened in any way. But you cannot argue with the numbers and demographics. People in general are choosing more and more to live in the more populated areas. It makes sense, because that's where the services are. Keeping rural schools open for sometimes 20 or 30 students isn't reasonable.

Schools must be consolidated and closed as necessary to match the changing demographics of the areas, and the whole district must be taken into consideration.

As far running for school trustee, I think there was one more person running than they had seats, so it seems that almost nobody wants this thankless job. Whatever decison they have to make will be unpopular with someone.

I have to agree with MrPG on this one.

I wouldnt take a school trustee's job if you gave it to me. I have give credit to those that do the job. To say it is a thankless job is an understatement.

"Yes, the resources are in the rural areas."

SOME resources are in the "rural" areas. NOT ALL!!

Kemess... resources ... where do the people that work there live?

Hibernia .... resources .... VERY "rural" ... where do the workers and their families live?

Fish in the ocean ..... "rural" .... where do the workers and their families live???

ALL, so called "natural" resources and, if we were a bit more careful, many are renewable. That means, unless we replace them with something else, we will keep on accessing them from "remote" areas for a few more centuries.

So, why do we not tackle the "problem" from that point of view? We have known for a long time about the facts of life of resource towns. We live close to one .. Barkerville.

Then there are the modern ones .... Tumbler Ridge, Mackenzie, Endako, Sinclair Mills, Giscome, Penny, Longworth, Kitimat, and tons more, all praying from one economic peak to another via the occasional economic valley that can become dangerously deep quite quickly. Then eventually the valley no longer has any peaks associated with it, and the place vanishes.

Look at Detroit if you want to see a larger version as it goes through major urban cancer erradication. It relied almost totally on a man-made resource, a resource that was people. The world is full of them and people all over the world can now make the product that was once in the hands of the few.

Langley is much closer to the "resources" of the world we now live in. There are other ways to extract the natural resources scattered over the remote areas of the world. We are beyond having to have communities of 200 or so close to them.

Hope Y'all don't mind me bringing my 250 head of cow, and 300 chickens into your parks?

Hope Y'all don't mind me bringing my 250 head of cow, and 300 chickens into your parks?