Rural Residents Should Be Happy With School Closings

By Ben Meisner

Art Kaehn must have been smiling yesterday when the school closing were posted. Kaehn in addition to being the head of the regional district has been front and center in trying to have a number of rural schools remain open, namely Nukko Lake, Hixon, Giscome , Salmon Valley and Dunster.

He may not have hit a home run on all of them but he has some wriggle room for the ones that got the axe Tuesday.

To their credit School district 57 trustees made their best effort in trying to have the rural schools in their district remain open. The sheer length of the trip for students, if nothing else, is a compelling argument to have them remain open.

The Giscome School is very likely to have a new life. They are sitting in portables right now, but Shirley Bond, cabinet minister is also the sitting MLA in that area and while it isn’t a slam dunk yet just watch what happens as the election approaches.

Lynn Hall, Chairman of the board has now cut his teeth on two major school closings and he is busy looking around trying to come up with a formula that is acceptable to all levels of government in which the school and grounds can be shared by a host of users. It is the future of education and the sooner that we get to working out a suitable program the sooner the rural schools will find themselves with for sale signs dangling from them

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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