LET’S END THE SCI-FI TIME LOOP AND BUILD NEEDED SCHOOLS

Do we really have to relive the perennial war over Catholic-public joint-use facilities?

The time loop is a favourite plot device in the Star Trek franchise.

In a classic time-loop episode, characters are forced to relive the same sequence of events, over and over, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

But when it comes to time loops, Star Trek has nothing on Alberta education politics.

This week, Education Minister Dave Eggen told the Alberta School Boards Association he’d look more favourably upon funding requests from Catholic and public school boards who propose joint-use school projects.

“I certainly will encourage both capital projects and other programming to be shared as much as possible. And you know, I’ll reward people who make those choices,” Eggen said.

That might not sound controversial. But the Alberta Catholic School Trustees’ Association (ACSTA) makes it a policy to “oppose the joint use of school buildings with public school boards in any manner that has the effect of undermining or interrupting the full permeation of Catholic values and beliefs.”

Any Catholic board considering a joint school must get the approval of the trustees’ association and its local bishop first.

Eggen’s pronouncement was hailed as a bold step by some, and as an assault on Catholic education by others.

But Eggen’s “new” policy is neither revolutionary nor outrageous.

Alberta Education has long given priority to Catholic/public joint school projects, a policy championed by many a Tory education minister. J. Percy Page and Holy Trinity high schools in Mill Woods were built in 1984, when Peter Lougheed was premier.

We have joint use/shared facility schools from Lethbridge in the south to Grimshaw and Fort McMurray in the north.

And here in the Edmonton area, we have a joint-use public/ separate school facility in Beaumont and another in Sherwood Park.

In our Star Trek time loop, the bishops and the ministers clash, over and over again, fighting the same fight. Meanwhile, down on the planet’s surface? Local school divisions just get on with the pragmatic task of getting schools built, in neighbourhoods that need them.

The Elk Island Catholic and Elk Island Public school divisions opened their joint facility schools, Holy Spirit and Lakeland Ridge, in 2004.

The schools share one building, one set of playing fields. Each school has its own gym, but they back onto each other, with connecting doors, so they can be pooled for large afterschool events such as basketball or volleyball tournaments. There’s one mechanical system. The same custodians clean and maintain both halves of the building.

Over the years, the schools have ordered their furniture in bulk, and their parent councils have worked together on fundraising efforts.

Michael Hauptman, superintendent of Elk Island Catholic, says that after 13 years, he has only one real regret.

“I would like to have seen more sharing of space,” he says. “It would be better if we had something like a shared library space in between.”

Sharing physical plant and maintenance costs, he says, has meant the district can put more money back into the classroom. And never, he says, has the Catholic district felt that their autonomy or values were at risk.

“Really, it came down to a true partnership. When you’re willing to make it work for both sides, you can accomplish anything.”

“Do you get two schools for the price of one? No, not really,” says Mark Liguori, superintendent of Elk Island Public. “You’re able to share space, and tables and things.

“But each is a separate school unto itself.”

The secret, they agree, is for the principals of the partner schools to work well together.

With both Holy Spirit and Lakeland Ridge filled to bursting, with Sherwood Park booming, Hauptman says they need more new schools on this model, with shared playing fields and shared transportation corridors.

That seems like uncommon common sense to me. -In a typical Star Trek time-loop plot, the characters onscreen eventually realize they need to work together to solve the problem and break the loop.

That, of course, makes for entertaining science-fiction. In real life, repeating the same patterns over and over is more like the definition of insanity.

But maybe, even here on Earth, it’s possible that cooperation can break a cycle, and move the narrative forward. Because it’s long past time we stopped having this same political fight, over and over again, and just got on with the business of building the schools we need, where and when we need them.