More time to think

Still time to react to school review recommendations

This week’s spurt of winter weather has served to extend the public meeting portion of the school review process for two families of schools. The meeting that was to be held Feb. 8, in the Morell Family of Schools, has been moved to Feb. 27, and the Feb. 9 meeting for the Westisle Family of Schools has been shifted to Feb. 21. The extra time is of particular importance for the Westisle Family where a massive community campaign is underway to resist a recommendation that two schools in the family should close. The resistance even has the strong backing of two Liberal MLAs in the region.

This extra 12 days provides the United Home and Schools of West Prince, the group that is leading the campaign to keep Bloomfield and St. Louis elementary schools open, more time to build their case.

The Public Schools Branch can also make use of that delay to fill in some of the blanks the Home and Schools’ united group has pointed out, about the need to provide resources that are lacking in West Prince schools.

The school closure recommendation has caused much anxiety in West Prince and this delay will do little to ease it.

The Public Schools Branch had toyed with the idea of rescheduling the West Prince meeting to Tuesday, Feb. 14, but it gave in to arguments that Valentine’s Day was hardly the time to meet, especially with many of the people who wanted to attend already having special plans for that date. This way, everyone who already has plans for Feb. 21, but wants to attend the public meeting should have time to adjust their schedules. Have something to say about the process or the recommendations? There’s still time. Can’t make a meeting? There’s still another month left in the 60-day consultation period for written and online input as part of the Better Learning for All school review process.

Rural protection needed

The school closure recommendations, if they go ahead, will negatively impact four rural communities in P.E.I.

It is true that rural P.E.I. is losing more and more of its population base to Charlottetown and Summerside. This is cause for concern. As more people move into urban centres, political power shifts further and further away from rural P.E.I., and that is likely to become quite obvious in the electoral boundaries review, now underway.

Urban areas will gain more representation at the expense of rural P.E.I., as policy requires each of the 27 ridings to have roughly one-twenty-seventh of the province’s electors. And there’s the domino affect. Keeping rural resources open just might become more difficult.

Somewhere along the way, government has to make it more attractive for people to remain in, or move to, rural P.E.I.