Wynne Liberals hit pause on school closings
Critics say it’s a desperate move to boost fortunes
LONDON, ONT .• Ontario’ s Liberal government is halting all new school-closing reviews, flash-freezing an issue that’s torn many communities apart with a provincial election less than a year away.
Wednesday’s abrupt move by Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government, after 14 years in power for the Liberals, smacks of electioneering by an administration that’s been struggling in the polls, some critics say.
“Just months ago the PCs called for a moratorium on school closures until there is a review process that is fair, but the Wynne Liberals voted it down,” said Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown.
“Now, a year out from an election, they have apparently changed their minds,” said Brown, who doubles as the PC education critic at Queen’s Park.
With about half a million empty seats in schools across the province, hundreds of schools built for earlier generations with more children still operate half-empty, targets of school board closing reviews that can drag on for months or years before often-agonizing decisions to close or consolidate them are made.
The hits have come even in the province’s largest cities, but the fallout is especially tough in rural areas where the loss of schools can trigger longer bus rides for kids and make it tougher for smaller communities to survive.
“We’ve been at this for eight years now, and we’re very pleased” by the mora- torium, said Doug Reycraft, a former Southwestern Ontario Liberal MPP who chairs the Community Schools Alliance, a group fighting rural school closings.
By freezing any new moves to close schools, the Liberals remove the backlash the issue might provoke in the next election, which some observers believe Wynne might call sooner than the June 2018 deadline amid a blizzard of recent election- style announcements.
But Reycraft s ai d he doubts any new schoolclosing reviews will happen now before 2019, noting the process that will unfold now — the province assessing its own guidelines, and school boards then having to adapt to any changes to reflect that — can’t happen overnight.
Still, Reycraft said he hopes the Education Ministry’s renewed focus on rural and remote regions — it announced $20 million in funding Wednesday to help boards in those areas cope — will lead to better policies and a better funding system that help to keep small-town schools alive.
“The ministry has finally acknowledged that the accommodation review guidelines and the funding formula are flawed and need to be revised,” he said.
Education Minister Mitzie Hunter said school boards won’t be allowed to begin any new school- closing reviews, except if student safety or joint use between school boards is involved.
But Wednesday’s move won’t spare schools where the school- closing review process is already underway, which an official said means five schools under consideration and 124 that have been recommended for closing — 40 of which are in rural communities.