Queen’s Park rally aims to stop school closings

It will be a long time before Nicole Scime’s two children are ready for high school.

Her oldest child will be starting kindergarten in September, and the youngest is still a baby. “They’re very young,” she said. But that hasn’t made the planned closure of her alma mater, South Lincoln High School, any easier for the Smithville resident.

After an accommodations review of west Niagara high schools, District School Board of Niagara recently voted to close South Lincoln High School in June, and to close Beamsville District and Grimsby secondary schools when a new centrally located high school is completed to replace them in about 2020.

The new school is planned for a yet-to-be determined location, large enough for about 1,400 students with programs and amenities that can’t be offered at the three existing schools because of their small size.

Scime, however, said she’s concerned that the proposed new school might never be built, due to limited provincial government funding.

“There are 611 schools across the province slated for accommodation reviews and potential closure, and they’re all competing for the same funding,” she said.

And even if the board’s plans are approved, Scime said she remains concerned about the distance her children will have to travel to get to school. She estimates that it will mean a bus ride of more than an hour.

“I can only imagine what my kids would have to endure,” she said.

Cheryl Keddy-Scott, the school board’s trustee representing west Niagara, however, said she’s “very confident” the board’s plans will be approved, especially since it eliminates 1,100 surplus student spaces in the three existing schools.

And she’s expecting provincial approval within the next few weeks.

“Yes, of course we have a contingency plan, but we’re not even considering that,” she said. “We wouldn’t enter into an accommodations review unless we were confident that the ministry would support us in this endeavour.”

Keddy-Scott said the board will move forward with the closure of South Lincoln High School at the end of this school year, regardless.

“We’ve already begun the process,” she said. “No matter what we’re moving forward because it’s not in the best interest of the students to keep that open regardless of what the decision is.”

Scime is not alone in her concerns about plans for the school closures.

People from across Ontario are expected to attend a rally at the provincial legislature Wednesday, organized by the Ontario Alliance Against School Closures (OAASC) — a group of concerned parents from across the province who teamed up last fall to lobby for a moratorium on school closures. The rally will be held on the south lawn of Queen’s Park from noon to 2 p.m.

Scime said she’s hoping for a strong show of support at the rally from west Niagara residents.

She said Lincoln-area residents have shown substantial interest in the rally, as well as representatives of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

Niagara’s Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) chapters are getting involved, too — including chipping in towards the cost of renting a bus for the rally, said OFA vice-chair Albert Witteveen.

“When you close a school, you close opportunities for the entire community,” said Witteveen, a Smithville resident. “We want to draw attention to … the impact rural school closures have on our children, families and on our rural communities.”

Board spokesperson Brett Sweeney said there’s “ample time for all the normal processes to take place” before the new school is scheduled to open.

“In every other school build trustees have voted for, funding has been in place in order to meet the established timelines,” he said.

“The board has an excellent business case to present to the ministry, and looks forward to having good news to share with the community at the appropriate time.”

OAASC spokesperson Susan MacKenzie said more than one million people have added their support to the initiative since the group was formed.

“That just goes to show you the depth of the problem, and how this government can ignore that many people and the tens of thousands of letters and petitions that have been sent. How this government can ignore a situation like this, I can’t understand. I can’t run my head around it,” MacKenzie said.

“It’s happening the same everywhere in many pockets of rural areas where they’re herding the children, as farmers would herd their cattle, into larger facilities and they’re making these decisions before any funding has been approved for new facilities.”

MacKenzie said there was “a bit of breakthrough” in the group’s efforts to keep schools open when Education Minister Mitzie Hunter wrote a letter to school boards in early March asking them to reconsider closures in single-school communities.

However, MacKenzie said no definitive action has been taken by the province and the Ministry of Education maintains that school boards have full authority to close schools.

Meanwhile, she said the funding formula that is essentially forcing boards to close schools has not been changed.

“It’s a one-size-fits-all,” MacKenzie said. “They’ve taken away the base top-up funding which is hurting rural Ontario schools more so than urban because rural Ontario doesn’t have as many schools as the urban schools do.”

Witteveen said the OFA is also calling for a review of the process used to determine which school are to close, as well as funding.

“We believe that some of that is based on economics, and should be based on other things. We really want a review of the funding formula for rural schools,” he said.

MacKenzie said representatives of both opposition parties are expected to be at the rally, including Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown.

Scime invited people interested in more information, or to take advantage of a bus trip to Queen’s Park for the rally, to contact her by email at nj.scime@gmail.com.