Prairie South allows some rural families to attend different schools
Trustees with the Prairie South School Division (PSSD) will allow a rural family’s children to attend the school in Mortlach next year since it is closer to them than Chaplin.
The kids will be in kindergarten and Grade 1 for the 2020-21 school year, so the parents asked the division to allow their children to attend the school permanently. PSSD is currently using alternate yard service and providing the family with the No. 3 bus to Mortlach since the child going into Grade 1 attended Mortlach School this year for kindergarten.
Trustees approved the family’s request during the most recent board of education meeting. Trustees voted down another motion that PSSD’s rural catchment review committee had recommended denying the family’s request.
“The family has indicated that they will never go to their catchment school (in Chaplin) …. It is cost-neutral when we look at, say the kilometres, if they were to go to their designated school or the school that they’re requesting,” said trustee Darcy Pryor, whose subdivision includes the two affected schools.
“This is an example of us doing the right thing for the right people and to use common sense.” Approving the motion for a catchment change would permanently move the boundary and would not just be a simple accommodation, clarified board chair Robert Bachmann. This means the family wouldn’t need to come back every year with the same request. Trustee Shawn Davidson disagreed with providing this new service, saying the division couldn’t be everything to everyone. Costs would likely increase by going ahead with this request. He thought maintaining the alternate bus yard service was a fair and appropriate option to transport the kids.
Trustee Brian Swanson wondered how many other alternate yard service busing options the division provided, while he also wondered if division administration had a summary of how many kilometres would be involved with this change and if it would be cost-neutral. “There would be a decreased cost to not doing this, in that, we would not have to run a bus from this location to the other location four times a day,” said education director Tony Baldwin.
While that may be the case, Swanson warned there could be “cascading requests” from other families due to a change like this.
Besides this request, board trustees approved five other recommendations that the rural catchment area committee presented:
• Changing the catchment area for a family in the Assiniboia area whose designated school is Coronach. A family has two children going into kindergarten next year. They are currently riding the No. 5 Assiniboia bus since an exception was made earlier this year for pre-kindergarten.
The Coronach bus would have to travel into the Assiniboia catchment area, while the children would be on that bus longer and transportation costs would be higher ;
• Changing the catchment area for a family near Caronport, whose designated school is Lindale. The family’s land is 400 metres south of the Caronport catchment boundary. The student is already attending Caronport School for pre-kindergarten and the parents are driving their child there ;
• Approving bus yard transportation service for one year only and creating a pilot project for a feeder bus concept for a family near Bengough. The family has students going into grades 3 and 5 next year — one is already attending Bengough — and the designated school is in Coronach. The family’s land is about eight kilometres south of the Bengough catchment area;
• Changing the catchment area for a family near Coronach. The family has children going into pre-kindergarten and Grade 1 next year and the designated school is Bengough, but the family wants to attend Coronach. The family’s location is 6.5 kilometres from the closest Bengough route and seven kilometres from the nearest Coronach stop;
• Maintaining alternate yard service for families near the Village of Briercrest. Several families made multiple requests to have their children attend Lindale School over Avonlea.
The next PSSD board of education meeting is June 2.