This is what’s lost when a school closes

Boards of education must think beyond herd mentality, writes Marie Zettler.

My heart breaks as I look at the photo in the Citizen of Regina Public School students experiencing nature at the Mud Lake wetland. They will lose this resource if their school is closed as part of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board’s initiative “to ensure that we continue to offer the best learning environments for students while ensuring the effective use of education funding and school space.”

In other words, enrichment opportunities such as going to Mud Lake are an acceptable sacrifice in favour of preserving the educational system.

The doors of the 110-yearold school in Westmeath community, 150 kilometres west of Ottawa, closed for the last time on June 25.

I am convinced the problem is not so much one of money than of a refusal for school boards and the ministry of education to think beyond anything that doesn’t support the herd mentality that guides the system. It’s mind-boggling that Regina Street Public School is even considered for the chopping block when it serves the community not only as a school, but also houses a day-care centre.

In Westmeath, one of the unacknowledged attributes was the built-in enrichment opportunities from the school’s intimate connection with a multi-generational farming community. Instead, children now will spend increasing amounts of time seated on a bus, away from opportunities for self-directed and family-oriented physical activity involving nature, farming and the outdoors in general, in favour of access to that holy grail of academia: a gymnasium.

Regina Street parents have mobilized themselves to make a case for the survival of their school, just as Westmeath parents and the broader community did. I do hope they have a better result than Westmeath folks, who spent three months jumping through the hoops of a mandated “process” that included a public meeting at which school board staff meticulously recorded dozens of questions, concerns and suggestions for inclusion in a final report. None of this input was deemed worthy of a recorded response.

One can only speculate at the cost to the taxpayer in staff time for this futile “process.” If it was supposed to be a venting opportunity to make those affected feel better, it didn’t work. People are too astute to fall for that kind of manipulation.

I wish the Regina Street parents luck. Westmeath parents were admonished by a board member when the final vote was taken, that they should “remain positive” and be assured that the students would be just fine because “children are resilient.” In my limited contact with the Regina Street community, I have come away with the distinct impression that many of the children there already have their resilience challenged on an ongoing basis.

It’s hard to see how educational goals will be furthered by the added stress of moving to a larger school, outside of the community, with the added difficulty for one-car (or no-car) families to stay involved with their children’s education.

Oh, yes — and they’re losing Mud Lake.