Osoyoos sues school district over closure
The town of Osoyoos and several parents are taking the Okanagan Similkameen school district to court over its decision to close Osoyoos Secondary.
Earlier this month the school board decided to close Osoyoos’s only high school, a move that the lawsuit says will leave the town as the largest municipality in B.C. without a high school.
Under the board’s plan, students would be bused 20 kilometres away to Oliver Secondary.
Parent and founder of Save Our Schools in Osoyoos Brenda Dorosz said the school is the heart of the community and is crucial for the economic and social development of the town.
Other parents will home-school their children if the school closes because the daily travel would be too taxing, particularly for students with special needs, affidavits supporting the lawsuit say.
Nearly 50 of B.C.’s 1,578 public schools are either scheduled to close this coming June, or are threatened with closure in the future, including up to 21 in Vancouver, five in Richmond, six in the Kootenay Lake district, and 16 that will close this June in other districts throughout the province. Many of these closures are due to an Education Ministry requirement that districts have schools 95-per-cent full before funding will be released for seismic upgrades.
The town offered the school board a grant of $352,000 for each of the next three years, plus support with mowing grass and removing snow to keep the school open, but the school board refused, saying the financial support would be illegal and against the School Act. The board projects annual savings of about $387,300 by closing the school, but the town disputes that estimate and says the savings would only be $254,000, due to busing costs.
The Okanagan Similkameen board is facing a $1.1-million structural deficit in its budget for the coming year, the court documents show.
The school district has 21 days to respond to the lawsuit.
Since 2002, 241 schools have closed in B.C., according to records kept by the B.C. Teachers Federation.