If closing a school is not the worst experience a school district ever goes through, it is definitely in the top three. The other two would be discovering an irresolvable budget deficit and then the board of education being fired for not submitting a balanced budget.
Boards of education do not close schools for frivolous reasons.
Schools are not just buildings with teachers and classrooms. They are that safe place you send your kids in their own community, knowing that the people there will look after them, teach them and return them safely at the end of the day. Kids like their schools, and that makes parents happy.
For the greater part of B.C., especially those low-density remote communities, public schools play a significant community role.
Although schools are not specifically funded to do “other” things beyond providing instruction, they bring public space for community programs, host events (such as voting), build social connections and generally provide a hub for many facets of community life.
Since 2003, Vancouver Island alone has lost 64 schools, seven of them from Greater Victoria neighbourhoods.
That’s why there has been so much parent and community trauma about the fact that since 2003, 44 of B.C.’s 59 school districts have found it necessary to close 240 schools.
The reasons for school closures sometimes, but not always, come down to budget considerations. Older buildings, for example, simply cost more to maintain and run. It is the same with small school buildings — there are fixed costs no matter the size of the school. Geographic location brings its own costs.
What makes the whole thing school-closure thing inequitable is that rural districts have been hit much harder than urban districts.
One rural district that is going through the painful process of possibly losing community schools is No. 53, Okanagan Similkameen. It serves a relatively small student population distributed unevenly throughout the southern Okanagan and lower Similkameen regions.
Communities include Cawston, Hedley, Keremeos, Okanagan Falls, Oliver and Osoyoos. If you spent the better part of a day, and that’s what it would take, driving around District 53 you might just squeak in a visit to all 10 schools, five of which are elementary and three secondary, plus two alternative programs.
Under consideration is the closure of Osoyoos Secondary and the transfer of some or all of the kids to South Okanagan Secondary in Oliver, 42 kilometres away.
In another district in which I once worked, North Okanagan Shuswap, three schools have been closed. One was at Malakwa, and I can tell you it is a long hike, more than 20 kilometres, from there to the next school at Sicamous.
It makes a long day for the kids who begin their winter days waiting for the school bus — if it can get in and out of Malakwa through the snow.
By contrast, in Vancouver there are 110 public schools, all within the general area of the city and many within walking distance of each other, with 50,387 students. Those schools have a purely theoretical capacity of 59,585.
New Westminster District 40 is another good example: There are 12 schools, nine elementary, two middle and one secondary serving 6,000 kids — all within about a square mile. Again, you can walk, as I have done when working there as an elementary-school principal, from one school to the next. No need for a school-bus system.
Those urban districts don’t face the challenges of District 20 Kootenay Columbia, which has had to close 10 schools since 2002. The district serves six municipalities and numerous small communities.
District 57 Prince George has had to close 22 schools. Those closures included schools in relatively remote areas: Mackenzie Elementary, Nechako North, Salmon Valley and Bear Lake.
The total driving distance between Prince George and Mackenzie is 184 kilometres or two hours and 27 minutes driving time — or at least that is what it took me one winter night on a consulting job.
The point of all this is that Premier Christy Clark was at least partially correct when, speaking in Oliver recently, she argued that school closures are not a result of a lack of funding: “They are the result of fewer students, fewer young people, and so the answer to making sure that schools stay open, and that more schools are ultimately able to open, is to grow the economy.”
I say “partly correct” because without a school in B.C.’s small rural communities, there is not much incentive for young families to move there and grow anything, much less the economy.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
