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School District 51 votes against middle school in Grand Forks

By a near unanimous vote, the School District 51 board of trustees decided against establishing a middle school in Grand Forks.
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The board of School District 51 voted against establishing a middle school in Grand Forks on Tuesday.

There will be no middle school in Grand Forks, at least not in the near future.

That was the near unanimous decision by the Boundary district school board (School District 51) last night after a lengthy discussion.

Only Trustee Ken Harshenin was in favour, casting his vote in absentia via teleconference.

All trustees voiced their concerns and opinions about the creation of a middle school, and while all remarked at the advantages that were possible by placing Grades kindergarten to 5 in Hutton Elementary, Grades 6 to 8 at Perley Elementary and 9 to 12 at Grand Forks Secondary, all except Harshenin felt that the small size of the district and the shrinking enrolment might reduce the effectiveness of the middle school concept.

During comment period at the beginning of the board meeting, Boundary District Teachers’ Association president Norm Sabourin offered the observations of the districts’ teachers regarding the middle school concept.

“I don’t think we have the population here and I think we have issues with the inflexibility at the high school because it will make timetabling for the year very difficult if we lose a grade level,” Sabourin said.  He also felt that Hutton Elementary, with 90 more students under the new system, would be overcrowded.

School board chair Teresa Rezansoff next outlined the process that the board had initiated to gather input and information about the middle school concept and then asked all board members for comments.

Board member Vicki Gee believed that the district should commit to addressing directly many of the issues facing public education rather than trying to simply restructure the system in the hope that restructuring will solve some of the problems.

“We have one of the best education systems in the world but we still struggle to sufficiently educate all of our children,” Gee said. “We know that the functional illiteracy rate in B.C. is very high, in 2003 Statistics Canada estimated that 40 per cent of adults in B.C. don’t read well enough to function properly in society.”  She added that in their consultations with parents, a number of other concerns about student learning were raised. “We need to address those issues,” she said, “and not simply restructure our system around those issues.”

Trustee Cathy Riddle commented that though the middle school the board visited in Aldergrove, B.C. was an example of a successful school in which students seemed happy and enthusiastic, the schools in Grand Forks were already equally successful and well supported by parents and the community.

She expressed concern that developing a middle school in Grand Forks might be leading two a two-tiered system in which students outside of Grand forks would not be benefitting as much.

Trustee Dave Reid agreed, saying, “I don’t think it would be beneficial as a whole. The high school would be under utilized, Hutton would be crowded without major financial upgrades to it. I don’t think what they have in Aldergrove could be matched here; we don’t have the numbers for that configuration.”

Rezansoff agreed that the student population was too small in Grand Forks. She added that Christina Lake Elementary students would not have the same opportunities as the students at Perley and Hutton. “If I am going to agree to a change, I want to make sure that it’s not going to hurt any of our kids and I can see that if we go to a middle school concept it is going to have a negative impact on Christina Lake students.”

Rezansoff agreed with a number of other trustees that the changes in education promised by the Ministry’s revised education plan meant more flexibility that the Boundary District could take advantage of without major structural change. “We have an opportunity to do something that is unique to us,” she said, “and address the needs of all our kids in an equal way, in a much better way than just putting in a middle school.”