Rural parents rally to save schools across Ontario
'Tears heart out of community,' protesters say as boards make decisions to close buildings, often due to low enrolment.

thestar.com
By KRISTIN RUSHOWY
April 26, 2017

School boards should learn from one another when it comes to finding creative ways to share buildings and services, said Education Minister Mitzie Hunter, who has launched public consultations across rural Ontario where a number of threatened closings has upset communities.

On a day when parents held a small rally outside Queen’s Park to save their local schools, both Hunter and Premier Kathleen Wynne were pressed on the issue by the Tories and NDP during Question Period.

“I understand that closing a school or consolidating two schools is a real challenge for school boards,” said Wynne. “I also know that we have great examples in this province where school boards have worked together, where school buildings have been kept open because there has been co-operation between school boards and municipalities. We need more of that.”

Hunter noted that in Terrace Bay, east of Thunder Bay, “both the English and the French Catholic school boards are working together to share an elementary school. This is allowing access to libraries, gyms, play spaces and technology labs, ensuring that students have the best range of programs possible.”

She also said that in the Keewatin Patricia public board, near Sault Ste. Marie, a new high school is being built with Confederation College that will also house mental health services.

“We are looking at that, and also wanting to hear and wanting to listen to parents, students and the community,” she said in an interview.

Some 15 per cent of Ontario public school students attend rural schools. The education ministry says it has increased funding for rural schools by $200 million, or 6 per cent, since 2013, and has also built almost 60 new schools since 2003.

Funding for rural boards will be $3.8 billion for the upcoming school year.

However, because of low enrolment or the cost of operating a small, rural school, many boards are considering shutting some down to save money.

Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown said that “according to the legislative library, this Liberal government has now closed 100 more schools than the previous Conservative government ever dreamed of. They are setting records on school closures.”

Tory MPP Bill Walker called Hunter’s rural tour a “junket,” and said voters “know this is no fact-finding mission. This is about damage control and the Liberals looking out for their best interests, not Ontarians.”

Walker, who represents Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, said losing local schools is “tearing the hearts out of rural communities.”

In Northern Ontario, the province’s education funding doesn’t work and “discriminates against small northern and rural schools,” said NDP MPP France Gelinas, noting that in her Nickel Belt riding, kids in kindergarten wanting to take French Immersion will ride the school bus for three hours a day.

And rural schools are losing out on $6 million in grants for the upcoming school year because of cuts, NDP education critic Peggy Sattler has said.