After the Grade 9 class was removed from W.R. Frose school in Fawcett effective September 2010, there have been no attempts to bring it back to the school, nor are there plans to further reduce the school’s class offerings.
“No, there will not, at this time, be further reductions,” said Pembina Hills Supt. Egbert Stang. “There’s no plan or discussions around that at all.”
That being said, there are plans to address the status of the schools in Dapp, Jarvie and Fawcett moving forward, in order to determine how best to utilize them, said Pembina Hills Regional Division board chair Doug Fleming.
“I think at this point, what we’re trying to do, as part of our work plan for the next six months, is to have a conversation with parents in the whole, what I like to call, the Westlock north corridor,” he said.
These conversations will be used to help establish how to build and sustain quality programs at the three schools. They could also potentially include discussions about further closures or expansions of the schools, but those are topics that will be debated if they arise, he said.
Stang said any discussion of closing a school or removing a class from a school must be conducted within the context of the division’s administrative procedure on the subject. This procedure looks at different factors, including a school’s utilization rate and the number of students.
In fact, all schools are evaluated using these criteria once a year. This way the board can monitor each school to determine if any action needs to be taken, he said.
However, Fleming said a decision will not be made to close or shrink a school without talking to the parents and the teachers first, as any discussion about sustaining a school is critical to all involved.
“I think our teachers and our parents and our kids have got a stake in what’s happening in our schools,” he said. “So we need to be prepared to look at opportunities and options, and listen to the students and the parents.”
Stang echoed Fleming’s assertion about the value of speaking with the people directly involved, but with his own cautions.
“It’s based on input from the parents, but it’s also based on reality factors,” he said. “The budget, the number of kids. Can we operate that school with that number of kids and all those other factors and deliver a quality program?”
That is not to say the views of the parents and teachers are not taken into account.
“We end up having meetings and we try to listen to what parents and staff have to say,” Stang said. “At the end of the day, it’s always usually an emotional thing if you’re moving a grade from a school.”
That emotion is something Fern Doke knows about, having fought to keep the Grade 9 class at W.R. Frose beyond the end of the 2009-2010 school year.
After the class was removed, Doke chose to move her daughter to Jarvie School in September to begin her Grade 7 year, in order to keep her daughter in one place throughout her entire junior high career.
She said another factor that influenced her decision was that junior high classes are very important, and better taught in straight, rather than split, grades.
“I felt split grades were not in the best interests of the children at that age,” she said.
She said almost a year later, she doesn’t feel the PHRD board properly considered the proposal she and the other parents brought forward to save the class at W.R. Frose. She said she questions how hard and how long to fight for something when the board seems to have already made up its mind.
Since the closure, the board has been looking at how to sustain the school in the future, she said. It is in better financial shape and is likely to run a surplus soon, but will still not be able to bring in another teacher and grade, she said.
Overall, she said she feels the PHRD’s rural schools are important and need to be kept alive.
“It’s an issue the board is going to have to look at, mandating that maybe the best thing is not just to shove everybody in Westlock, but maybe they need to look at which schools should stand outside of the boundaries to provide for overcrowding classrooms,” she said.
Despite the disappointment of losing the grade and having to send her daughter to Jarvie, Doke said it’s been the right choice academically and socially for her daughter. She said she plans to send her Grade 4 son to Jarvie when he reaches Grade 7, to take advantage of what her daughter is currently experiencing.
