COLES ISLAND, N.B. – As New Brunswick’s population drops, rural towns and villages like Coles Island are often hit the hardest.
For Leslie Champion, Coles Island is the place she knows and loves. She’s lived here her whole life and she’s now raising her four kids here. But soon, a part of that life could be taken away.
“A child isn’t raised just by their parents, it’s raised by the community,” she said. “And pulling them out of that and saying it’s not important, and just throwing them into another area…”
Champion is talking about losing the Coles Island School. The small school is being considered for closure by the Anglophone West School District.
Built in the 1950’s and expanded in 1992, the school can accommodate hundreds of students. But today, they only have 30.
It’s a kindergarten to grade five school. Middle and high school students are bused to Chipman, some riding for more than an hour each way. If the Coles Island School closes, all students, some as young as five, will be put on that bus.
“Five years old on a bus with high school kids? I worry,” said Champion.
It’s not just the trip, but the actual road that has parents worried. Highway 10 runs between Coles Island and Chipman. It’s a heavy truck route, with more than 20 transport trucks driving the route every day.
For parents, it’s one of the main arguments against a closure and to those who say it’s too expensive to keep a rural school open.
“What is the cost on their life? You’re going to ship them down that road. So what’s the cost on their life?” said Sabrina McFarlane, the chair of the Parent School Support Committee. “It’s completely the heart of the community. If we take this out then – that’s it. We’ve taken the heart out of the community.”
A petition to save the school has more than 600 signatures – more than the entire population of the village. Steve McrCready helped organize it to save his community.
“That is what New Brunswick is losing, is community identity,” said McCready.
“Every time a community, a rural community dies, it’s a part of New Brunswick that is gone. And pretty soon we’re not going to be ourselves anymore. We’re not going to be New Brunswick.”
McCready presented the petition to the MLA of Gagetown-Petitcodiac, Ross Wetmore, who introduced it on the floor of the legislature.
Wetmore said the public was given about six months notice that the school was being reviewed, but he argues it’s not enough time to come up with a solution.
“The easy thing to do is to close the building. You know what, you wake up one day and you say it’s closed and you move the kids 50 kms away. The hard part is to think outside the box and see what we can utilise the building for. We have wood, we use that wood outside of rural New Brunswick. We have farmers that live in rural New Brunswick.
“So are we not going to support the people that live in rural New Brunswick, where they support our economy so much?” said Wetmore.
Ultimately, the decision to close the school rests with the Minister of Education, but he receives his recommendations from the school board. They will conduct several public meetings to gather information.
The next meeting is in Coles Island on Jan. 15.
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