SALMON ARM – If your children attend school in the North Okanagan-Shuswap School District, their schools could be in for some big changes. A long-term facility plan is recommending officials look at reconfiguring some schools and closing others. It comes as the school board is expecting a budget shortfall, although they don’t know yet exactly what their funding will be next year.
“I’ve been a trustee for 15 years and 14 of those …we have had to cut,” says board chair Bobbi Johnson. “We have cut everything we can think of within our district that we hoped didn’t have great impacts on kids, so when we looked at it this year we needed to do a long-term facilities plan.”
And it was that plan that recommended the board look at changing and closing schools. The report suggests closing Silver Creek Elementary next school year, the school had a 2014 enrollment of fewer than 40 students. It also recommends the board look at closing Grindrod Elementary in 2016 after making other changes in the Enderby area. In the longer term it suggests looking at other closures in the Armstrong and Sicamous areas.
“We have so many empty schools in our district that we have to start utilizing the space that we have and consolidating,” says Johnson.
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The idea of closing Silver Creek Elementary isn’t sitting well with some parents who worry the closure will mean long bus rides into a school in Salmon Arm.
“It is not fair. What if my daughter, who is going to be five years old, has to go to the bathroom on the way to school? How are they going to provide for her?” asks mother Kristie Clark.
The school board chair admits she has some concerns about the bus ride as well but cautions that the recommendations in the plan are still just recommendations. Johnson says all issues including busing will be discussed.
Some Silver Creek parents are hoping something can be done to boost enrollment and prevent their school from closing. One option already being pursued is to introduce a Montessori program at the school.
“We are the perfect pilot project for it because the philosophy of Montessori is combined classes–we already do that,” says Clark.
The board chair says they will look at Montessori for Silver Creek.
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