Castlegar teams with Rossland to oppose SD 20 plans
By Kyra Hoggan
Castlegar mayor and city council are calling for an independent analysis to determine the future configuration of local schools, after hearing the School District 20 board’s plan, which proposes closing Blueberry Creek Community School and Castlegar Primary School, as well as the Rossland Secondary School, among other changes.
This, after a closed meeting of the SD20 board and elected community representatives regarding SD20’s Planning for the Future document, a document Castlegar Mayor Lawrence Chernoff rejects as “flawed”.
“My take is that the report is a fraud,” Chernoff said. “I think the best way to get a result on this is to have an independent consultant generate the report, taking into account, not just the schools, but the communities and the students.
“The report should be about children and education, and I’m just not seeing that in this document.”
Councillor Deb McIntosh absolutely agreed, arguing that it’s vital that SD20 remove both bias and the perception of bias in a process so critical to the region and each individual community.
“We’re not criticizing anyone, we’re just saying it’s impossible to be unbiased when something will have such a huge impact on your own community – that’s why we want an independent analyst to assess the data,” she said, adding she had issues with the way trustees processed the available information. “Some of the criteria were redundant, giving one option more weight than it should have had in the final analysis, because it was included more than once.
“And the questions were so vague and open to individual interpretation,” she said, explaining an independent consultant would likely generate, not just better answers, but better questions, too …ultimately promising a far better result.
McIntosh also took exception to the City of Trail’s letter, supporting the SD20 plan and urging swift action and implementation. “Trail said they don’t want to stall the process, but that’s exactly what they did when it was a Trail school (on the chopping block) – they not only stalled the process, they took the school district to court over it,” she said.
At the Nov. 24 meeting, Rossland Mayor Greg Granstrom read aloud a joint letter from himself and Mayor Lawrence Chernoff of Castlegar, which reads as follows:
The City of Castlegar, and the City of Rossland strongly reject this report.
The City of Rossland and the City of Castlegar state very strongly that proceeding with public consultation based on this Report would become extremely divisive and a detrimental exercise not only for the citizens we represent,, most importantly a detriment to the education of our children.
The Board has allowed a process to go forward without adequate focus on educational criteria.
Furthermore, without provincial government direction, and given the political climate, there is no directive on which the board must act.
The City of Castlegar and the City of Rossland are unanimous in their opposition to Proceeding on the basis of this Report. Respectfully,
Lawrence Chernoff Mayor City of Castlegar Greg Granstrom Mayor City of Rossland
School Board chair and former Rossland Mayor Gord Smith was not able to comment on the proceedings of the meeting noting, “I can’t really comment on the meeting because it was a closed meeting. The proceedings of that should remain confidential. From a procedural point of view I shouldn’t be talking about the content of that meeting.” Smith did note, however, that this document is by no means a final report and that people shouldn’t see it as a death sentence for RSS or other schools in the region. Rather, Smith pointed out, the document is the culmination thus far of the planning process that has been undertaken and is designed to foster further discussion and get people engaged. “No decisions have been made,” added Smith. “The report that has been released is a collection of the planning exercise that we’ve undertaken over the last year. We collected the feedback from the first phase of Planning For The Future based on those scenarios and then again weighted different scenarios based on the criteria set by district staff, principals and vice principals. We’re now back into a dialogue with our communities to gauge how they feel about these scenarios and what impact they have on education and their communities. There is lots of work to do yet. There is lots of time for people to understand how the analysis has been undertaken to date and to get involved in the process if they choose to.” One of the school board’s guiding value statements, as noted by Smith, has been to maintain a “fluid and transparent process.” To that extent all feedback received will continue to be posted to the SD20 website. “We are accepting any written response or critiques or alternatives and that’s the case we expressed to our partners in the municipalities last Thursday,” said Smith. “We were looking for their feedback at that meeting but also to represent their schools as well. The next steps will be opening the forum once again to the public.’ The next scheduled public meetings will be held:
* Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2011 – 7 p.m. – JL Crowe Secondary School gymnasium * Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2011 – 7 p.m. – Rossland Secondary School gymnasium * Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011 – 7 p.m. – Stanley Humphries Secondary School gymnasium
Focus group meetings will be held as follows:
* Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011 – 7 p.m. – JL Crowe Secondary School gymnasium * Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011 – 7 p.m. – JL Crowe Secondary School gymnasium * Tuesday, March 1, 2011 – 7 p.m. – JL Crowe Secondary School gymnasium
– With files from Andrew Zwicker, Rossland Telegraph
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