The Town of Star City has a proposal to reduce overcrowding schools in Melfort and Tisdale – encourage more students to attend Star City School.
Anita Tkachuk, the town’s administrator, told the North East School Division board Jan. 23 the school is near a well-travelled highway, is in excellent condition, has a before and after school program to help working parents, and could accept between 70 and 100 more students immediately with no preparation required.
“To implement our idea would cost a great deal less than the $800,000 that is projected for the portable classrooms [at Melfort’s Maude Burke Elementary], thus allowing $800,000 to be redirected towards other educational projects throughout the school division.”
Yet it’s not uncommon for children from Star City to go to school in Tisdale or Melfort. The school division’s policy is that students can go to any school, but they are only transported by the district in their own catchment area.
Star City School’s population is small enough that it qualifies for a viability review.
Randy Ariss, a trustee for Melfort, said he liked the idea.
“I just don’t know how to implement it as far as getting kids from here [Melfort] to want to go there.”
Greg Cochran, the vice-chair for the Gronlid Central School Community Council, said there might be students in nearby rural areas that are assigned to go to Melfort instead of Star City that could go there instead.
“If you looked at the size of Melfort’s catchment area, if you shrunk it just to the borders of Melfort even, there’s a huge number of rural students and families that are having to send their kids to Melfort, Nipawin or Tisdale right now because those boundaries are so far out of town.”
Luke Perkins, the division’s chair, said they are always changing catchment area boundaries when they receive requests from rural parents for transportation to a certain school.
He also wasn’t in favour of making it harder for students to go to a school outside their catchment area.
“You never want to challenge the parents as to why they want their kids to go to one school as opposed to the other,” he said.
As for the Town of Star City’s idea, Perkins, who is also the Star City trustee, said he wasn’t in a position to say what the school board thought of it.
“We haven’t had the chance to talk about it yet as a group, so you’ll have to ask me after we do that.”
