Last week about 60 people attended an informational meeting at North Battleford Comprehensive School aimed at families whose children are currently in Grade 5 and who are expected to enter the high school as Grade 7s in 2015. Between 180 and 200 students are likely to be affected by the relocation.
While Principal Lyndon Heinemann reasonably made excuses for parents who may not have been able to attend because they had other activities with their children, it's a given there are going to be many more parents who don't attend these kind of functions because they don't have concerns. That can be taken in a positive or negative light.
It's obvious the parents who were there did have concerns and are attentive to how their children are going to be faring as they go through Grade 7 and on into the high school system. A great deal of the concern was around safety.
Living Sky School Division board chair Ken Arsenault pointed out the safety of students is as important to them as it is to the parents.
When talking about the board, school administration or central office, it is easy to forget those groups, even though frequently referred to as entities unto themselves, they are in fact made up of people. And no doubt most of them are parents themselves. To those who attend meetings where these kinds of far-reaching decisions are made, it is apparent they are looking at those issues through the lenses of personal experience and resultant conclusions, not from an un-invested entity's point of view. They do not always agree, which can lead to lively discussion, and lively discussions often lead to better solutions.
It's also clear division school boards are not autonomous, even less so now they don't have the ability to adjust their budget by local taxation. Their decision-making powers are much more limited than they used to be.
If the Ministry of Education deems there are only so many dollars available and tells the board there is no money for them to build a new school, the board has no choice but to work within the remaining parameters. As Living Sky School Division Board of Education chair Ken Arsenault said, the decision to move the Grade 7s to NBCHS was basically made for them. As long as there was space in the high school, there would be no new construction. Even the new gymnasium has to be built within the existing footprint of the school, or there will be no maintenance or operation money from the Ministry for that space.
One could go back and wish things undone, like the closing of the junior high schools more than a decade ago, or the sale of the portion of the NBCHS building now owned by the North West Regional College. But those are things that have been carved in stone and cannot be changed arbitrarily.
Of course parents have every right to be concerned about how their children are going to do when they move to the Comp. But is it not also important for them to remember that, like division school boards, the Comp is not an entity. Is it being seen as a giant maw that devours children, when it's really just a hubbub of people, good bad and everywhere in between.
To assume that a child, simply because they are the youngest, will be bullied, will not be safe or will be at risk, is to say everyone older than them has no care for their safety or for their happiness.
