Sixty West Boundary parents and supporters crowded into the basement of the Boundary School District offices in Grand Forks March 2 to attend the monthly meeting of the school board. Item 6 on the agenda was a proposal to consider closure of Beaverdell and Midway elementary schools. The meeting began with three parents reading prepared statements designed to drive home the negative impact of the two school closures.

Parent Tammy Shipton described the negative impact of the closure of Beaverdell elementary. The bus ride, she said, would mean that primary students would have to be away from home for 10 hours every school day, including two hours on the school bus and an additional half hour waiting for school to open and another waiting for the bus after school closes. She added that the current district budget surplus of $732,000 should be used before the two schools are closed. She added that families are moving into the area and that logging activity is picking up as wel,l meaning the school enrollment is likely to increase.

Shipton’s comments were added to by Angelica Moline and Rose Zitco who also made presentations. Moline said, “The 10 plus hour day would set the stage for failure for my children.” The decision facing the board she said ”will make or break our family and community.”

Zitco’s comments emphasized the lifestyle choices that those living in Beaverdell had made and referred to the closeness s of all community members and the importance of the school to all who lived there. Patti Posten said much the same. “I have lived in the community for twenty years,” Posten said, “and without the school, we won’t have a real community. The school is the heart and soul of the community.”

Four others present added comments related to the potential growth and development of the community and the negative effect on that growth if the school is closed.

When the discussion began among board members and Superintendent Michael Strukoff, it centered not on whether the school closures should be discussed, but the timing of the process. Five trustees, Ken Harshenin, Sally Garcelon, Cathy Riddle, John Malloff and Chair Teresa Rezansoff favoured proceeding with the vote to start the process, while trustees Kris Sabourin and Vicki Gee maintained that the process should be delayed until the formal Ministry of Education budget was brought down.

“We don’t have the information,” Sabourin said. ”We need to make a call on something that we don’t have (information about). I never choose to do something in my life and not have all the information in front of me so that I can make an educated point, and we don’t have that in front of us. So to start this process now without having that vital key information, I think we are doing the process a disservice.”

Strukoff responded by saying,” The issue that we’re talking about is, once the consultation period is over, if there is adequate time for the board to go over the information they have collected and give the proper time to the decision that they may have to make one way or the other.” He added, “Right on the heels of that, we have to finalize the budget, so it all links together in a way that I think we have to give ourselves adequate time.”

Gee said, “We’re talking about the inconvenience to our process when the other side of the coin is we should consider the inconvenience to the parents and the community.”

In the end, Trustee Harshenin introduced a compromise that all board members agreed to. A motion was made and carried that the board would call a special public meeting to discuss the issue again as soon as the formal education budget was brought down.

The spokespersons for the West Boundary residents appeared satisfied. After the meeting, Mark Danyluk, head of the Boundary Education Alliance said, “I was very encouraged that they did move (on the issue) and listen to us and engage in active dialogue with the concerns of parents and reached a compromise. We felt that we were heard. The next step will happen if they do reduce funding, then that next process will go into place.” Zitco agreed with Danyluk.

The Ministry of Education has announced that the budget will be released on March 15.