Herchmer demolition - Scott next
Herchmer Community School, once home to a community of more than 200 North Central kids and their families, was brought down with a back-hoe this weekend. It is the first of several historic inner city schools on the demolition list. Meanwhile, a number of North Central residents and Scott Collegiate alumni are banding together to ensure 85-year-old Scott Collegiate remains standing. Participants in consultations regarding the new Shared Facility that will replace Scott report that the idea of using the existing building as a design centrepiece was never presented as a serious option, despite the surrounding community's desire to keep its heritage buildings in use.
For information and an email link to provide feeback, visit http://www.northcentralsharedfacility.ca/
Next RealRenewal Meeting
Sunday, Nov. 2
2023 Cameron St.
10:00 a.m.
Province-wide petition launched
Following the government's weak response to ongoing school closures in the midst of a boom, a province-wide petition regarding school closures has been developed by parent-community organizations with helpful input from SARM.
The sponsoring organizations are RealRenewal, representing urban school communities, and SOS Saskatchewan, representing rural school communities.
It calls for policy and funding reforms that support and recognize the value of rural and neighbourhood schools, and that place community consensus at the centre of decision-making. It further calls for a moratorium on closures until such reforms are in place.
If you would like to circulate the petition in your community, please email RealRenewal.
Manitoba halts closures
Manitoba parents are elated that school closures plans in Manitoba will be halted by new legislation. The Strengthening Local Schools Act received royal assent Friday. “It is a shock to everyone. It is the beginning - it provides for a brighter and hopeful future for our children, our small local community schools, and their neighbourhoods,” said Manitoba parent Victoria Schindle. Schindle is chair of the Argyle Community Action Group, a group that encourages boards and governments to develop alternative ideas to school closures.
A toast to neighbourhood schools
by Jim Stanford
Jim Stanford is a Toronto economist.
I recently logged onto Google Earth for the first time, to take a bird’s eye view of my own neighbourhood (Parkdale, a mixed-income district in central Toronto). And I learned a surprising lesson. The most visible feature in our community, from that sky-high vantage-point, is none other than our humble public school.
And when you think about it, this is quite fitting. Because the importance of that building to the life of our neighbourhood goes way beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Physically, the school is the largest and most recognizable building in our immediate ’hood. In fact, it was only thanks to the school that I could find our house (otherwise indistinguishable from all those other roofs) on Google in the first place. I started at the school, and then mentally “walked home” – following the same route my two daughters take five times a week. The school thus provides an organizing point for the whole community.
Indeed, whether school is in session or not, the schoolyard is a welcome, green magnet amidst our urbanized milieu. Naturally, its safety-proofed playground and sports fields are well-used by students. But dozens of non-students come each evening, too, from teenage skateboarders and trick cyclists to adult joggers and dog walkers. (The dog walkers aren’t actually supposed to be there – that’s another story!)
Indoors, too, the school is a resource for the whole community. Swimming lessons in the pool; music lessons in classrooms; community meetings in the auditorium. For children bombarded with advertising from birth, the school provides a rare non-commercial space: something that exists for a purpose other than selling something, and hence where you’ll never have to bark at your kids, “No, we can’t buy that!”
Swarms of stay-at-home parents bring their pre-schoolers to the parenting centre. There they enjoy some unstructured run-around time, referrals to outside services, and welcome adult conversation. There’s an on-site child care facility, too, facilitating the one-stop care of kids (including after-school care) from 3 to 13. Thanks to the hot lunch program, kids get what for many (too often including mine!) is their most nutritious meal of the day.
But the importance of our school to its immediate community goes far beyond these important facilities and services. Its provision of high-quality schooling to students from the many varied backgrounds of Parkdale makes a priceless contribution to social cohesion. This democratic, egalitarian approach to education enhances our ability to get along as neighbours, in addition to boosting the life chances of our children.
Together, our two girls have now had a dozen different home-room teachers at this school. All were good; several were extraordinary. All students have their challenges, and this school has tried to integrate and support those with special needs. This may pull down standardized test scores a tad, but provides a more important lesson to our kids in the importance of inclusion. And the school works seriously to create a safe, bully-free environment. That’s something we could emulate elsewhere in society … like our workplaces.
Speaking of which, our public school is itself an important, high-quality employer. Indeed, it’s perhaps the largest workplace in our immediate neighbourhood. Several dozen professionals (teachers, administrators, specialized support workers, and maintenance staff) ply their trade. They earn decent (not extravagant) incomes, protected by their unions, and they pump their valuable earnings right back into the regional economy.
I wouldn’t for a moment pretend that everything is perfect. Some silly problems take way too long to get fixed. Governance can always be improved. But on the whole, I feel blessed that our family can receive the services of this dedicated, high-performance public institution. And I am happy to pay taxes to support it.
Every neigbourhood needs and deserves a high-quality public school like ours. Collectively, we should recommit to providing the resources, the attention, and the care that public schools need, to stay at the top of their game. By the same token, anything that undermines the economic and social basis of public education poses, in my view, a nefarious threat to the Canadian fabric.
This includes, obviously, subsidies and other incentives for private schooling (which is at least as dangerous, in my view, as private health care). But almost as bad are market-like “reforms” that have been proposed for the public system – like promoting more competition between schools. These measures have been proven to exacerbate inequality between schools and hence neighbourhoods, thus accelerating the ghettoization that already poses a huge threat to our cities. In short, we should worry less about how to get our own particular kids into the best particular schools – and more about providing top-notch public schools for every single kid, in every single neighbourhood.
So this week, as kids and their parents march back to classes, say a little thank-you to your friendly neighbourhood school. As our local school is a prized asset in our neighbourhood, so is public education in general a gift to our whole society. The fact that children from all classes and backgrounds attend the same building, know each other, and learn from the same teachers, is nothing short of a miracle.
And it all starts right there in the neighbourhood.
A version of this commentary was originally published in the Globe and Mail.
Farewell to Herchmer
Herchmer School, a landmark in North Central Regina since 1930, is scheduled for demolition.
Roger Currie commentary
I think I’ve mentioned once or twice that I’m the child of two teachers, which partly explains why I’ve always liked school buildings. When you think about places in this world where going to school is a luxury that’s not for everyone, it should make all of us appreciate schools more than we do. This week, Regina said goodbye to two of them, Stewart Russell on 7th Avenue, and Robert Usher Collegiate in Uplands. They have been deemed ‘redundant’ because of declining enrollment, based on projections which are questionable at best. Usher is less than 30 years old. It was the ‘pride of the fleet’ when it opened its brand new doors in 1979. At Stewart Russell, there was an
interesting little ‘wrinkle’ no one thought of when public school trustees signed the ‘death warrant’ earlier this year.
When staff were tidying up recently in preparation for closing the doors, they came across a time capsule that was left there when the school opened in 1974. It would be ascinating to open it and see what everyone thought was important 34 years ago, but we’ll have to wait quite a while to find out those secrets. You see
back then, they thought that a school might last at least 50 years. The time capsule is not to be opened until 2024 .. 16 long years from now. What will
happen to the building in the meantime is anybody’s guess. The third school which will be closing in a few short weeks, Herchmer Community School, will be a distant memory by 2024. It will be a pile of rubble by the end of July.
So if you missed its farewell last month, and Herchmer has special memories for you, better head over to 1132 McTavish and get your pictures. Then,
maybe write a letter or an E mail to one of Regina’s public school trustees, and give them a piece of your mind.
For 620 CKRM, I’m Roger Currie
http://www.620ckrm.com/curriescomments.html
Sask Party Policy
*Saskatchewan** Party Caucus News Releases*
*Bridge Financing Would Give Boards A Chance to Keep Schools Open:
**Sask.** Party
/Learning Critic Offers Boards A Chance To Reverse Some School Closures/*
Thursday - June 21, 2007
REGINA—Saskatchewan Party Learning Critic Rod Gantefoer today said
trustees need new tools to give communities the opportunity to keep
their schools open.
“Because of the NDP’s failure to take leadership on this important
issue, closure decisions have been made without communities receiving
all of the information they need, exploring all other options and taking
sufficient time to have a meaningful discussion about alternatives,”
Gantefoer said.
“These communities need to have discussions about complimentary uses for
school buildings, whether as libraries, seniors’ centres, town offices
and medical centres. Trustees also need an enhanced set of standards and
criteria for school closures, tools that are not yet available and will
be provided.”
Read More
Education Act changes panned
Rural parents and RM leaders have panned the government’s proposed Education Act changes. “We’re upset with the whole thing,” Dave Marit, president of SARM, told the media after the Saskatchewan Party tabled its proposed Education Act changes yesterday. Marit pointed out that the changes fall far short of what rural communities lobbied for, by providing only minimally longer time periods for closures. Todd Lewis of SOS Saskatchewan agreed, telling the Leader Post that the government is “fiddling away at the edges” while communities face the deep crisis of school closures in the middle of an economic boom. Critics noted that the proposed community-school committees have no authority, and that the proposal contains no appeals process, which was a key recommendation of rural communities. Urban communities fared even worse – they were excluded entirely from the proposed changes. This will doubtless form the basis of discussion when RealRenewal meets with education ministry senior officials on Wednesday.
Bill 29 - Amendments to the Education Act (pdf)
The colour of closures
In total 18 schools have been targeted for potential closure or merger, with 14 fewer schools as the final outcome.
Looking at the catchment areas for these schools:
14 (78 per cent) include census dissemination areas (neighbourhoods) where the aboriginal population is 15 per cent or more.
3 (16 per cent) include neighbourhoods where the aboriginal population is 9 – 14.9 per cent.
1 (6 per cent) includes neighbourhoods where the aboriginal population is 3.9 – 8.9 per cent.
Zero closures or mergers will occur in school catchment areas where the aboriginal population is uniformly less than 3 per cent.
And…
14 (78 per cent) include neighbourhoods where 30 per cent or more of people live in low income households.
4 (22 per cent) include neighbourhoods where 15 – 29 per cent of people live in low income households.
Zero closures or mergers will occur in catchment areas where the low income incidence is uniformly less than 15 per cent.
Figures compiled by Sask Tends Monitor.
Aboriginal data: 2006 census. Income data: 2001 census.
Manitoba halts closures
Community consensus required
Manitoba is moving to halt school closures and provide additional support for community schools, parents from that province report. If passed, Bill 28 will place a moratorium on closures and introduce more stringent decision-making guidelines.
“We gave a report and presentation to our school division and to the minister's office. Within a month of this, the attached bill came out,” school advocate Victoria Schindle said in an email.
For the first time, community consensus will now factor into closure decisions. According to the proposed Strengthening Local Schools Act: “A school board can close a school only if it demonstrates that there is a consensus among the affected parents and residents that the school be closed.” As well, schools in low socio-economic areas will be safeguarded and provided additional funds.
Schindle said her own school division was “pursuing a school closure policy that had no consideration about our children’s well-being, their education, and the student’s relationship with their community.” Parents were also concerned about increased school fees and long bus ride times. The Bill proposes caps on bus time, to be determined through regulations.
Parents have been asked to comment on the Bill and are seeking advice from parents in other provinces. “We would like as many people as possible to take a look at the proposed bill, and perhaps point out a few places that we could research a bit further or point out areas that may be of concern,” said Schindle.
Anyone with advice can send comments through RealRenewal.
A letter from the Usher family
February 14, 2008
We, the family of Robert and Rheta Usher are writing regarding the proposed closure of Robert Usher Collegiate. Since its opening, RUC has always been an integral part of that community and has maintained an excellent reputation for both its strong academic and extra curricular programs. The school always had a feeling of personal interaction and terrific school spirit. It was a pleasure to walk the welcoming halls of this smaller high school where everyone--teachers, staff, parents and students knew each other and exuded a sense of pride in THEIR school. Good manners and caring were evident in the daily interactions. When the unicorn was chosen as the school's mascot, it was hoped by all that the school would become as unique as the mythical creature itself. It not only met this goal but surpassed it immensely.
We've always been proud that Grandpa's name was given to such a fine neighborhood school. Even more important to our family, was the role that the school bestowed on our grandmother, Rheta. Although the unicorn was the official school mascot, we know many faculty and students considered her the "true mascot" who embodied the spirit and values of the school. She was an excellent role model whom the students related to very strongly even years after their graduation. We're sure that this interaction was achieved in part due to the more intimate atmoshphere found in a smaller school. During all the years that Reta participated in the daily life of the Collegiate and many of the students' activities, we were all able to see how the school had grown and thrived. She was its most proud and vocal ambassador throughout the city and never missed an opportunity to promote RUC as an excellent school with an outstanding reputation.
We are not just supporting the future of RUC because it is named after a member of our family. In 1985, their great granddaugher, Christina Nash, was fortunate to live in an area where she could choose to attend either the larger high school, Thom or the smaller, more personal RUC. She attended grades 8-12 there and thoroughly enjoyed her education and especialy the drama and music programs. Over these five years, we as parents and family were able to observe the happy "family" atmoshphere and qualities of this great school. As a result of his sister's positive experience at Usher and his interactions with the school through his great grandmother Rheta, Robert Nash was sincerely hoping that one day his two sons might also have the privilege to attend high school there.
Both Robert and Rheta Usher were ardent supporters of fine arts in the community and were actively involved in the symphony, square dancing, Stairs for Stars and the Centre of the Arts. Thus, as a family, we would be overjoyed to see this school continue as a neighborhood high school with an emphasis on fine arts. If students must be bussed long distances to a school, it is far better that they and their families have a choice in the type of educational facility that they wish to attend.
Sincerely,
Vivian (Usher) Evans
Gail & David Nash (granddaughter & husband)
Robin Evans (granddaughter)
Robert & Sandra Nash (great grandson & wife)
Christina Nash (great granddaughter)
Busing numbers
Busing has become a pervasive part of the Regina Public School system. According to the School Profile information, 3900 Public Elementary School students, out of total of 12286 were being bused in 2006. That is 31.7% of all Public Elementary School Children.
According to the Regina Public School document Renewing Regina Public Schools - A 10-Year Plan (page 9, under Operations (Appendix F) - 1. Transportation Costs) up to 1684 additional students could be transported as a result of the 10-Year Plan. The 10-Year Plan also notes that the estimated annual cost of transporting each student is $1,000. Using the 2006 busing numbers as a base, and adding the potential of 1684 additional students being bused; if the proposals of the 10-Year Plan had been in effect in 2006, then up to 5584 students out of a total of 12286 or: 45.5% of all Public Elementary School students. would have been bused.
Numbers compiled by Larry Elliott. For a detailed report, visit http://users.accesscomm.ca/lmec/research/rbe/RK_BUS.HTM
New on the site
Follow this link to Building Sustainable Communities: Why Local Schools Are Key, a very clearly written 8-point summary by Roger Petry, professor of philosophy and sustainable development at Luther College, University of Regina.
Ring those phones!
The consideration of the closure or merger of schools is a very grave matter. Such decisions irrevocably change the educational environment for pupils. The communities surrounding the schools are also forever changed. Once a school is gone, it is gone, and the fabric of our city will never be the same again. Please contact your elected representatives and let them know how important this issue is to you and your community.
Don't we have to close schools?
No, school closure is a choice, based on a management theory that says ‘bigger is better’ at any cost. The board proposes a capital investment of $96.5 million – much of it borrowed – to merge and enlarge schools across the city, and to push services toward the city’s outer rim. That investment, or even a portion of it, could be redirected to maintain and improve the facilities and services we have.
While much is made of declining enrolment, our neighbourhood schools have optimum student populations by any commonly accepted measure. Desks are full and enrolment is steady. We need our schools!