What The Avon Maitland School Board Has Taught Us

Blyth Public and Continuation School

Built 1896

This was our school back in the good old days. We had our own school board of local people who were elected each year. They were from all walks of life: merchants, preachers, doctors, labourers, gentlemen (retired folks), etc..We knew all of them personally and they knew us. Heck, they even knew most of the students.

When we wanted to indicate that we liked or disliked their decisions, we would tell them so when we met them at the post office or at the ball game. Once in a while, but rarely, a big issue would come up and a group of citizens would go as a delegation to a school board meeting and have their say.

The public school usually had two teachers for grades one to eight - sometimes three. The Continuation School had three teachers who taught all the subjects required for grades nine to twelve. Those who wanted to go further had to go to Clinton Collegiate Institute for their Grade Thirteen or "Upper School".

It was our school, and it was a good school. Two of our Grade 8 students in the 1940s happened to move to a big city in the same year. In Grade 9 in that new school they placed first and second in overall marks above all the students in that grade. They attribute their achievement to the grounding they received in Blyth Public School.

Along the way we lost our school board, then we lost our representative on the later school boards. They say that we have a representative on AMDSB, but she doesn't talk to us and few know who she is. Now we are about to lose our school. The present school board has turned against us on advice of their senior employees who have decided that although we used to run our own schools successfully, we are not smart enough now even to have an opinion about how our children are to be educated.

If AMDSB were to be picked up by aliens from another planet (what a dream!), Blyth could actually manage and maintain its own school and educate its own children. The education requirements are different than they were in 1896 and 1946, but we have learned a thing or two as well. The advantage we would have is that we could hire real educators who know and value our community and we would not require those many layers of administration overhead which have made things so costly and complicated that they can't afford the money or the time to look after our children and community properly.

We won't be setting up our own school any time soon, but I am betting that this community is going to remember what AMDSB did to us and our community.

I support public non-sectarian education and when I see the public board behaving so badly, I become very angry and disappointed. They are the kind of board that is supposed to serve the whole community.