Rogue School Board: Avon Maitland DSB

Avon Maitland District School Board has decided to close the only school in our community of Blyth.

So what, you may say! That’s happening to many communities!

This is the community that I know well, and I just want to use it to illustrate how these closures can affect any small rural community. You have to understand the Ground Zero realities before you can grasp the enormity of what is occurring across Ontario.

We have been told by the school board that rules over our Huron-Perth education system, that they can no longer afford to operate our school. Our elementary students, almost all of them, will have to be bussed to a different municipality for their schooling, Central Huron. It is, they say, a simple matter of saving money by reducing the number of school sites.

Well, sometimes they say it is not entirely a matter of saving money; it is a question of improving education quality. To achieve this, they are building a large 24 classroom school in Wingham. This, some say, is a great step forward. The vice chair of the school board stated at the sod-turning ceremony that it was impossible to provide quality education in those old school buildings. The new school will, he said, open doors for the children that we can barely imagine today.

The Director of Education in 2009 gave a different explanation. He told an ARC meeting that the new school construction is being funded under the economic stimulus program, so we had better get busy and make our decisions quickly to please the Ministry and get this money working. So it’s not to save money; it’s not to improve education; in fact it is not an educational program at all; it’s just a project to spend a few million dollars to build a school – somewhere – to help out the economy.

That turns out to be the most plausible explanation for this school. But anyway, lucky Wingham! They are getting stimulated. Too bad for Blyth, however. Their school is going to be sacrificed to make the new school appear to be serving a real educational purpose!

To add insult to injury, only a handful of our Blyth children will ever get a chance to attend this Nirvana of educational bliss. Instead most of our children will be riding a bus down the road south to Londesborough to another of those old school which like Blyth Public School lacks the ambiance required to deliver excellent education. Here I thought teachers did the educating – not bricks and mortar.

So in return for giving up our only school, what are we in Blyth getting in return?

No joy, that’s for sure; just a long list of losses and a very bleak future for the community of Blyth.

· No children able to walk to school,

· No school board employees living or working in the community,

· No ability to attract or retain young families to the community

· 10% to 20% drop in residential property values (this decline is already in evidence)as a community which has no school

· Reduced business investment in the community

· Reduced patronage of existing businesses

· Loss of connection with the community culture and spirit

· Reduced connection between parents and school

· Loss of community identity in the present and in the future

· Loss of a major community meeting place

· Local taxpayers having to pay for development costs for a new school in another community

One wonders why our own elected officials would do this to us. 


I sent some questions to the Director of Education, Ted Doherty, to help me understand the thinking behind the Blyth decision. He provided no answer to any of my questions. He wrote: “I have read your letter numerous times. The only thing I can say is that I am sorry you feel as you do, but the proper processes were followed. The school board has to make difficult decisions.” That was the whole letter. If that is not a sign of a fortress mentality, I don't know what is.

The really scary part of this is that similar scenarios are playing out all over Ontario.

One of our very attractive houses in Blyth has dropped in value by fifteen percent, $32,000, in the past year, solely because of the school closure. Imagine the loss across our entire community. Several million dollars for sure! Then think about what that means for property values across the length and breadth of Ontario where other rogue boards are behaving almost as irrationally as AMDSB.

My goal is to find some way either to force the school boards (including AMDSB) to change their deplorable decisions, or to convince the opposition parties and rural backbenchers to find a political solution which will force the weakened Liberal government to find a way to end this madness and do the right thing.

We need lots of support from small rural communities. We are all being affected.