Is the Province about to pull the plug on the new school?

ARE THE MINISTRY AND THE SCHOOL BOARD CONSPIRING?

Sunday March 25, 2012

It has come to my attention from undisclosed sources that the Avon Maitland District School Board was advised some time ago that the Ministry of Education intends to quash the plan to build the Maitland River Elementary School (MRES) in Wingham. It is no secret that the province is close to bankruptcy and needs to cut back on many multi-million dollar projects. Apparently MRES is one of them.

It also appears that the Ministry and Avon Maitland are coordinating their timing to give the school board the chance to get rid of the Blyth, Brussels, and East Wawanosh schools before the axe comes down on the new school that was supposed to replace them. In this way, the “ temporary” arrangement for the transitioning will become a longer term accommodation until some future time when they can afford to build a new facility – much later, maybe never.

This leaked information answers many questions many of us have been asking:

• Why not leave the children in their present schools (Blyth PS, East Wawanosh PS, and Brussels PS) until the new school is ready?
• Why did Trustee Colleen Schenk and Mike Ash come to meet with North Huron Council to explain how the students are going to be accommodated during the construction, when they have never provided any information of this type to council before?
• What was behind Trustee Schenk’s pseudo-psychological explanation of the transition process as a means of helping children to “build a culture where people would get to know each other and hopefully negate some of the culture shock that would come with moving all the students mid-year”? When we are exposed to a speech like this, one must ask what the speaker is trying to hide. If moves are so disruptive, why have two moves when one move would have sufficed? Now I think we know what they were hiding.
• Why adopt such a convoluted plan of moving children here and there in such a crazy quilt pattern, and renaming Turnberry Public School and Wingham Public School as “campuses”?

Now we are beginning to see how it all fits together. If this new information is correct, the plan is to get the doomed schools closed and sold, move the children into one of the schools in Wingham (all of which will have a new lease on life), announce the cancellation of the new school build (with great sadness), save a few million dollars on construction, and gain a few more dollars from the sale of our schools.

It is difficult to believe that a plot like this is happening in our community, but it is undeniable that it matches the pattern of deceit that has characterized Avon Maitland’s past treatment of Huron County communities. And they could not have gotten away with these behaviours without the complicity of the Ontario Ministry of Education.

I firmly believe that this kind of subterfuge on the part of the school board and the government, now exposed, should convince the opposition parties in the legislature that it is time to use their new influence and force the government to be accountable for treating their citizens in this manner.

More Blyth History Coming Your Way

Today, Jan and I received two DVD disks containing many hundreds of issues of the Blyth Standard, our weekly newspaper. These are dated from 1906 to 1980. I just now counted the number of issues, an amazing 1,686 separate issues - ranging from 8 to 12 pages each.

We already had the 1906, 1907, 1925, and 1930 issues, but this new collection will fill up our collection to the end of the life of that publication.

We have already begun to lay plans for getting this "new" information from the past out to the many people who are interested in Blyth. One idea that I am thinking about and plan to pursue is publishing some decade summaries in book form of what happened in the old home town. The first I intend to work on is the 1940s.

The other process that this collection will allow us to do is rapidly search through the old papers for tne occurrences of a particular name. We have many people contacting us and making appointments to visit the colection for family information.This newspaper collection will provide us with another rich area to search for "Smith", "Jones", or "Brockest" in any article of any issue of the paper, select the article, and print it for the guest if it appears to be relevant to their search.

We know that not everyone is as excited as we are about old newspapers, but from a lot of experience we can assert that when we find an item related to the ancestor of those indifferent people, many of them become quite engaged.

We are excited!

Brock Vodden
Blyth,  Wednesday March 7, 2012

The McGuinty Code

The McGuinty Code

I just spent three days at a municipal conference in Toronto. While there were numerous  beneficial presentations and discussions, there were many provincial cabinet ministers there responding to questions, giving speeches, and holding fifteen minute audiences for delegations  from all over Ontario.

Each time I attend meetings like this, I find it interesting to watch for themes that emerge from members of the government. This year the common theme, expressed in various ways is this:

"THERE IS NO RURAL-URBAN DIVIDE. WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER. WE JUST NEED TO WORK TOGETHER AND EVERYTHING WILL BE OK."

This annual conference is jointly sponsored by the Rural Ontario Municipal Association and the Ontario Good Roads Association, both of these are organizations that are very well aware of the increasing number and advancing seriousness of issues facing the rural and small town communities throughout this province. Many of the emerging problems we face are caused by or aggravated by the current Ontario Liberal government.

Even the Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs espoused this myopic viewpoint, despite the fact that he is in the position most likely to make the rural-urban divide most obvious.

That minister, Ted McMeekin, does not strike one as the most insightful politician in the pack, can hardly ignore the cries for help coming from all over the rural areas of Ontario.

Another common element is showing up amongst the government officials. I have been encountering this right here in Huron County. It is not a theme, but a code. It’s a code made up of a very ordinary string of words. Those who are not aware of the fact that this word string is actually a code for something else, will end up with a very wrong interpretation.

Here is the code:  “IT’S ALL ABOUT THE .......” .   Now this code can be completed with any number of nouns and adjectives. To fully and accurately understand what the speaker is saying about those things, you must convert the code part to its literal meaning.

What does “IT’S ALL ABOUT THE .......” stand for? I’ll provide you with some very frequently used examples by members of the McGuinty government, and Ontario school board officials.

“It’s all about the children.”  Spoken by the Avon Maitland School Board officials over the past two or three years, in reference to the closing of certain schools and the building of huge new schools, actually means:  “It has absolutely nothing to do with the children.”

“It’s all about the safety of the children.” Spoken by Laurel Broten, Ontario Minister of Education at the ROMA/AGRO Conference in Toronto, February 27, 2012 in reference to the ministry giving out huge contracts to U.S. firms to provide school bus services for some Ontario Counties, and thereby putting many Ontario transportation companies out of business.  What she actually was saying is “It has absolutely nothing to do with safety of the children”. Local companies have been providing safe transportation for hundreds of thousands of Ontario children for many decades. Ms.  Broten is struggling to get the hang of using The McGuinty Code in a convincing manner. She has a way to go still.

“It’s all about the declining enrolment in our schools and the need to save money.” This has been said by senior administrators for Avon Maitland many times trying to justify the closing of Blyth Public School and other schools. We have to apply the key to The McGuinty Code to find out the real meaning of the statement. Translation: “It has absolutely nothing to do with declining enrolment or saving money”. What the board is actually doing is using up some available economic stimulus funding to match the new school opened in Perth County last year. Spending $10 million dollars, give or take a few million, on an unnecessary school is an unusual way to save money.

Look out for The McGuinty Code.