MURDER IN THE SCHOOL OFFICE - ALMOST

It’s June 28, 2012

A lady enters the office of Blyth Public School and approaches the school secretary.

Sect'y:   Good morning. How may I help you?

Lady:     Good morning. We are moving to Blyth next month and I would like to enroll our children for this school in September.

Sect'y:   Sorry. We are not accepting registrations for this school.

Lady:     I didn’t realize there is more than one school in Blyth.

Sect'y:   This is the only school in Blyth today, and as of tomorrow it is closing.

Lady:     You mean there won't be any school for my children?

Sect'y:   Oh, there'll be a school for them. You have a choice. They can either go south to Londesborough or north to Wingham.

Lady:     Well I am going to be working in Wingham, so I guess they will go there. So, we're talking about Wingham Public School?

Sect'y:   No, that school is closing, too.

Lady:     But you said ......Wait a minute, why are these schools closing?

Sect'y:   We are closing many schools: Wingham, Blyth, East Wawanosh, Turnberry, Brussels.

Lady:     But if all the schools are closing ......

Sect'y:   Don’t worry, Ma’am. We do have a beautiful new school.

Lady:     So why are all these schools closing?

Sect'y:   They have to send the children from several schools to fill up this new school.

Lady:     So why did they decide to build the new school?

Sect'y:   Well they had to have a place for the children whose schools are closing.

Lady:     Typical government circular argument. What is this new school  called?

Sect'y:   Maitland River Elementary School. It opens its doors on Monday morning. We are looking after registrations here right now.

Lady:     Well, that’s great. I’ll register them in Maitland River Elementary School today. Can you tell me where it is so I can drive around and show it to the kids?

Sect'y:   No, you can’t.

Lady:     Why can’t I see it?

Sect'y:   It hasn’t been built yet.

Lady:     But you said, its doors were opening next Monday.

Sect'y:   It doesn’t have any doors yet. It’s just now under construction. Opening doors is just a figure of speech.

Lady:     Now look here. I’ve had just about enough of this nonsense. Figure of speech, indeed! Are we on TV or something? Is somebody going to step out here and say SURPRISE! THANKS FOR BEING SUCH A GREAT SPORT!  I really don't have time for all this. "You can do this. No you can’t do this. First you see it, now you don’t!" I want to speak with the principal and RIGHT NOW!

Sect'y:  You can’t. She isn’t here!

Lady:     Why am I not surprised? Where is she?

Sect'y:   She’s working at the new school today.

Lady:     Working at the new school? The Maitland River Elementary School ? The one that hasn’t been built?

Sect'y:   That’s right.

Lady:     Does she know that it hasn’t been built yet?

Sect'y:  We don’t want to break it to her – too suddenly! We’re sure she’ll notice it herself – gradually!

Lady:     I am running short on time. I am sure there is enough weird behaviour going on here to fill a PhD thesis, but I have to get our kids registered. I want you to do this and please don’t give me any more of these little road blocks. Agreed?

Sect'y:   Sure. That’s why we are here.

Lady:     I have my little Mavis who is starting into Junior Kindergarten. What can you do for her?

Sect'y: Well, the Kindergarten children are going to Turnberry.

Lady:     But you said Turnberry Public School  is being closed tomorrow.

Sect'y:  That’s right but it is becoming The Turnberry Campus of Maitland River Elementary School  as of Monday morning. That’s where Mavis will go.

Lady:     So is there a real brick and mortar building there with doors and a roof and teachers?

Sect'y:   Oh, of course! Except the teachers won't be there till September.

Lady:     Now for my next child. Mark is going into Grade 3. Turnberry for him as well?

Sect'y:   No. He’ll go to Wingham.

Lady:     Aha! I’m one ahead of you. Let me pre-empt your speech. Wingham Public School is closing tomorrow. MRES does not exist yet. So my little Mark will be attending the Wingham Campus of Maitland River Elementary School. Am I right?

Sect'y:   You are absolutely right.  Do you have another child?

Lady:     Yes, and I am going to tempt fate and tell you where she will be going. Francine is going into Grade 8 and she will also be attending the Wingham Campus of Maitland River Elementary School.

Sect'y:   Wrong!

Lady:     Do you never give up? Is there no bottom to your little bag of tricks? What do you propose doing to my Francine?

Sect'y:   She will be attending F.E. Madill High School.

Lady:     No, no, no. Francine is going into Grade 8. She is not going to high school. I’m afraid you are in the wrong this time.

Sect'y:   Maitland River Elementary School  is a Grade 2 to 6 school. F.E. Madill as of next Monday becomes a Grade 7 to 12 school.

Lady:     OK, Miss whatever your name is, you win again. Now I want you to listen to me while I summarize my first encounter with the craziest school system ever devised. My family and I are moving to the lovely village of Blyth which is about to lose its only school. We have three children of grade school age, and they will each be attending a different school. This is a temporary arrangement while this school board gets around to building the Taj Mahal. The board is pretending that this lovely new school is real, but it in reality is still on a drawing board in the office of a very frustrated architect.

Why on earth are they closing the schools twelve or more months before they get the new school  built and ready to accept our wee darlings?

Sect'y:   This plan is intended to create a smooth transition for all the children from the old schools to the new school environment. The children will be grouped wherever possible with the children they will be with in the new school. The children can get a head start on developing the culture of Maitland River Elementary School  instead of having to go through that very challenging process when they actually transition into that wonderful new building. We want them to feel comfortable, free from the stress of change involved in leaving one environment and moving into another very different environment.

Lady:     I'll bet it took you a while to memorize that speech? Some bureaucrat wrote that for you and I have to wonder what he is trying to hide. You have put me through about 20 transitions today exposed to schools that exist today, but won't exist tomorrow, a school that is opening doors it doesn’t have, campus schools that have no parent school, high schools that take in elementary school kids.  The children of Blyth are being put through this insane process. Now, tell me this, and I am asking you to be brutally honest. Are the people of this village happy about their school closing and all these changes?

Sect'y:   There are a couple of old guys creating a bit of a fuss over this but everybody else seems to be accepting the change. A few people signed a petition to stop the closure, but it’s the school board that decides these things.

Lady:     How many people signed the petition?

Sect'y:   Just a few over 600.

Lady:     What is the population of this village?

Sect'y:   Almost a thousand people.

Lady:     I would say that’s almost unanimous disapproval. Doesn’t the opinion of the community count for something?

Sect'y:   The school board is not concerned about the community. Their only concern is the school and the children. We do it all for the children.

Lady:     And the school board goes along with this?

Sect'y:   Of course. It's their idea, well with a bit of prompting by the administrators.

Lady:     What are they going to do with this building? It looks to be in excellent condition.

Sect'y:   That has not been decided yet.

Lady:     I have a suggestion. They should convert this building into a maximum security mental institution and lock all of the board members and administrators in it.

Sect'y:   They can’t do that.

Lady:     Why not?

Sect'y:   They were all committed to another school in Seaforth a few years ago for the same offenses!

Brock Vodden (with apologies to all the Blyth Festival Playwrights)

Picture: BPS Senior Room - Class of 1946

Bert Gray, Principal
How many students do you recognize?

I would like to thank all of the many people of Blyth and area (and elsewhere) who have supported our drive to save our school. Thanks for the letters, emails, phone calls, and conversations that encouraged us. It is unfortunate that we were not successful, but we knew when we started that the situation was stacked against us.

I have encountered only two people from Blyth who opposed our actions. I am sure there were a few more, but I say to them that if they think the closure of the Blyth School is a good thing, they are not aware of the whole situation. There is nothing good about this situation for anyone. 

Avon Maitland DSB is no friend of North Huron.

Brock Vodden

On Beating a Dead Horse?

Relaxed on a trip to Prince Edward County

I do relax once in a while, but in the past three years there have been many issues that create tension and a sense of urgency. Some of this intensity has occurred in connection with our work on North Huron council, but the situations that have perplexed me the most are those associated with what is happening in our education system in Ontario and how these things have affected us here in Huron County, in North Huron, and in Blyth in particular.

Several people have told Greg Sarachman and me and others that we should have given up a long time ago on the "save our school" campaign. They said that there was no way that we could win. "It's a done deal. Forget it!" 

They were right; there was no way that we could win. But I wish I could get people to understand that that is exactly the problem. There should have been a way for the Blyth community to appeal the closure of their school, and to reverse that decision. So far, I have come to know of two Blyth people who seem to agree with the closure. There may be more, but we have 631 people signed their names on a petition to stop the closure. In a democratic society that should count for something. Not in this case, it seems.

What did we achieve? Greg and I agree on one thing: that we can look back on this time and say with pride that we did what we could and that it was, in our view, the right thing to do. We can also say that we have proved that the draconian system set up by the Ontario Ministry of Education and rogue school boards like AMDSB is not just a bad for places like Blyth. It's bad policy for rural Ontario, bad for education everywhere, and a disgrace in a society that considers itself to be a leading example of democracy.

Obviously some people are very happy with the result. They see many advantages in having the new school. They don't really care that it has no educational justification. It's good for the economy - of Wingham. They don't care about the cost to the communities that are bereft of their only schools. They don't care about the undemocratic practices of our school board and our Ontario government. They don't care about the lies many people have told trying to justify the decisions and actions of their board and their ministry.

I care about these things and will continue to work towards achieving a more fair and honest democratic society in this corner of Canada. 

Brock Vodden

WHY WE CAN'T TRUST OUR TRUSTEES

Old school on the hill pre-1896

The term "trustee" refers to persons who have been appointed by someone to perform some service or to represent the appointer in specific matters. In the case of school trustees, the people of a community have elected several people to represent the community in matters related to their school or schools.

The universal understanding in the past has been that the school trustees saw their responsibility as a matter of providing the best possible educational environment within the context of the community.

In recent years, that model has shifted to something quite different. As a result of changes in the Education Act since 1995, school boards have been given certain powers which are not subject to question by anyone, including the very people who elected the board of trustees. School boards, therefore, have the right to close, open, build, or alter any school they so desire without input or objection by the people or the municipal government  of that area.

The net effect of this new power, is that school boards are now controlled by the Ministry of Education, not by their electors. They no longer earn the title "trustees".

On June 12, 2012 the chairman of a city and area school board pointed out that the Ministry now directs the staff of each board through the Directors and senior administrators as to what the elected board is expected to  do, then the director and superintendents give the board instructions on what policies they are to adopt to accommodate the Ministry's demands. This Chairman, indicated that the pressure from the ministry is intense and the senior staff transfer that pressure to him and become quite agitated when he does not immediately comply with the "orders from Queen's Park".

The unstated reason for granting this power to school boards, we believe, is to accommodate the plan of the provincial government to reduce drastically the number of schools in the province, in other words to consolidate schools and make remaining schools larger, more efficient and effective, and by implication, reduce the costs of education.

This trend was started by the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris, and has been continued and accelerated under the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty.

School consolidation on a system-wide basis does not work. It does not save money, it does not improve quality of education. In fact, it more often than not increases costs and lowers education quality.

There is a ton of research that discredits consolidation campaigns such as Ontario has been waging. The uncalculated factor in all of this is the damage to communities who lose their schools - in particular, those communities who lose their only school.

This is not to say that all school boards have abandoned their pledge to represent the community. But those that buck the trend are often under threat to be punished in some pecuniary way by the Ministry.

Long Before the Rubber Boot or the Blyth Inn

HAWKSHAW'S HOTEL 1877 TO 1887

This is the hotel that stood on the same lot as the present Blyth Inn.We understand that the last vestige of this building was torn down to make way for the present three-storey cement block structure built in 1906 by Jonathan Emigh. The man driving the bus is Lon Shane.The bus was used to pick up guests and luggage from the Grand Trunk train station (on Dinsley Street) and to deliver them to the station for departure. The CPR line had not been built during this Hotel's life span.

John and William Hawkshaw took turns owning and operating this establishment as well as at least one other hotel in the county.

The Name painted on the wall says "Commercial House by Hawkshaw"

My presentation to Ontario Education Critic June 12

Received in person by The PC Education Critic, Lisa MacLeod. MPP Nepean-Carlton accompanied by Jeff Yurek, MPP Elgin-Middlesex-London

SCHOOL BOARD ACCOUNTABILITY

I am Brock Vodden, a retired educator, and currently a municipal councillor for North Huron representing the Blyth Ward. I, along with others, have been working hard for almost 4 years to try to make the Avon Maitland District School Board recognize its responsibility to the community in which its schools are located.

I have been involved with many aspects of education throughout my entire career. A teacher in elementary and secondary schools, Superintendent of Schools, College administrator, and from 1976 to retirement, a self-employed corporate training and development specialist.

 I have only recently become aware of the question of school board accountability. Until the past 10 or so we have taken as a given that the trustees are public-minded citizens who are looking after the education needs of our children within the context of our communities. The connection of school to community was not something that we ever felt the need to discuss.

The convergence was always assumed.

In my in-depth studies of education, I came to realize that one of the truly outstanding strengths of the Ontario education system is the tight bonding we have between school and community – especially for children in the early years.

Recently, this matter has become a very serious matter for my community and for many communities across the province subject to a cluster of pivotal questions. There has been a major change that quietly took place. Even at the last municipal elections most people were just beginning to become aware of these emerging questions:

• ·       What is the nature of the relationship between the school board and the community?
• ·       Does the school board represent the people who elect them?
• ·       What is the nature of the relationship between the Ministry of Education and the school board?
• ·       What obligation, if any, does a school board have to ensure that its decisions support the sustainability of the community, and that those decisions are not in conflict with the plans and the needs of the community at large?
• ·       If such a conflict were to develop between a board and a community, what mechanisms are there to resolve the conflict?

These are very serious questions, and all across Ontario we find examples of school board-community conflicts based on these questions, and most of these battles are being resolved at the expense of the community. I believe that when the community loses the fight, the education system suffers as well. They are lose-lose situations.

Battles are being joined almost every time the term “Accommodation Review” is introduced.

I am in touch with many communities across Ontario going through similar conflicts.  My community of Blyth in Huron County seems to be fairly typical of these troubles

.

Let me tell you a bit about Blyth in case you are not familiar with it:

We have a small but vibrant community with many remarkable assets. Population is less than 1,000. 

Our Blyth Festival Theatre thriving since 1975.(30,000 patrons each summer) Our Threshers’ Reunion  in its 51^st  year. (13,000 visitors for one weekend each September). 

We have the largest serviced event campground in Ontario (800 serviced sites and 200 un-serviced.). 

Our latest achievement: the opening of our Emergency Services Training Centre which will provide training for 7,000 or 8,000 emergency personnel each year from all across Ontario and beyond.

Through great local investment we have developed and retained a very attractive main street with plans which will make this one of the most distinctive communities you ever passed through. But you might feel you just have to stop for a second look.

Unfortunately, I have to report that all of this is threatened by our school board.

They are closing our only school, Blyth Public School, in the next two weeks. This closure is already producing serious side-effects which will only multiply. It will affect our businesses, our general economy, our property values. This condition will discourage investment in our community. We will not be able to attract or retain young families. We will over time lose volunteers who play such an important part in all of our signature events as well as our volunteer fire department. We stand to lose retail businesses which in turn will cause us to lose our bank and perhaps our post office.

Our pool of volunteers, which is essential to so many of our endeavours, will be depleted over the years. Some facilities and events will not be sustainable for lack of volunteer support. The school board is doing all this to us with no thought or concern for the downstream effects.

A senior administrator with the Avon Maitland DSB is quoted as saying that the community is not the concern of the school board. He said that the only concern of the school board is the children and the schools. If the closure causes difficulties for the community, the community will have to find the solutions.

The school board has done nothing to dispel that opinion.

It is not just Blyth that is facing this bleak future. There are 90 other communities under the same type of shadow across the province at the moment. And many have already gone through the pain and suffering.

The Blyth community did everything it possible could to challenge this decision, but all has been of no avail.

·       The Blyth members on the ARC committee petitioned the Minister for an Administrative Review of the board’s process. They got their review, but the process was rigged by the Ministry.

• ·       Objections to re-zoning application for the site of the new school
• ·       Letters to the Board
• ·       A petition delivered on March 5 to the Ontario Legislature against the closing of our school with the support of our MPP, Lisa Thompson. 631 signatures were on that petition.
• ·       We filed a complaint with the Ontario Ombudsman’s office about the negligence in the Ministry of Education in not enforcing the terms of the ARC Guidelines
• ·       We filed a complaint with the Auditor General Ontario regarding the waste of funds in conducting consultative ARC meetings when the decisions had already been made as to the school closures, and for the wasted millions of dollars to build a new school which has no educational justification.

Members of the Blyth community have worked hard for four years to prevent this arbitrary decision from being implemented. 

Avon Maitland DSB has resorted to producing falsified reports about what they have done in Blyth, about the ARC meetings, about what the people of Blyth said and did. Just as an example, the official word from their Director of Communications and the chairperson is that every ARC meeting was advertised in the local paper. In fact, only the second meeting was advertised. 

That is just one of many such missteps. 

The chairperson wrote to me pointing out that the ministry’s facilitator judged the board’s conduct of the ARC to be exemplary. The facilitator made no such judgment. She said that the board’s policy was exemplary – not their implementation of it.

That seems like a small slip of the tongue, but it is typical of the misinformation that comes from the highest levels in the board.

The history of our own school is being written by board staff replete with untrue statements.

The school board does not represent us. It is not clear to me what their real motivations are. At first, we were led to believe that all these efforts were to deal with declining enrolment: too many schools, not enough children.  But deciding to build a new 24 room elementary school does not seem a logical remedy for declining enrollment.

I happen to believe that rogue boards like AMDSB are merely using the declining enrolment obsession as an excuse to do many things that have been dreamed up in back rooms in years past.

In any case, it is clear that many school boards across this province do not see themselves as being accountable to their respective communities. The Ministry is complicit in this anti-democratic trend since they have done nothing to dispel that impression and have done much to project a false impression that the people are being listened to.

Research on School Consolidation in both Canada and the United States shows that consolidation can be a good thing in some cases, but only in very specific circumstances.

It can be effective in terms of achieving greater efficiencies and improved educational quality but only when careful, objective research is done on the specific community and equally careful design of the precise solution to be implemented.  The nature of the consolidation must be tailor-made for the specific situation.

On the other hand the research shows that system-wide consolidation programs do not work. Saving money and improving quality are not guaranteed. Success in one aspect may be accompanied by failure in the other, or both results might be negative.

Also the research is very clear that big schools are not better than small schools just because they are bigger.

This entire consolidation campaign throughout Ontario is supported by no research and offers no advice on alternative strategies that boards may use. There is so much wrong with this entire process, it is little wonder that the Ontario educations system has to rely on Draconian measures to enforce such a baseless and destructive policy.

The damage being done to small rural communities is beyond measure but it is probably in the billions of dollars. It is another aspect of the government’s attack on rural Ontario.

REMEDIES

Legislative changes:

The absolute right of school boards to close or open schools without offering the right of appeal must be removed.

School boards must be subject to the principles of sound municipal planning in addition to sound educational planning and must be required to face objections and appeals.

The traditional link between the community and education must be restored  throughout Ontario so that no community can be deprived of a local school except under very specific conditions, making retention of a local school completely impractical.

We must find a way to balance cost efficiencies and ensuring that our education is relevant to each community.

School boards have become obsessed with the need to have all kinds of specialists in the board offices.

This is one of the reasons that the board has notified five schools in our county that they cannot afford to operate their schools any more.

It is time to recognize that the most critical need for expertise lies in the teaching staff. The relationship between the teacher and the students is the most critical part of the education process. Many teachers tell me that there is so much paper work and so many demands to continually adopt new fancy methodologies that they barely have time to do any teaching.

The board specialists need something to do so they constantly demand reports from the teachers and seek to prove their worth by working on the implementation of the latest instructional fad – needed or not!

I believe that the Ontario Ombudsman must be given the right to investigate the activities of the MUSH group: Municipalities, Universities, Schools and Hospitals.

One mayor mentioned to me that I should be careful what I ask for since if the OO looks into school affairs he will also be able to investigate my activity as a councillor. Well, I happen to believe that all of these public organizations need to be subject to review. There are many injustices that are never challenged because the individual or the groups do not have the resources to conduct the review themselves.

CONCLUSION

The Ministry of Education has facilitated this process that enables school boards to do pretty much whatever they decide to do. The activities in question very often have little or nothing to do with declining enrollment. This arrangement leaves the community with no way to turn.

In my view, school boards are accountable to the Ministry of Education these days.

The school boards, when questioned about their arbitrary decisions either refuse to answer our questions or they give false information. If the community requests an administrative review from the Ministry, to pass judgment on the board’s ARC process which they know was rigged, they do not get an objective analysis. The facilitators that conduct the reviews invariably find the board’s actions to be satisfactory. They point out a few areas that the board might improve the next time they have an ARC process, but they always point out that they do not feel that these little errors had a material effect on the board’s decision. Of course they didn’t! The decision was made before the ARC even began.

The only result of the admin review is that it provides the board and the ministry with documents which whitewash the entire process of the board, and which contradict all of the facts known by the people who were there and know the truth about what was actually said and done.

It appears that the Ministry of Education has a goal of eliminating a certain number of schools. They don't seem to care which schools are closed, or what the effects are on their communities. To them it is just a matter of numbers. We often refer to this as management by spreadsheet. It is happening in both urban and rural settings, but the rural areas are hardest hit.

We are looking for support in the Ontario legislature. Our school board will not even talk to us or listen to us.

SCHOOL BOARD REFORM DESPERATELY NEEDED

The way we were

This picture was taken in the spring of 1953 on the steps at the front entrance of Clinton District Collegiate Institute. The students, all from the Grade 13 class of that year, hailed from various communities within the district. Each of these communities its own school board with representatives on the Collegiate district board.

These students were represented and their home communities were represented. In most cases, these students were known personally to those representatives. The decisions made by these trustees reflected their concern for the educational needs and opportunities of these students as well as the needs and interests of their whole communities.

Those days of representative democracy in education are gone now. Sadly, they are gone!

The system in decline: Taxation without representation

Instead, we have a school board, Avon Maitland District School Board, made up of nine members from all over two counties: Huron County and Perth County. If they know any of the students attending these schools, it is a purely accidental happening. They don't even know most of the communities they are expected to represent. What is more - they don't care about those communities, except perhaps for the one in which they happen to live. A senior administrator for the system was quoted as saying that "we are only concerned about the schools, not the community. If closing a school causes difficulties for the community, the community will have to deal with it. It is not our concern."

We can't truly refer to these members as "trustees". We cannot trust them to represent our communities. They work for someone else. We are not sure what is the basis of their strange behaviour.

Back in 1953, school boards represented their communities. Today, AMDSB has been co-opted by the Ministry of Education to serve the political needs and wishes of the McGuinty government. They are led by a pack of non-accountable self-serving administrators who have no sense of community and not much wisdom related to education either. Not only does this board hold a silo mentality; they are a silo built within a fortress.

AMDSB's Hidden Agenda

They have declared that they can no longer afford to operate our Blyth Public School (among others).

The reason given is the evil funding formula, and the declining enrollment.

Too many schools, too many classrooms, not enough children! So what is the first measure taken to solve these problems? It is to build a new 24 room school. Cost: approaching $14 million dollars.

Does that make any sense?

Two weeks or so from now, Blyth Public School will be history.

HISTORY!  That brings up another issue. 

AMDSB Fails its history test

AMDSB is writing its own history about the Blyth Public School. Anything in that history that might make them appear to be stupid or dishonest or incompetent (and there are many examples of each), they alter the facts to create a better image - the image that they wish were true.

The Ministry of Education is complicit in this process of revising the history of our school and our community. They sent one of their consulting flunkies to perform an administrative review on the ARC process that took place here. Margaret Wilson did quite a number on us. She ignored all of the cheating and missteps  committed by the board during the ARC process and declared that their ARCing job was exemplary.

So our little community of Blyth is all wrapped up in pink paper and tied with a bow.

If we seek the truth from the board, they give us their revisionist version backed up by Margaret Wilson's fictional report. If we lodge a complaint against the Ministry with the Ontario Ombudsman for the way we've been treated (and I have done that), the feedback we get is Ms Wilson's fiction backed up by the school board's revised account of what AMDSB would like us to think happened.

As a self-appointed volunteer historian of this community, I take great exception to these interlopers producing distorted accounts of the life and times of our village. I take exception to the damage this board is doing to the quality of our education. 

AMDSB, by closing our only school, has delivered a serious blow to this community. Economically, socially, and educationally!  Education needs to be intrinsically tied to the community of the learner. That link is being broken for Blyth.

We must face the fact that our school is lost - probably forever. But we must engage in a new war to achieve a complete reform of the school board system and the Ministry of Education as well, since the Ministry has allowed rogue boards like ours to corrupt the Ontario education system.

Throw the bums out.

At the very least we must see that we have community-minded candidates for all positions for school board in 2014. They must be prepared to get rid of the dry rot in the administration and give notice to the Ministry of Education that that the new board will strive for a better education system that serves the needs of the whole communities in which the students live.

Then we must work with boards across the province to eliminate the corruption within the Ontario Ministry of Education and to revise the Education Act so that school boards are subject to the same planning requirements as everyone else in the making of decisions that have major effects on neighbourhoods and the community in general.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We received a phone call a week ago from a 90 year old lady friend who was raised in Blyth. She told us that she called the school board office and asked the receptionist whose idea it was to close the Blyth School. The reply was that the school board decided that. I have to translate her reply slightly:
She shouted "Get rid of the buggers!" and hung up.

NEWS RETURNS TO INDUSTRY HALL

In this streetscape of Blyth from around 1920, we see that our weekly newspaper office of that era was located at the southwest corner of Queen and Dinsley. That paper was called the Blyth Standard, owned and published from 1910 to 1934 by J.H.R. Elliott.

Blyth circa 1920
Queen and Dinsley looking south

In the past month, our current paper, The Citizen has moved to the same site, Industry Hall.

Industry Hall June 2012

This building has served many purposes since it was built in 1888.

To name just a few:

• Upstairs was the main concert hall for the village. Pauline Johnston gave a concert here about 1896.
• Meeting room for many groups including Village Council.
• Blyth Standard
• Telephone central office, first on second floor later on first floor.
• Red Cross meeting room
• Sibthorpe's billiard hall, barber shop, soda fountain
• Wolf Cubs and Boy Scout troop.
• Blyth Library
• Village Office and council chamber
• OPP Police Office
• Insurance/investment office

Can you add any functions for which this building was used?

History-making

Jenny Versteeg, Chair of Avon Maitland District School Board,  has written to me that various watchdogs and committees have "confirmed the veracity of the previous board's decisions" (regarding the closure of our school). In an earlier letter she advised me that the Avon Maitland Board has also confirmed all of their previous actions and decisions.

I guess this means that the fibs told by their Communications Director on CKNX and confirmed by  Ms. Versteeg herself, have been forgiven. The slate is wiped clean. As far as I know none of the board members or staff have confessed to any breaches of veracity, but those confirmatory motions are pretty powerful, if you think it is proper to abuse that kind of justification.

Now that all is forgiven and the smart-board has been completely erased,  AMDSB can start all over again to write the history they wish were true. If the truth gets stretched or twisted, self forgiveness can cover up.  

Unfortunately, the official records about the closure of BPS and the Blyth ARC experience in the board's files as well as the copies in the Ministry of Education will still contain the fictitious accounts. The sinning is washed away but the products of the sinning will remain forever in the soon to be archived history of Blyth Public School.

There is to be a celebration of the history of Blyth Public School later this month. Which history will  be celebrated?


Note: By "smart-board" in paragraph 3 I am not referring to the school board. It has not been erased.