The first meeting of the Fort Assiniboine and Area Multi-stakeholder Alliance (FAAMA) featured a presentation by a Fort Assiniboine resident on the future of the community’s school.
About 25 people turned out for the meeting, which was held last Wednesday night at the Fort Assiniboine Legion.
Peter Kuelken, who was the speaker that evening, said he was heavily involved in trying to prevent the closure of Fort Assiniboine’s high school, which occurred in 2011.
During that time, Kuelken had pushed to begin a dialogue between municipalities and school divisions about what recourse either party has if the other makes a decision that adversely affects them.
Kuelken said a municipal government’s responsibility is to take care of “the social and economic welfare of their community,” but when a school is shut down, “that is virtually the first step in shutting a community down.”
“If you look across rural Canada, that has often been the case,” he said.
Kuelken said there was real resistance to getting into that discussion, simply because it’s not normal.
However, he’s aware of districts that do recognize how the closure of a school adversely affects them and have taken measures to address it. One school he’s familiar with graduates a class of eight kids per year, he noted, and they supply a full program.
Kuelken said he has investigated the research on small schools and it becomes very clear that small schools are worth saving, defying the notion that centralizing schools nets savings in the long run because it ultimately kills off communities.
Unfortunately, short-term economics has become one of the biggest considerations in education.
“In some ways, that has become the focus, rather than the … end result. What is it we want to achieve? The outcome should be a good, solid social fabric rather than what it costs to educate a child,” he said.
Kuelken noted that centralization becomes a trend with small schools, adding that at one time, Fort Assiniboine was one of several schools in a small district.
“Now we are a small school in the division, and we are being centralized,” he said. “Centralization becomes a trend.”
While he was unsuccessful in his larger goal of starting a dialogue between Alberta Education and Municipal Affairs, Kuelken said he is a “sore loser” and says the community must be pro-active in getting involved with the school.
“The citizens of this jurisdiction have to get involved. Not just in voting for elected representatives, but the democratic process,” he said.
He said he is seeing a similar situation with the hearings regarding the Pride Valley Area Structure Plan, a development strategy for an area near Fort Assiniboine rich with gravel deposits.
There are some people who support the development involved in the process and some who are concerned about negative impacts of the development, but most are not exercising their democratic rights to have their voices heard.
“We have allowed ourselves to be dictated to,” he said. “That’s the unfortunate truth. We need to get involved.”
For more on Kuelken’s presentation, see this Page 1A of this week’s edition of the Town &Country.
FAAMA is a volunteer group originally created to be a liason between the community and industry in the area; industry representatives continue to attend each of their free supper meetings to give updates about activity in the area.
One of their partners is the County of Barrhead, and thus Barrhead and area residents are free to attend FAAMA’s events.
