ATHABASCA — In a few days the fate of Rochester School will be decided, but on April 14 school supporters were able to make one more plea to AspenView Public School trustees.
Seven people attended the special meeting in-person that day along with two trustees, Dennis MacNeil and Elohne Chizawsky on Zoom, and parents Candice and Clayton Jensen who gave another impassioned plea to keep the small rural school open.
The first person to speak on saving the school was Melody Shologan who noted how her own children excelled after moving to the community.
“I believe it's because they grew and developed because they weren't lost in the big numbers of a bigger school where we used to be or slipped in the cracks,” she said. “As a parent, I felt safe and at peace, sending my children to a small school where I knew that they were going to be supervised throughout the day.”
Sologan was also a teacher at the school and felt the small staff size contributed to a feeling of family.
“With the small classroom sizes, I was able to give individual attention to each one of my students,” said Sologan. “As an example. I was able to work every day with each student reading one-on-one and then dealing with their individual learning needs. I'm not saying that the teachers with the larger numbers in the class don't do their best effort to get to them but it's simply impossible to reach each student each day, one-on-one.”
She went on to speak of the impact losing the school would have on the community which has seen several families move into the area as they relocate from the cities during the COVID-19 pandemic before current parents to a student, before the Jensens spoke via Zoom.
“I find it ironic that I can’t be with you in person today because I have COVID and I think that just speaks to the poor timing of this study,” Candice said. “I don’t believe that it was really thought about as to how proceeding with this study at this time would have hurt so many students and individuals.”
And while the Jensen’s want to keep the school open for all the students, their primary concern is limiting their daughter to exposure to germs as they navigate the rare syndrome she has.
“It's a condition, it's a syndrome. It's a kidney disease; they don't really know how to describe it yet,” she said in an April 15 interview. “But yeah, so that is a concern because we are in a unique situation where I don't want to put her in a class where there's a ton of students and her exposure to germs goes up.”
Then there is the chance of her daughter having to ride the bus for an hour or more twice a day although it was mentioned by AVPS more buses could be added to shorten the length of the rides, something Clayton noted during the meeting could end up costing half what the current deficiency for the school is now.
“If they want to save money, they can, but it'll cost the students,” Janice said.
At the end of the day though, she felt like she got the message across, now is the wait to find out the final decision.
“They did try cutting me off after 15 minutes, but then they did let me continue. I was a little frustrated with that because I felt like they were more concerned with the time than what my husband is saying,” she said. “But they gave me the opportunity to speak, and I felt like they asked quality questions in response to what we asked and shared about so yes, I do feel heard. But is it going to be taken into consideration? We'll see.”
Trustees will meet April 21 for another special meeting specifically to vote on whether to close all or part of Rochester School.
