Pembina Hills trustees will have a very tough decision to make in light of the recommendation by the Westlock North Task Force to close two of the three schools in northern Westlock County.
And if the overwhelmingly vocal public response to the task force’s recommendation is any indication, then whatever decision they make will be unpopular in some quarters.
It’s a good thing that as a publicly elected body, we should be able to expect this board will be open and accountable about whatever contentious decisions it has to make.
Unfortunately, if past performance is any indicator of future results, it may be a long time before we get any straight answers — if we ever do.
This board, and its predecessor prior to the 2010 election, doesn’t have a stellar track record when it comes to being open and accountable, despite many of the trustees having campaigned on promises to better communicate with the public.
Now we hear that board chair Sharon Volorney is woefully non-committal with respect to having the discussion about possible school closures done in public.
In response to a direct question at the Jan. 23 board meeting about whether the discussion would be done in public or if the board would go in-camera, Volorney said, “We don’t know what we’ll do with that. We’ll let you know.”
To even entertain discussing this decision behind closed doors, away from the oversight of the members of the public this decision will most significantly affect — especially since there has been such overwhelming opposition to the recommendation as presented, both from within the task force and from the public at large — speaks volumes about what this board thinks.
If not for a police investigation we might still not know why Richard Harvey is no longer superintendent, and we still don’t know why the board chose to pay his successor Egbert Stang a $120,000 severance a little over a year into his contract.
But while the inner workings of the bureaucracy is important, it pales in comparison to the implications of shutting down a school in a remote community.
Failing to discuss this decision in a public forum would be a terrible decision, and one trustees will surely pay for come election time.
