Dear Editor,
It has been several days now since Pembina Hills Regional Division No. 7 trustees voted 6-1 to close the senior high school program at Fort Assiniboine School, and I have a few comments I would like to share.
First to Dale Schaffrick, our trustee, thank you for your heartfelt fight to convince the other trustees to kill this motion.
To the trustee who said up front that she was voting in favour of the motion for closure, I guess thanks for your honesty.
To the other five trustees, I have lost all respect for you after the March 16 meeting. All during your spiels, we continued to hear that you didn’t like that some students would have to ride on the bus for two to 3.5 hours per day, or that you weren’t comfortable with the Fort students getting out of Barrhead Composite High School at 3:10 p.m. as proposed, and that Fort Assiniboine School has a lot to offer. You said it’s true that it takes a village to raise a child, and that you liked the fact that maybe PHRD and Fort Assiniboine School could become a pilot project to try new delivery options for rural schools, and the list goes on.
Then comes the vote, and I didn’t see any hesitation in your votes. It was hard and fast in favour of closure. In my opinion, this tells me that this decision was predetermined. It also tells me that for the parents and students who took time out of their busy schedules to be at the meeting that we were wasting our time and we don’t matter.
I think you trustees fail to realize that the superintendent works for you, the board, not the other way around.
To Mr. Stang (Superintendent of Schools), I thought it was rude by allegedly texting throughout the meeting. The students and parents were paying attention, and three of the students pointed out your supposed behaviour to me. In my opinion, it told me how insignificant both our community and school are to you.
To Tracy Meunier, I have a question: During the March 16 meeting, it was stated that PHRD in 1995 had approximately 5,000 students and that has now dropped to approximately 4,040 students. Has the number of PHRD employees at the central office also decreased since 1995?
In dealing with PHRD for approximately the past 2.5 to three years in regards to this closure, I have learned something, and that is one of the board’s goals is to stop the bullying that goes on in our schools. How do we stop the bullying, when in my opinion, the school board is the biggest bully?
Louise Ralston,
Fort Assiniboine
