Building Sustainable Communities: why local schools are key
Written by Roger Petry
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
1. Saskatchewan has entered a long-term growth phase, and local schools are critical to each community’s ability to harness these new opportunities.
Attracting potential employees, professionals,and business people to a community means attracting the entire family. Communities without a local school do not provide the quality-of-life benefits associated with living within walking or cycling distance to school and actively participating in the life of these schools. Schools also provide
publicly available facilities and greenspace for recreation, other educational
opportunities, and community gatherings.
2. School infrastructure
supports community innovation and social development.
The crucial and
historic task we currently face is to redefine and re-equip our communities to
make them sustainable in the long term. Creative use of public infrastructure
for multi-functional purposes is key.With increasing transportation costs, local schools of necessity become
a vital hub for life-long education. In cases where school enrolment declines,
classroom and other space can be adapted to meet locally identified needs (such
as preschool) until such a time as enrolment levels increase (as occurs with
changing neighbourhood demographics).
School buildings and land can also be vital to
community experimentation and innovation in health and social services,
recreation, community gardens/local food production, greenspace and in new
building types and materials. These local community learning centres are key
public assets for our future and need to be seen as cornerstones of our
communities, to be invested in, used and improved.
3. Community connections and
volunteerism are an increasingly vital resource.
Closing
local schools eliminates community networks that have built up over years and
that are key to community competitiveness in the knowledge-based economy. The
potential to reduce costs through volunteerism should not be
underestimated.In addition, community
networks are especially valuable for poorer communities and can be a foundation
for economic development that benefits the entire community.
4. The viability of local
schools is increasing with technology.
New,
low cost networking technologies can be made use of in local school settings to
provide high quality learning opportunities. It is worth designing educational
programming that take advantage of networking technologies to help provide the
advantages of specialized programming while retaining the proven educational
advantages of local schools. Familiarity with these technologies is also
valuable to students for success outside of school.
5. Eliminating local schools
creates unacceptable long-term risks to the public education system.
Selling public assets
is not a long-term solution to funding shortfalls and long-term cost pressures.
The decision to sell public property is irreversible once the land has been
redeveloped and new land in established neighbourhoods is unavailable or priced
prohibitively.When the goal is an
accessible, high quality public education system, ongoing investment in
existing infrastructure is the most cost-effective strategy.
6. Specialized programs become
vulnerable when centralized.
When centralized, programs such as French Immersion can become less
appealing because of increased transportation time and costs. At the same time,
the visibility of these programs, which helps bolster their enrolment and
public support, is reduced, making them easy targets for politically expedient
cutbacks. Programs such as French Immersion play a vital role in keeping
Saskatchewan’s educational opportunities on par with the rest of Canada, and in
making our communities attractive. Having specialized programs integrated in
local school settings also creates positive synergies.
7. Plans that increase
dependence on bus and automobile transportation are short sighted.
Long-term plans that eliminate
local schools and rely on routine bussing of children expose school systems and
governments to ever-increasing transportation costs as the cost of fossil fuels
escalates. This situation is potentially catastrophic once a public system can
no longer afford these costs and has eliminated its local options. With climate
change clearly linked to burning fossil fuels, it is hypocritical for the
school system to knowingly increase its dependence in this way, thereby
modelling poor decision-making for its students. Students also acquire bad
personal habits where opportunities for walking and cycling to school have
intentionally been eliminated that would otherwise contribute to long-term
physical and mental health.
It is also irresponsible to offload extra
travel costs on parents, some of whom do not have the resources or flexibility
to travel extra distances to volunteer or attend school functions. These added
costs undermine the equality and fairness of our public system.
8. Strong educational outcomes
are the bottom-line.
The goal of a public education system should be achieving quality
educational outcomes for all citizens. High educational outcomes are strongly
correlated with smaller schools and parent and community involvement. Educational outcomes should not be sacrificed;
everything in our power should be done to maintain our commitment to these
outcomes. With bold, innovative and strategic decision making, which is the
hallmark of Saskatchewan, we can achieve this goal long into the future.
Roger Petry specializes in philosophy and sustainable development
issues. He teaches at Luther College at
the University of Regina. Contact: 585-5295,
.
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