Cut Knife schools are consolidating, but securing support wasn't always easy.
The plan is to close the elementary school and have one K-12 school in the high school building starting next fall.
A year ago, Living Sky School Division board chair Ronna Pethick said the board approached the community of Cut Knife to look at consolidating two schools into one K to 12 school.
Pethick said the board met many times with school community councils. After going to their public and having a public meeting, the councils approved the consolidation.
Pethick said the board is drawing $2 million from its reserves "for changes that need to be made to that school to accommodate all students from pre-k to Grade 12."
At a recent meeting with the board, MLA Larry Doke said he got "lots of calls about this over the last year, but to sum it up, once you people [the board] got out of the way, so to speak, and let [residents] make the decision, it went fine."
Doke said in meetings he's had, "there were other underlying factors that had nothing to do with education, and that's what was holding [the consolidation] back."
When faced with declining enrolment, school boards can convince school community councils to make the decision to close schools, and in some cases the board can consolidate schools. If enrolment drops too low, the board will close the school anyway. Making a decision sooner means the school board saves money sooner in areas such as staff and building maintenance costs.
Vickers argued the way to view the Cut Knife situation was residents get to keep the school, but the board is changing the configuration. Vickers also said conveying that message was difficult.
"There was the illusion that the school division was coming in and telling them they have to do it," Doke said. According to Doke, the school board wasn't doing so.
"Once we got that cleared up, they understood it was their decision, then it went OK," Doke said.
Pethick said the board believes the school consolidation is in the best interest of students.
"Two months after we met with the school community councils, the numbers at the high school dipped to a point where the board could have looked at closing the high school and Cut Knife might not have had a high school anymore," Pethick said, adding "that was never a threat, but their numbers did drop."
Doke said some residents were skeptical.
"When you explain it to [residents] and give them the information, then they understand and away they go," Doke said.
"But there's always the assumption that it's the heavy hand of government, or it's the heavy hand of the school board, or it's always the heavy hand of the health authority."
Doke said there was a lot of bad information amongst the citizens.
Plans to consolidate schools in other communities are ongoing, but Pethick said the board hasn't made any decisions yet.
