By John Francis
In the last issue of this paper I talked about clumsy school bus route planning which results in some elementary students from Tobermory being on the bus for four hours a day — two hours each way.
This is a serious problem, but it is worth remembering that things almost got much worse. Twenty years ago, Bluewater District School Board (BWDSB) was proposing that Tobermory high school kids board a bus at around 7:15, ride to Lion’s Head, then board another bus around 8:45 to go to Wiarton, where they would arrive in the middle of the first class. The bus would pick them up part way through the final class of the day to get them back to Lion’s Head by 3:20 to board the bus back to Tobermory. No extracurriculars; no Outers; no High Skills Major in the Environment.
But it would have made life a lot easier for the bureaucrats.
I am not making this up. Bluewater District School Board’s bureaucracy was committed to this idea and it came very close to being implemented. Bruce Peninsula District School (BPDS) would have been converted to an Elementary School, St Edmunds Public School would have been closed and all the Secondary kids would have been bused to Wiarton.
This proposal was still under consideration in 2014 when Jane Thomson ran to be the School Trustee for Bruce Peninsula. Her dedication to student-centered education has helped bring voice to our rural students. BWDSB no longer talks about closing schools to make things more convenient for bureaucrats.
But bureaucratic convenience still rears its ugly head now and again — with the school buses, for example. Sending large buses into sparsely populated areas is the easiest solution, but according to Provincial policy, it is the worst choice. Is there anywhere else in Bluewater where elementary students from the largest town in a municipality spend two hours on a school bus, each way? Would they put up with it anywhere else in the board?
We need to tell the trustees and the school bus service that this is unacceptable. We need to make them realize they have to do better.
Our Trustee: jane_thomson@bwdsb.on.ca
Shared Services, School Bus Operator: contact@stscgb.ca.
BWDSB Communications Officer Jamie Pettit: jamie_pettit@bwdsb.on.ca
Defending Our School Board
But as I mentioned earlier, things could have been much worse. Perhaps things are poised to get worse again.
Education Minister Paul Calandra has been floating the idea of taking over all the school boards and getting rid of the trustees. He justifies this by saying that several boards are in financial turmoil. He fails to acknowledge that most of that turmoil is caused by flaws in the provincial funding model.
There are Toronto schools that are forced to keep their swimming pools open but are not allotted extra funding to do it with.
A Provincial moratorium prevents many boards from closing underutilized schools and selling the properties, yet the funding model is never adjusted to compensate.
Instead of dealing with the real issues, Calandra spent a lot of time talking about single instance of a trustee who expensed a fifteen-dollar milkshake.
He failed to mention that, as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives points out, “Real government funding per student fell by $1,500 per student between 2018 [when Doug Ford became Premier] and 2024, resulting in 5,000 fewer educators in the province”.
South of the border, they call this “flooding the zone with s**t” and they keep up a barrage so heavy that it drowns out the people who try to point out that they aren’t making sense.
Calandra has mused about getting rid of school trustees across the province by the end of this year.
Our Trustee, Jane Thomson has been voicing her concerns on behalf of Bluewater District School Board. A letter she wrote to our MPP, Paul Vickers, pointed out that:
“Eliminating trustees would silence local input and concentrate decision-making at Queen’s Park, removing the local democratic voice that parents and communities count on. Trustees provide a critical check and balance…”
She’s right, of course. If it weren’t for our local Trustee, BPDS would probably be just an elementary school by now.
Imagine trying to defend our schools against a faceless Provincial bureaucracy. Imagine how little traction we would get, complaining to Queen’s Park about overlong school bus rides. Administrative convenience would rule.
Please let our MPP know that Minister Calandra’s plans are unacceptable.
MPP Paul Vickers: paul.vickers@pc.ola.org
Not Just Parents!
It’s important to point out that this is not just an issue for parents of current students — this is an issue for our community. If a community does not offer good education, it will have a hard time attracting young families. Add this to the ridiculously high cost of buying a house and it adds up to a good reason for young folk to look elsewhere.
We need to defend our education system. Our whole community depends on it.
