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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2019-02-28, Page 5Last summer, as I made plans to attend a reunion at my former high school in Lucknow, I pulled out old yearbooks and a history of the village to refresh my memory of former classmates I might meet and the history of the school in general. I was struck by a photo in the history book of the local school board which included, among others, familiar faces of owners of the local hardware store, lumber yard, jewellery store and one of the local funeral home directors who also ran a furniture store. That photo came to mind when the news recently surfaced that the provincial government is planning to merge some of the province’s “smaller” school boards. Officials from the Avon Maitland District School Board (AMDSB) quickly went on record with their concerns about that possibility, saying the government’s goal to save money may not actually happen while a larger school board would hinder the trustees’ understanding of the uniqueness of each school. Back in the days when all those local business leaders sat on our local school board, there was no concern about knowing enough about the special circumstances of each school. The board existed to solve the unique challenges that the local school faced as trustees worked to provide the best education possible for the children and youth of their community. What I remember was the sense of proud ownership the community took for its local schools. Those business leaders felt a responsibility to lend their time and talents to the community school board. This extended all the way down to the one-room schools that dotted the countryside where local farmers and other residents felt they owed it to their neighbours to take a turn on the local board. Individually, those trustees may not have had a huge knowledge of education, but by taking part they did their best to keep their school running well and because so many people in a township or community were intimately involved in the schools, there was a greater community-wide knowledge of the challenges of educating their kids. In the early 1960s when the push accelerated to close one-room schools and bus kids to central schools, there may have been those who mourned the loss of traditional education, but many more people, I think, were thrilled by the opportunities the larger schools offered, like libraries and gymnasiums. The schools were still within their communities and most people were proud of them. But little did people understand that the amalgamation of tiny schools into small schools was the beginning of a trend that would make our educational system unrecognizable. Soon afterward, the provincial government of the day announced there would be only one school board for the entire county. A later government decided that board, too, was too small so two or more county boards would amalgamate – in our case Huron and Perth went together to form the AMDSB. If the current government’s drive for efficiency proceeds, one can imagine at the very least that school boards covering Huron, Perth, Bruce and Grey will be amalgamated. As it is, I wouldn’t recognize my local trustee if I tripped over her – and it doesn’t really matter anyway. I have no sense that the current education system gives a darn what I – or you – think. That sense that the schools were ours began to diminish as decision-making was taken farther and farther from local communities. Any delusion of community ownership was shattered with the mass closing of community schools by AMDSB a few years back, based on a funding formula by the last provincial government which no doubt was designed to save money. It doesn’t matter which party we elect as the provincial government, the relentless drive plows onward to distance the education system from the community. How many of these decisions like further board amalgamation begin with the politicians and how many with the deep thinkers at the Ministry of Education? How many people within the school system, from the ministry right down to the classroom, resent the remaining influence of amateurs, whether community leaders or even trustees, in a system that they feel should be left to the professionals. The education professionals have plenty of ways they measure the success of their programs. One thing they don’t measure, the thing they wouldn’t even recognize as a loss, is the fact that most people no longer feel the schools belong to them and that, in turn, they have any responsibility to the education system. I can’t help thinking something valuable has been lost from the days when communities felt the schools were theirs. Other Views Talking out both sides of the mouth Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk Once we felt the schools were ours Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Back when I was a green reporter, I was asked to cover Huron County Council once and, being a Huron County-born and raised guy, I decided I was going to ask some tough questions. It wasn’t that I wanted to make a name for myself or anything like that, I just wanted to make sure that the questions I always have whenever hearing about county council meetings were answered. This particular meeting, for example, included council moving ahead with an initiative to approve seniors’ apartments in a community I have ties to, while at the same time puzzling over how to bring more youth to the area. The question I had was, in taking that residential land off the market and earmarking it for seniors instead of young families, was council not working against its own interest? I never really got an answer aside from, “well, we can do both”, a sentiment I didn’t agree with. See, at the time, I was trying to find a place to live in Blyth which was difficult. The only location that had any rental vacancies was some apartments that were, you guessed it, designated for seniors. County councillors, however, didn’t see the connection between allowing another seniors’ development to take up valuable residential space and the young families that couldn’t move to the area due to the lack of affordable housing. Despite the fact that – at the time, because this was just shy of a decade ago – I was one of these wondrous mythical creatures they sought (a youth trying to make my life in Huron County), my question was panned and went without a suitable response. Unfortunately, that’s a stance that continues. Take, for example, the Vanastra Early Childhood Learning Centre. Now, full disclosure, my daughter is enrolled at the centre so, yes, I have a vested interest in the site. If you believe that bias makes my concerns unwarranted, stop reading now. While it’s great that Huron East has apparently decided to keep the status quo with the site, the fact that the municipality ever considered divesting itself of it is problematic because, like other municipalities, one of the major concerns in Huron East is attracting young families. Young families are kind of a panacea to whatever problems a community may have. They like to shop local because driving any distance with one, two, three or four young children can get frustrating. They like to have local community centres and activities, which means that fundraising for such initiatives should become that much easier. Name any problem and an infusion of young professionals looking to find their forever homes can provide a solution. Huron County municipalities, however, seem to keep forgetting that they want young people and keep looking for ways to get rid of them. Getting rid of a day care centre, for example, is a great way to show young families that the municipality either doesn’t support their young families or there aren’t enough young families to justify such an expenditure (and the fact that there are typically waiting lists for centres like the one in Vanastra would seem to refute the latter). Huron East isn’t the only community that seems to have forgotten that young people are needed to make sure Huron communities don’t become retirement communities. North Huron Council, for example, thought putting a fire station across the road from the only public park in Blyth was a good idea. I have to give credit where credit is due: council did change its direction and are looking to put the building elsewhere. However, as a young(ish) father who lives in Blyth whose daughter makes good use of that park, I have to wonder if some council members are out of touch with young families. The fact that that location was even considered shows that a majority of councillors involved in the decision-making process sat back and said, “We can stop searching. This is the place.” Just to stop any assumptions before they start, this isn’t any form of NIMBYism (not in my backyard). I’m not upset because my daughter uses the park, I’m upset because everyone uses the park. If the new fire hall were constructed at the end of my street, I wouldn’t be thrilled about it, but I wouldn’t have near the same qualms that I do about the proposal to build it across the road from a park. It’s got to go somewhere. These councils keep highlighting youth retention and attraction as goals, but suggesting constructing of a fire station in a community safety zone or trying to divest the community of a child care centre (with childcare already being one of the most expensive costs a family faces according to the United Way of Perth-Huron) seems to scream, “We don’t want young families moving here.” Like all issues with municipal governance, it’s never as cut and dried as it seems, but even that doesn’t seem to assuage my fears that there’s a disconnect between the goals set out by council and their actions. Denny Scott Denny’s Den THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28 2019. PAGE 5. The wrong way We should all be giving credit where credit’s due to North Huron Council on its decision to revisit the Blyth fire hall issue, ultimately finding a solution in the face of nearly universal public outcry. The fact is that people/governments/corporations don’t always change their mind and often have a hard time admitting when they’re wrong. To recap, council, admittedly between a rock and a hard place due to a looming deadline and very limited land options in Blyth, proposed building a new fire hall and public works shed on Gypsy Lane, wiping out a memorial ball diamond and taking land away from the annual reunion of the Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association, not to mention pitching a location across from the village’s only park. Councillors made it clear this was far from their first choice, but, given limited options and very little financial flexibility, they felt it was the best choice under the circumstances. Members of the public, however, rose up and made it clear they didn’t want the hall there. Council saw what I saw that night and went back to the drawing board, seeing no way to proceed with the Gypsy Lane option. Whether you agree with me or not, that took guts. When I was a teenager, one of my consistent summer jobs was as an umpire in my local Pickering Baseball Association. I started with rookie ball (little kids, a pitching machine and a parent or two in the field of play) though they must have thought I was a real mover and shaker, because I skipped right past tee-ball. To become an umpire, you had to complete a two-day course at the Pickering Recreation Centre. It covered everything from the rules of baseball – from the simple to the impossible to comprehend – to positioning, to how to physically call a strike or call out a runner. One thing they didn’t cover was humility. The instructors told us that, under no circumstances, were we to admit a mistake or reverse a call, even if proven wrong. In fact, if a coach was angry about your mistake, you were to throw him out of the game. If a coach brandished a rule book on the field, you were to throw him out – no questions asked. To a roomful of young, cocksure baseball up-and-comers who all thought they were the next Ken Griffey Jr., this was music to our backwards, fullback hats and Oakley Radars, but it didn’t make for very sound life advice. As an umpire, you have to command respect and, above all, you have to demonstrate control over the game. Unfortunately, in sports, admitting a mistake is like throwing a chum into a shark tank, whether it’s with fans or players, so that advice isn’t wrong, but it trains you to shy away from admitting fault and, in some cases, be aggressively defiant. That was, of course, long before the days of video review, challenges and slow-motion replays. Now, umpires and referees are shown to be wrong all the time and much to my surprise, the earth hasn’t cracked open and swallowed us all whole. It’s O.K. to be wrong. So, thank you to North Huron Council. Councillors and staff could have been so prideful and unwilling to admit a misstep that they could have forced a fire hall down our throats in a location we’d all hate, but they listened and adjusted course accordingly. It can be hard to admit when you’re wrong. That particular flaw has been known to challenge friendships and marriages and even manifest itself in the worlds of business and politics. However, honesty and a willingness to revisit a controversial stance should always be on our to-do lists – unless being the best dictator you can be is also on your to-do list.