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The Citizen, 2003-12-17, Page 1The Citizen Serving the communities of Blyth and Brussels and northern Huron County Volume 19 No. 49 Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2003 NH NORTH HURON PUBLISHING COMPANY INC. Inside this week Pg. 8 Pg-18 Atom Dogs in Silver Stick tournament Trust fund hot topic at HE council Gaylea reports profit n Some Dickens youPg- 27 say? Thousands using AMDSB info Special day at Marsh The Friends of Hullett are inviting everyone to join them for a family fun day on Sunday. Dec. 21 from 2 - 4 p.m. at the Hullett Provincial Wildlife Area. Education co-ordinator Sandra Johnstone has arranged an afternoon of outdoor activities at the Hullett Marsh sugar bush. Games and rambles through the hardwood bush wili help children and adults understand and enjoy the woodland environment. Resource people will be on hand to help participants enjoy the wonders of the forest. Children and adults will be able to test their tree identification skills as they explore a woodland environment and everyone will be encouraged to search the forest floor to see if they can interpret the tales the animal tracks tell. The sugar bush is located near Clinton and can be reached by travelling north from Hwy. X on Wildlife Line between Clinton and Seaforth. If you are travelling via Hwy. 4 turn east at Hydro Line Road and then north at Wildlife Line. For further information contact the Friends of Hullett office at 519- . 4X2-7011. ‘Citizen’ closed for holidays The Citizen will be closing for holidays over the Christmas season. Anyone wishing to advertise an event for the end of December or early in the new year will want to make sure they have it in the Dec. 24 issue. The deadline will be Dec. 22 al 2 p.m. Brussels and 4 p.m. Blyth. The Brussels office will be closed from Monday. Dec. 22 al 2 p.m. until Monday, Jan. 5 at 10 a.m. The Blyth office will close Tuesday, Dec. 23 at 5 p.m. to re-open at 9 a.m.. Jan. 5. The first issue of 77ze Citizen in 2004 will be mailed Jan. 7. Ground-breaking ceremony What started out as an idea one year ago has finally become a reality for the new Blyth Emergency Services Training (BEST) Centre in Blyth. The BEST Centre is being built for rural fire departments to have more access to world-class training. The construction of phase one, which began on Monday, will include a water rescue pond, a fire training centre and confined space rescue centre. Phase two will begin next year and will include a classroom and an auto and farm rescue centre. Participating in the ground-breaking ceremony are: front, David Sparling, project co-ordinator and Jeff Howson, past fire board chairman: back from left, Ralph DeVries, North Huron councillor, John Stewart, clerk administrator for North Huron and Marg Anderson, councillor and fire board representative for Central Huron. (Elyse De Bruyn photo) Some local schools to get more funds through Rural Education Strategy By Stew Slater Special to The Citizen With the final adjustments made to a formula weighted heavily towards the distance between small schools. 16 elementary and two secondary facilities in the Avon Maitland District School Board have most likely qualified for additional funding under the provincial government's Rural Education Strategy. Created in response;to a public consultation process undertaken by the since-defeated Conservatives, the $5()-million initiative met with criticism earlier this year, when school administrators discovered the information being used by Education ministry officials wasn’t always correct. In the case of the Avon Maitland board, initial ministry figures indicated Brussels Public School was practically next door to Hullett Public School, and St. Marys Central was treated as the closest school to Arthur Meighen, even though one serves primary students and the other serves Grades 4-8. Under a final readjustment of those figures, however, many inaccuracies were eliminated, according to Janet Baird-Jackson. The Avon Mailland business superintendent, in a Rural Education Strategy update provided at a regular meeting. Tuesday, Dec. 9, stated, “we received information late Wednesday, Dec. 3 providing clarification around the . . . rules and are currently calculating the impact of those changes.” Baird-Jackson’s latest estimates suggest the following elementary schools will receive Rural Education Strategy funding: Brookside. Brussels, Central Perth, Colborne, Downie, East Wawanosh, Elma, Grey, Hensail, Howick, Huron Centennial, North Easthope, Seaforth, Sprucedale, Stephen, and Zurich. According to those estimates, Brookside, which is in the extreme north of Huron County and is the second furthest away from any other school at 17.3 kilometres, will receive the most money: $52,461. The school which is the furthest from its closest neighbour is Howick, at IX.9 kilometres, but it would likely receive slightly less. The school on the list likely to receive the smallest amount is Zurich, with $19,9X5. The threshold distance for Rural Education Strategy money is eight kilometres, with North Easthope (near Amulree) and Sprucedale (in Shakespeare) just barely qualifying. The two schools lie X. I kilometres apart. The distance factor is larger for secondary schools, with F.E. Madill in Wingham and Goderich District Collegiate Institute the only Avon Maitland facilities expected to qualify. Baird-Jackson included a breakdown of how the Education ministry might direct boards to spend the money in each school. Specific envelopes, announced when the government introduced the Rural Education Strategy, include learning materials, in-school administration, and others. Huron East/Central trustee Shelley Kaastra wondered why Baird-Jackson’s analysis included no learning resources money for any of the IX schools. The business superintendent responded that her reading of the ministry’s formula indicated no schools would qualify for such funding. Director of education Geoff Williams added the Rural Education Strategy could allow the board to OPP issue reminder Huron County OPP would like to remind parents to talk to their children about safety, snow and sledding-or snowboarding, as times change. OPP Const. Maclsaac, of the Wingham detachment, explained that he was responding Monday morning io a call from a snowplow driver concerned about the safely of some Municipality of Huron East children sledding before catching the bus. According to the snowplow driver, the children were not very visible, particularly after a snowfall. Sr. Const. Don Shropshall would also like to stress the importance of talking some safety issues over with children. "Make sure they know the dangers of tunnels collapsing and of-walking on snowbanks, especially neat roads.” Shropshall suggests. Another area of concern is children who are not visible to snow removal equipment. “When these vehicles back up. they certainly cannot see a child. It’s important for kids to stay out of the way and listen for the sounds of the machines.” Children who walk to school on their own or who are unsupervised while waiting for the bus need to be constantly reminded of snow safety. Frostbite is also a winter hazard for kids. "When their little hands smart and turn red, they need to warm up.” he cautions. - take some money out of other areas to support learning resources. In the past, he noted, money has been taken from other areas to keep small schools as well-served as possible, and that money could now be put into learning resources. Baird-Jackson’s board-wide estimate for additional funding is just over $600,000, which is not far off her initial hopes. The Avon Maitland board also expects to receive just over $130,000 as a result of the new Liberal government’s recent announcement of funding to “Improve Student Literacy” for those in disadvantaged social classes. Although Premier Dalton McGuinty admitted much of the $112 million would end up in urban communities with many English as a Second Language (ESL) students, a portion is available based on other social factors. Details on that initiative also arrived Dec. 3. Trustees approved a recommendation to place the money into a “student literacy” reserve, to “provide more adequate time to analyze the impact prior to making any decisions on how to allocate this grant.”