cent of the funding for day-to-day operations, there’s not much that can be done to save a school on the chopping block.
When a rural school is closed, the community mourns the loss. Parents find a new school for their kids. Life goes on. But is it really that simple?
Loss of Identity
Agriculture has shaped the identity of rural Alberta since the birth of our province. As far back as anyone can remember, cows meandered about pastures, grazing alongside a quiet countryside flush with fields of wheat, while each of a family’s seven or eight children would be coached on the logistics of farming.
Even though Alberta is still the second largest farming province in Canada, Statistics Canada data shows that the number of farms in the province has dropped by almost 13 per cent since 2006. As rural schools continue to disappear, we may see more farms disappear with them.
With the recent closure of Satinwood, a rural school that had stood strong in a community east of Red Deer for close to 100 years, parents worry their children will be pulled away from their agricultural roots.
Tree farmer Jackie McPherson said with her 7-year-old daughter Morgan now forced to go to a school 40 minutes away, she is concerned Morgan will no longer have the time or energy to learn how to farm — a trade that’s been in the family for generations.
“If these kids are on the bus over an hour each way, they’re not going to have any time to be on the farm,” McPherson said. “And I wanted that lifestyle for my children. I wanted them to come to a rural, country school and learn about where their food comes from.”
Jennifer Day is a parent with five children at Pipestone, one of two rural schools in Wetaskiwin that were almost shut down this year. Day had similar fears, explaining that if an effort isn’t made to save rural schools, we could continue to see more and more local farms falling by the wayside.
“Nobody wants to stay and farm,” Day said. “That’s one of our main resources, and we have to be able to sustain them or we’re losing the part of our province that keeps us alive.”
Not only could losing a school in a community adversely affect local agriculture industries, but it also cuts down the character that makes each one of these little communities unique.
Bruce McAllister, Wildrose MLA and advanced education critic, reminisced on life growing up in a small town, and said he received most of his education in rural schools. He said while smaller schools may be pressed to offer as wide a variety of programs as larger schools in urban centres, there’s just something about them.
Another prevalent concern among parents dealing with school closures is the lengthy bus rides their children will have to endure in travelling to the next closest school.
While long bus rides might not be as much of a concern for kids in high school or even junior high, young children spending upwards of two hours on a bus everyday is not an ideal situation.
Parent Jackie McPherson said she is constantly worried about her 7-year-old daughter Morgan, who now has to attend a new school 40 minutes away after their local school was closed.
“I’m worried about Morgan,” McPherson said with a sigh. “The other day she fell asleep on the bus, and that was only an hour ride. What if she has to go to the bathroom? What if there are big kids roughhousing and swearing? Everything to do with busing is worrisome for me.”
The Long Road to Learning
28 km
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34 km
Some research shows long bus rides can have positive impacts. One particular study in the Journal of Rural Community Psychology revealed that extended time on the bus “allows for increased periods of socialization.” But according to others like researcher Michael Fox, “those with larger average times on a bus report lower grades, poorer levels of fitness, fewer social activities and poor study habits.”
Wes Neumeier, superintendent of Prairie Land Regional Division (PLRD), said parents have every right to be concerned about their children undertaking lengthy bus rides. Not only is extended time on the highway potentially dangerous, but the monotonous trips can quickly exhaust a child.
“There are a lot of transportation issues for rural students that you have to consider,” Neumeier said. “It’s not actually humane to transport students long distances morning and night, and then expect them to get a quality education.”
Aside from the strain on students trapped on long rides, parent Jennifer Day said she thinks increased transportation times will also steer families away from moving into a community where there is no school.
“These are little kids. To have to travel for more than a hour to get an education is not okay,” Day argued. “If you can already see moving here with your kids they are going to have that long of a bus ride, you’re just not going to move there.”
The above shows the distances former Satinwood students will have to travel in order to get to their new schools this year. Because of the numerous stops and slower speeds school buses take on the highway, students are likely to spend at least an hour getting to and from school every day.
Lost in the Cracks
As small schools across the province continue to shut down, parents have few options other than to ship their children off to a bigger school in a city or town. Because towns like Blackfalds, for example, are growing at unprecedented rates, these increasingly crowded schools are starting to look more like cattle corrals than education centres.
Although larger schools are beneficial in terms of providing programs rural schools just don’t have the capacity for, parents worry their children may get lost in the ever-expanding sea of students.
“I do believe they are creating, if they know it or not, super schools,” concerned parent Jackie McPherson said. “There’s just too many kids to have any control, and I don’t understand how teachers are going to be able to give them the one-on-one attention they need.”
R
ural schools face a harsh reality. Families are getting pulled like magnets to urban centres, which offer a vast array of work opportunities, services and of course, schools. And with school boards across Alberta in control of 98 per
“Those schools say so much about the town,” McAllister said. “They are hubs of the community, and they are a great part of our success story. When you close down the school, there’s this feeling that you’re rolling up the sidewalks.”
As alluded to by McAllister, rural schools are often referred to as the heart of a community. And once the heart is gone, what’s left?
Wes Neumeier, superintendent of Prairie Land Regional Division (PLRD), said that when a local school is closed, it tends to have a domino effect on other services in the community. He added when infrastructure that’s integral to the vitality of a community vanishes, “life starts to look different for people within those communities.”
“Those schools play a significant role in that whole life and vigour of the community,” Neumeier explained. “When you remove all the services from a community — as has been typical in rural communities — it lets the community down from a social and psychological perspective.”
A teacher by trade, parent Jennifer Day said her own experience as an educator in a larger school gave her a new appreciation for the intimacy of a rural school. Trying to juggle four different classes of Grade 7 students at a school in Fort McMurray, Day said it was impossible to get to know each child at an individual level.
“When I look back, I think some of those kids fell through the cracks in my classroom because I just wasn’t able to see what I needed to see,” Day admitted. “I don’t want my kids falling through the cracks, but there’s just no way you can be known when a school is that large.”
Day added that while she is aware rural schools may be at a disadvantage in terms of the programs they can offer their students, to her, the intimate environment fostered in these smaller schools is worth it.
“There is something about the individual attention, that feeling of being needed,” she explained. “Belonging to a safe environment that allows kids to develop into strong individuals is valuable, even with the lack of programming.”
Parent Jennifer Day shares why she chose to enrol her five children in a rural school. She explains the intimate environment a smaller school provides is what prompted her to move her children from being homeschooled into the public system.
