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Who Owns the Schools?
When Gerard Kennedy was Ontario’s Ministery of Education about four years ago, he requested school boards to create a moratorium on school closings - a politically-smart move that worked for Mr. Kennedy and helped propel him into federal politics. Now Mr. Kennedy’s chickens are coming home to roost, and Ontario school boards are trying to close hundreds of schools. In response to this activity, the Community Schools Alliance has been formed - a blue chip group of municipality leaders who are concerned about the effect of school closings on their communities.
As What You Can Do When the School Board Threatens to Close a Community School makes clear, School for Thought believes that all communities should be able to keep their schools provided that the parents are prepared to be flexible. Clearly, it isn’t financially possible to keep every school open as currently configured, with all the bell and whistles parents and teachers have come to expect. However, if the parents in a small community school are prepared to make compromises (for example, pitching in with the janitorial services, sharing a principal with another school, foregoing expensive programs like strings, renting part of the school out, etc.), then School for Thought thinks they should be allowed to keep their school. After all, it’s their taxes, and it’s their children.