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Home My WebLink AboutReevely: School closures will devastate...ntario, townships say | Ottawa Citizen - Ottawa Citizen - 01/18/2017 - Ottawa Citizen - 01/18/20171/19/2017 Reevely: School closures will devastate rural Eastern Ontario, townships say I Ottawa Citizen Reevely: School closures will devastate rural Eastern Ontario, townships say 2�i DAVID REEVELY N2 More firorrrn IDavid IPP—Ply (HTTP://OTTAWACITIZEN.COM/AUTHOR/DAVID-REEVELY) IPullalliished sin„ Jainuairy 18, 2017 1I ILast Updated,: Jainuairy .. , 2017 5:01 II11IM IEST "v r Ycw of II ft, LJ� r r �I t:.�' .T1dh[e IfU,I flG�l i✓, Ir'a�/ cif .a'. j I UDui I Ja r r') a")e l ti1"11,1"rf ,il ;"..l b"..Nil`f of I ��i;!�r1r , r�'r,, , Oct,L!j a 016lin TODD HAMBLETON / POSTMEDIA http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/col um ni sts/reevel y-school-cl osures-wi I1-devastate-rural-easterr)-ontario-townshi ps-say 1/6 1/19/2017 Reevely: School closures will devastate rural Eastern Ontario, townships say I Ottawa Citizen Five towns south of Ottawa are making a hard economic case for keeping their schools open in the face of a provincial push to close half -empty buildings to save money. "With no school, we anticipate that we would have younger families moving out of the area. There wouldn't be the attraction — the two most important things people look for is schools and medical facilities," said Mayor Evonne Delegarde of South Dundas near Cornwall, in an interview Wednesday. Two of South Dundas's three schools are on the block, including its high school. Students now at Seaway District High School, where Delegarde herself went, would be sent to two other schools, one of them outside South Dundas's county of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry. "Both of the other schools are minimum 20 minutes away by car, and you can imagine how long it would take by school bus," Delegarde said. "It would take the students away and out of our area. It would affect them with after- school jobs and it would affect after-school programming whether it's hockey or dance or tae kwon do.... For families, it would change everything. Many of them rely on the older students to babysit." Seaway's 50th anniversary celebration is coming up in the spring, after the Upper Canada District School Board takes its vote. "We don't know what kind of party it's going to be," Mayor Delegarde said. "It will have a very devastating effect if we lose our high school." Nobody closes schools for fun. The school boards are acting on instructions from the provincial government that funds them, which estimates it spends $1 billion a year on schools that are less than half -full. The education ministry obviously would rather put that money into new schools in places that are desperate for them, especially booming suburbs. Any school less than two-thirds full is a candidate for consolidation, boundary changes, having programs moved in and out to try to make the numbers make more sense. Mostly, in rural Ontario, closures are what are coming as school boards struggle with the dwindling populations from demographic shifts and, worse, years of economic decline. In a city like Ottawa, closing a school and dispersing its students can mean massive disruption and inconvenience for http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/col um ni sts/reevel y-school-cl osures-wi I1-devastate-rural-easterr)-ontario-townshi ps-say 2/6 1/19/2017 Reevely: School closures will devastate rural Eastern Ontario, townships say I Ottawa Citizen its staff and students and their families. In a rural town, closing the high school could be one of the last things to happen before the place fades off the map. Delegarde said South Dundas will make its final case at the end of January. She gets that half -empty schools don't make sense, but hopes a different set of consolidations can keep Seaway, at least, open. Teaching jobs pay well and attract university graduates. When those jobs leave, so does money. There's work in administration, in building maintenance, in renovating. High-school students buy things and go to after-school activities. They work part-time, which some won't be able to do if they're riding buses instead. Co-op placements help businesses. South Dundas is one of five municipalities in Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry to hire consultants from Nepean-based Doyletech to try to see just what it adds up to. They've been filing their reports over the last few weeks; they pegged the economic cost of closing the county's schools according to the board's draft plan at $17 million a year (http://www.nationvaIleynews.com/2017/01/13/almost-17-million-hit-stormont- county-economy-schools-closed-consultant/) in those townships. South Dundas's chunk is $5.5 million, about $550 per resident. For a sense of scale, the proportionate amount for Ottawa would be about $500 million. A University of Ottawa study in 2014 (https://www.nhl.com/senators/news/uottawa-releases-study-on-economic- impact-of-the-senators/c-26473) estimated the economic value of the Ottawa Senators to our economy at $200 million a year and we're hoping to get $230 million in extra activity out of 2017 -celebration tourism. Imagine losing the Senators, twice over. Economic -benefit studies rely on assumptions and estimates of multiplier effects and much related voodoo, but no matter what, closing two of a town's three schools would be catastrophic there. "In sum, the impact of the proposed school closings will be to exacerbate the `hollowing out effect' in this rural area;' the reports conclude. The province has tried to limit the damage. For truly isolated communities where busing kids out would be ridiculous, school boards can make exceptions. Filling closed schools with public offices, daycares and housing, http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/col um ni sts/reevel y-school-cl osures-wi I1-devastate-rural-easterr)-ontario-townshi ps-say 3/6 1/19/2017 Reevely: School closures will devastate rural Eastern Ontario, townships say I Ottawa Citizen so maybe some of the jobs get replaced and at least the places don't sit empty, has been made easier. Sometimes it's possible to put agencies in half -empty schools to keep them from closing. But there are only so many tricks you can pull with buildings that weren't designed to be shared, that have children and teenagers in them, in communities where school populations are shrinking instead of growing. The education ministry isn't in the economic -development business — at least, not in the sense of keeping schools open in places that can no longer fill them with students. But these closings, necessary as many of them are, are hundreds more kicks to small towns across Ontario that have already taken a lot of them. dreevely@postmedia.com(,mailto:dreevely@postmedia.comJ twitter.com/dayidreeyely (httl2://twitter.com/davidreevely) HOVER FOR FLYER Comments HOVER FOR FLYER RONA HOVER FOR FLYER �14GNtA MsM�illrtA�M�I HOVER FOR FLYER We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the 'W' in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page (http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/story.htrnl?id=7195492) for more information. http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/col um ni sts/reevel y-school-cl osures-wi I1-devastate-rural-easterr)-ontario-townshi ps-say 4/6 /!-- This code was added to remove the metadata from document view in Weblink -->