Mitchell Hendry is a grade 12 student at OSCVI who made a deputation Wednesday at the special meeting of the Owen Sound city council. The meeting was called to discuss the Bluewater District School Board's recent decision to amalgamate the two local high schools, temporarily using West Hill Secondary for both student populations. The full text of the deputation can be found below.
The survey to which Mitch refers was conducted in class time at both high schools in December, when the possibility of such a one-school plan was already on the table at the Accommodation Review Committee comprised of representatives from all affected Owen Sound Area schools. The survey included the initial 7-12 proposal as well as questions about the one high school option.
OSCVI Results
26% of students and 59% of staff considered this proposal (7-12) as a good to great option
41% of students and 35% of staff had no preference
33% of students and 5% of staff did not like this proposal at all.
79% of students and 53% of staff firmly indicated that they do not want to relocate to West Hill Secondary School
West Hill results
75% of students did not want the 7-12 model put in place at WHSS
The top choice was to leave the high schools alone, and 34% of the students as their second choice chose the option of possibly merging OSCVI and WHSS making WHSS a secondary school and OSCVI a middle school.
More details of the surveys, and full text of submissions to the Board, including the initial one-school proposals from both OSCVI and West Hill staff in 2015, are available here.
The full text of Mitchell Hendry's deputation follows.
My name is Mitch Hendry and I speak for the students of OSCVI. I understand we are all familiar with both the Accommodation Review process and with the widespread dissatisfaction with both the process itself and the decision that has come about as a result of that process. I'm here to provide a student 
perspective.
At the end of 2015 when the Accommodation Review was just getting started, surveys were conducted to learn about the students' stance on the issue. A few interesting things were learned from these surveys, however none were taken into consideration in the staff reports. As could be expected, 79% of OSCVI students were in favour of amalgamation at the OSCVI site. This option was barely discussed because the Board claimed they would never get Ministry funding for an addition on to OSCVI. 69% of OSCVI students were in favour of, or felt neutral towards, the notion of having OSCVI converted into a 7 to 12 school. Only 7% of OSCVI students were in favour of amalgamation on the site of West Hill.
Somehow the option that the least students favoured was deemed the best option for those students.
On March 1, the Board publicized its Preliminary [Final] Staff Report suggesting amalgamation at West Hill and people wanted to talk. Unfortunately, the public had only eight days to prepare presentations for a special Board meeting before the March 9 deadline. For a recommendation that changes the scholastic climate of Owen Sound so profoundly, eight days is a very short period. We, the students, wanted to be included in the discussion. We wanted to be convinced that amalgamation on the site of West Hill would be good for us. Unfortunately, we were hardly spoken to, let alone convinced.
To summarize, the students of OSCVI feel that their input has been all but completely ignored on a decision that was made on our behalf. In light of this feeling, and with the speed with which the recommendation was ushered to approval, we are pursuing an appeal of the motion.
In order to do this we need signatures equal in number to one-third of the OSCVI student head count. These signatures need to be from parents of currently enrolled OSCVI students or from people who participated in the Accommodation Review process. We also need to highlight the Bluewater District School Board's documents and articulate where we felt policy was not followed. We have 23 days left to make this appeal, however option sheets for students that are slotted to be at the West Hill site next year have already been handed out and are to be returned by this Friday.
Although we disagree with this decision that was made, we understand that the Bluewater District School Board was put in an impossible position by provincial funding guidelines. At the heart of their difficulty was the usage-based funding model for schools in Ontario. It has been said before and should be said again – what works in Toronto does not work everywhere.
In conclusion, we have a question and a request of Council. Firstly, does the City have any resources or venues that we could use to further the appeal process? Secondly, could Council make it known to the Ministry of Education that the province's usage-based funding model is ill-suited to small communities such as Owen Sound?
