-by Anne Finlay-Stewart

"How do you sleep at night?" was the parting shot from a woman leaving the Bluewater District School Board meeting Monday night. The mother wondered how the trustees could live with their decision to begin a review which could end in school closures in the Owen Sound area.

The motion at Monday's meeting was to "commence an accommodation review on the Owen Sound Area Group of Schools", which includes all its elementary and secondary schools in the city, plus Derby Public School in Kilsyth. New guidelines for both Community Planning and Partnerships (CPP) and Accommodation Review Committees (ARC) issued by the provincial government this spring – an attempt to improve on the existing processes - provide both encouragement of community input and tighter constraints on the reviews themselves.

Derby School was promised five more years at its last review in 2013. That hard-won reprieve was threatened with the school's inclusion in the Owen Sound Area Group of Schools in Monday's motion. The Derby situation is complicated by specific concerns about the building itself, including radon gas, flooding and inaccessibility, all of which have temporary fixes. Parent Marlissa Nyenhuis who called on trustees to "show character" and stand by their five-year promise, said it was the school community that must be protected. A motion will be made at the next Board meeting to rescind the October 2013 reprieve.

Miranda Miller, an Owen Sound parent who challenged BWDSB vice-chair Marg Gaviller in the 2011 election of trustees, was supported by a considerable contingent of Owen Sound parents. Her argument for putting the brakes on commencing an ARC was rooted in the lack of community consultation described in the ten pages of "applicable Board policies and Ministry requirements"she provided. This lack of "due process" was also the concern of Councillor Richard Thomas when he brought forward a motion unanimously supported by Owen Sound city council to ask the Board to hold off on beginning the highly-structured and time-limited ARC process. A meeting was held in June with municipalities and community partners to provide information and planning data, but Owen Sound was not represented because the date conflicted with a city council meeting. Regardless, Thomas said as he spoke to his motion, "one meeting does not constitute community consultation." A similar sentiment was reflected in a notice of motion made by Georgian Bluffs Mayor Al Barfoot at Grey County Council's October 6 meeting.

Whether or not the new ARC guidelines will allow for sufficient time, flexibility and community input to make the best decisions is a matter of opinion. In an interview, Board Chair Ron Motz pointed to the Peninsula Shores K-12 school as an example of new ideas arising within the community over the course of an accommodation review. But the process must begin said Motz, who also proposed that trustees commit to a 50% reduction in empty pupil spaces over their term. He said there were 25,000 students when the Bruce and Grey Boards amalgamated in 1998, and 16,000 now, without the corresponding reduction in infrastructure.

The Director of Education, Steve Blake, spent considerable time explaining the process and rationale behind the staff recommendation (here) required to begin the AR process, and the urgency behind it. The 7000 "empty" spaces in BWDSB schools – the equivalent of seven unused secondary schools – are costing the system money that Blake said could be re-invested in secondary school programming, current technology and services for students with high needs. Given what the trustees described as "gut-wrenching" cuts they had to make in special education in what remains an unsustainable budget, that case is defensible.

Will the process have enough time if it is not begun now? Will the new policies allow for a robust discussion of the options? Is it inevitable that some students will pay the price to give other students what they need? Is this still, ultimately, an issue of an urban bias and tax-payers unwilling to pay a premium for the small schools that suit rural Ontario?

I too worry about the Bluewater trustees' sleep . The decisions about the many needs of the students in this region would keep the best of us awake.