To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to you in regards to yet another poor decision that the Bluewater District School Board is about to make. I urge you to approach with caution, as your decision will affect not only students, parents, and school staff, but also community members such as myself. I am a concerned older sister with a seventeen-year-old brother in grade 11 at OSCVI.

Obviously you would have heard the more obvious arguments against closing OSCVI by now, such as what will happen to certain jobs. Teachers have families they need to provide for. It's hard enough to break into the world of teaching, and yet you're willing to jeopardize already-secure jobs? What about certain classes that were only offered at OSCVI, such as greenhouse? What will the new busing situation look like? Why move students from a fairly new facility and place them into a crowded, decrepit facility that can barely house the students who already go there? I have visited West Hill, and I have seen it first-hand. For example, theirstudents sit on the floors in the hallways to eat their lunches because their lunch room is too small. Are you really prepared for an influx of another six hundred or so students?

But aside from the more common queries, I ask you to think about the impact upon the community at large. What about tradition and the preservation of history? The City of Owen Sound is all about tradition, heritage, and history, and to close OSCVI would put an end to a very important historical legacy. The school was established in 1856. It is old enough to have its own historical archives, located right inside the school. My maternal grandmother, who would be 97 years old this year, attended OSCVI. She remembered the school song and cheer in even her final years of life. Need I mention the age-old rivalry between OSCVI and West Hill? For years, the two schools put on events such as Friday Night Lights and, until recently, Crone Cup. These events gave students a means of creating memories outside of the classroom, and have merged school and community together in a positive way for many years. To attend such an old school is to essentially participate in a historical rite of passage. But to terminate the existence of the facility so anti-climactically is to essentially erase that history.

To put it bluntly, haven't you wronged this age group of students enough? Children my brother's age have already seen their schooling experience being compromised many times. For example, students in Noah's age bracket are young enough to have been affected by the closing of Strathcona Senior Public, meaning that they have already experienced going to school in a facility that was not prepared for them. Noah's former K-6 school had no lockers, no gym change rooms, no proper division from even the primary students. Again, a teacher strike a few years after that meant that Noah, a skilled athlete, was unable to participate in school sports. Isn't education supposed to be an experience for the students? Why should they be continuously punished for the bad decisions of others? I think that the school board owes OSCVI students some respect, by showing them that their education is worth more than the money it costs to operate the school. Education is more than knowledge, as a school like OSCVI has provided students with memories and life-shaping experiences for literally over one hundred years. Stop making education in this district a financial experiment. Give the students some stability. Save OSCVI!

Shayla Rouse

4th Year BA student, University of Guelph