To the Editor:
I was recently invited by a friend to a meeting about school busing and catchment areas in the Creston Valley. The meeting was with Creston’s School District No. 8 (Kootenay Lake) board members Mel Joy, Annette Hambler-Pruden and Rebecca Huscroft, SD8 operations director Larry Brown, and concerned people of the community. My friend is a single mom who presently has two children attending Erickson Elementary School (two more will also one day hopefully be attending Erickson elementary). She lives almost right across from what used to be South Creston Elementary School, the building that now holds other educational enterprises, including Homelinks.
In the summer, my friend received a letter from SD8 saying she would have to pay $400 ($200 per child) a year for her two children that are now attending Erickson elementary. She was out of the very small catchment area that belongs to Erickson elementary. Many parents throughout the Creston Valley received similar busing fee letters. My friend’s children are in kindergarten and Grade 1, and are supposed to go to Adam Robertson Elementary School. Enrollment in ARES is presently full for children in kindergarten-Grade 4.
Catchment boundaries in the Creston Valley are antiquated. The most recent catchment map still has catchment areas for Wynndel Elementary School, which has been closed since 2008. When South Creston closed, the lines for Erickson elementary were never enlarged. Children that went to South Creston were given a choice to go wherever. Even as recently as last school year, people in that area were given a choice. If families move now into the ARES area, and they have children kindergarten through to Grade 4, they have to go elsewhere, making it not attractive for families wanting to move into the Town of Creston.
I brought up to the board that the idea for what the board termed “revenue generation” for catchment fees was implemented without due process. These catchment-fee letters were sent out without redrawing the lines and basically thinking it through thoroughly. It makes it even more difficult for one of the lowest income areas (if not the lowest) in the Kootenays. To the credit of the board, they will waive the fees if the family goes through a process of declaring hardship (not that that is an easy process for someone dealing with hardships), but then again, the board also said they “might” make the individual schools cover those that are in hardship. The board members also said they are reviewing this whole process, but I suggested that these reviews should have been in place before they sent out these bills to parents throughout the district.
Public education is supposed to be free, but you have got to be able to get to the education source. It was suggested that maybe everyone could be charged a small fee, perhaps $50 a child, for more revenue generation, but to me that’s a slippery slope towards not-free education. Schools often have free food for children that are not adequately provided with nourishment, but free transportation to school should also be there.
Creston