By Tina Comeau
THE VANGUARD
NovaNewsNow.com
A parents group unhappy with the way the school board went about reconfiguring two junior high schools has decided not to pursue a legal challenge of the board’s decision.
Instead the group, Parents Putting Students First, will pursue seeing tightened legislation introduced to allow for public input before decisions on school reconfigurations are made.
The group had explored the option of going to the court to seek an injunction of the Tri-County Regional School Board’s April decision to make Maple Grove a Grade 7-8 school and Yarmouth Junior High a Grade 9 school beginning in September.
The school board has been criticized for making the decision without widespread public input, and for the short timeframe involved in making the transition. Many people have complained about the fact some students will attend four schools in five years until a new high school is built.
Kerry Muise, the chair of Parents Putting Students First, said last week that the group had hired a lawyer and could have gone before a judge. If the judge granted an injunction, the schools would have gone back to the way they were before. But the court date they would have gotten was in mid-August. Given that, Muise said the group had to do some soul searching.
“Ethically the parents couldn’t do that, even though in our hearts we wanted to get a court decision on this, we couldn’t do that to the staff and the kids,” Muise said. “We felt we’d be just as bad as the school board by springing this on people in mid-August.
“So the change is going ahead and we know we can’t stop that and we have to support our staff and students in that,” she added.
But that doesn’t mean the group isn’t still concerned by what has transpired over the past couple of months.
Muise said they will be working with Liberal education critic Kelly Regan to come up with legislation that can be introduced in the fall sitting that will put structure in place when it comes to school reconfigurations. The group will also approach Yarmouth MLA-elect Zach Churchill.
“Now basically school boards can do with they want and call it a reconfiguration without following any of the protocol that goes with a closure,” said Muise.
School boards are not required to hold any formal public input process with a reconfiguration. In the case of school closures, a year-long review that includes public input is a necessity.
“So we want to see some legislation that tightens this up,” Muise explained, noting at times school reconfigurations are murky or represent a significant change. School boards, she said, shouldn’t be able to make such decisions without giving the public an opportunity for their say.
“Around a closure there has to be consultation . . . that’s a very healthy process to go through,” she said. “With the way reconfiguration now sits there is no process, so it can literally be thrown on people over night and that’s not fair to anyone.”
Meanwhile, Muise hopes that even though the group won’t be pursuing a legal challenge, that the Tri-County school board has learned something from this experience.
“What I am really hoping for is that our board starts putting more thought and professionalism into decisions like this, because I think it was reckless and not made with the proper educationally sound advice,” she said.
