By ROY WOOD

The recent decision to postpone school closures in a district up the valley will have no impact on the future of the schools in Osoyoos.

Okanagan-Similkameen school board chair Marieze Tarr said in an interview that districts face unique challenges that decisions in her district will be based on conditions here, not elsewhere.

The North Okanagan-Schuswap board decided earlier this week to put off for at least a year the closure of Silver Creek Elementary in Salmon Arm and Armstrong Elementary.

However, Tarr said, the local board has not closed the door to delaying school closures. The presentation from senior staff at a meeting early next month will form the basis of its decision.

Facing the board are two options intended to help resolve a looming budget crisis that has resulted from declining enrollments, reduced provincial funding and excess classroom capacity.

The proposals under consideration are:

•Close Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS) and transfer students to South Okanagan Secondary School (SOSS) in Oliver.

•Close Osoyoos Elementary, transfer its students to OSS, making it a kindergarten-to-grade-9 school, and transfer grades 10-12 to SOS.

“We will, on April 6, deliberate on whether to close a school, to not close the school, or to extend, based on the facts that we have on that day,” said Tarr.

“If the board feels that … they do not have sufficient information or that there is possibly something that we can follow up on that is going to influence our decision, then we might make a decision to extend it by a year,” she said.

The April meeting will take place at 7 p.m. OSS, although the exact location hasn’t been determined. There will be no opportunity for public input at the meeting.

Superintendent Deb Young and secretary-treasurer Lynda Minnabarriet will present a draft budget to the board.

Staff will outline what spending cuts that will make it possible for the district to operate within the revenues from the provincial ministry of education, which will be announced on Tuesday next week.

Those spending cuts will have a direct impact on the quality of education in the district, said Tarr. “When the draft budget is presented to us (the question will be) this is what the budget will look like. Are you willing to move forward with all these cuts?”

So, it’s not just a financial decision, she says. It’s also a decision regarding the quality of education.

“Sometimes that is hard for the public to understand. They just think that we are basing the decision on the money. But it’s not just the money,” she said.

“It’s also the fact that as we shrink as a district, as we have fewer students in our high schools, it’s increasingly difficult to staff them and increasingly difficult for students to have a wide variety of courses.”
When senior staff brought forward the recommendation to close one of the schools in Osoyoos it was “because they felt that by combining the two high schools there will be more opportunities for students,” she said.