Women headline OSS mini-series
By ROY WOOD
There was no bigger story in the South Okanagan this year than the threatened closure of Osoyoos Secondary and the determined and ultimately successful effort by the townsfolk to save their high school.
Clearly our society is well past the time when we are surprised that successful and influential women take central roles in important developments. But it is worth noting that virtually all of the key players in the OSS story were women.
From the senior school district administrators, key board members and the main architect of the grass-roots battle to save the school to the mayor of Osoyoos, the local MLA and her boss, the premier, women played the lead roles. Men were bit players.
The story took centre stage on January 13 and played out for nearly six months like an action-packed, emotionally draining mini-series.
At a meeting at the board office in Oliver, superintendent Bev Young and secretary-treasurer Lynda Minnabarriet painted a bleak picture of the Okanagan-Similkameen district’s finances.
Years of declining enrollments and dwindling revenues had left the budget in deficit. And the provincial ministry of education doesn’t allow districts to operate at a deficit.
To balance the books, the administration explored several school closure options throughout the district, but settled upon two, both involving OSS: close it altogether and bus students to Southern Okanagan Secondary in Oliver; or close Osoyoos Elementary and convert OSS to a kindergarten-to-grade-nine school and send the grade 10-12s to Oliver.
Long-time Osoyoos Trustee June Harrington objected then and throughout the process. “Closing either school will be devastating to the community,” she said.
Harrington kept up the fight against closure, arguing emotionally at every opportunity to keep OSS open.
Once the battle was won and the school saved, Harrington resigned from the board, ending a distinguished 26-year career, which included 15 years as chair.
Osoyoos Mayor Sue McKortoff attended the January board meeting, having been tipped by a reporter about the closure options on the agenda.
After the board voted to target Osoyoos schools, the mayor said presciently: “I find it difficult to accept that either option is acceptable. … I know that when you have consultations in Osoyoos you will run into confusion. This will be a huge issue in Osoyoos.”
The board’s vote kicked off a consultation process with the community. The first public meeting saw about 1,000 parents, students, teachers, taxpayers and others crowd into the OSS gym to listen to the proposal, to offer alternative cost-saving suggestions and, mainly, to express their anger and frustration.
It was at the February 9 meeting that Osoyoos trustee and board Chair Marieze Tarr became more clearly focused as the public face of the board. She chaired the meeting and was forced to defend her decision not to vote against the January resolution because the prevailing rules of order enjoined her from voting except to break a tie.
It was not the last time Tarr was targeted. Throughout the ordeal she received nasty and ill-informed abuse from some residents of the town.
During the summer, Tarr announced she will not seek re-election in the fall of 2018.
The February meeting also saw Brenda Dorosz publically take the reins of the anti-closure forces. She had already formed the Osoyoos Save Our Schools committee and told the board that the group had collected 3,300 names on a petition demanding a re-think by the district.
Derosz continued to lead the fight, organizing rallies, coordinating efforts to advance alternative financing to save the school and eventually chairing a committee aiming to create an independent high school in Osoyoos.
Once the crisis eventually passed, Dorosz seemed to be the obvious candidate in the by-election precipitated by Harrington’s resignation. Derosz had run unsuccessfully for school board in 2005.
However, she had bigger plans and is one of two candidates seeking the NDP nomination in the Boundary-Similkameen riding heading into the May provincial election.
A second community consultation meeting was held at the Sonora Centre on March 8. Slightly fewer locals attended as the agenda differed little from the February event.
There was a bit more meat on some of the financial options, including a few from McKortoff, who suggested, in addition to minor cost saving ideas, that the town might look at a tax increase to help keep the school open.
April saw the board finally approve the motion to shutter OSS. Tarr, Harrington and Keremeos Trustee Myrna Coates voted against while Oliver trustees Rob Zandee and Rachel Allenbrand along with Sam Hancheroff of Okanagan Falls and Debbie Martens of Keremeos voted in favour.
In an ironic aside, it was noted that Allenbrand was elected to the board in 2013 following a successful battle a couple of years earlier defending Tuc-el-Nuit Elementary against a closure threat.
Following the April meetings, the idea of establishing some sort of alternative high school in Osoyoos began to gather momentum.
At an April 21 “visioning session,” prominent Osoyoos dentist Jason Barsch discussed the Osoyoos Community School Committee (OCSC) and its idea to create an independent school. At that point, the leading contended as a partner was the Studio 9 Independent School of the Arts in Kelowna.
Within a couple of weeks, however, Barsch had stepped away from the OCSC and Dorosz was back in charge. The focus had also shifted, away from Studio 9 and onto the Good Shepherd Christian School operated by the Lutheran Church.
As details of how such a joint venture high school might work emerged, it became clear that the idea was probably unworkable, particularly with the less than enthusiastic involvement of the town.
At the end of May, Liberal MLA Linda Larson — who until then had stayed in the wings, insisting the school closure was a local issue — decided to take a turn on the stage.
Using McKortoff and the rest of Osoyoos council as props, Larson held a news conference outside the town hall to announce the province had found $118,000 to help save the school.
The day before, the funding news was leaked to a media outlet* and word spread rapidly, mainly on social media, raising hopes in the community.
However, the one-time money wasn’t nearly enough. In declaring its inadequacy, Tarr said: “Our board feels very badly for the community, for the parents, for the students, who once again have to go through this emotional roller coaster … all of a sudden being hopeful (and) thinking possibly the school could be open.”
Then, in mid-June, just two weeks before the curtain would fall on OSS, a plot twist emerged providing Osoyoos residents hope that the high school might, after all, be saved.
At a news conference in Quesnel, Premier Christy Clark announced the so-called “Rural Education Enhancement Fund,” (REEF) which offered a little over $2 million to seven rural BC schools threatened with closure. The share for OSS was about $400,000 and is guaranteed for at least three years.
Along with the REEF, Clark announced a study of rural education funding, appointing Larson and Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA Donna Barnett to conduct the review. Both were named parliamentary secretaries.
The board voted to apply for the funding and was successful. They voted to rescind the closure motion literally the day before OSS was to be officially shuttered.
Osoyoos Secondary School re-opened for classes on September 6 along the other high schools in the province.
In an odd denouement to the story, the result of the by-election to replace Harrington is being contested on technical grounds by the second place finisher.
Osoyoos resident Casey Brouwer received 251 votes while Penny Duperron got 211. Brouwer was sworn in Nov. 23.
Duperron claims and the district has acknowledged that the rules dictate that two advance polls be held for such a by-election and the district only provided for one. She has petitioned the BC Supreme Court to declare the vote invalid and order a new one. A decision is expected in January.
Meanwhile, Tarr will serve one more year as board chair. Oliver trustee Zandee has been designated her successor.
*Publisher’s note: I doubt you will see such an in-depth analysis of this story elsewhere. It was ODN that was referred to earlier in the story in which a Victoria source told ODN that Osoyoos Secondary would NOT close. I believed the source and still do.
In the end – the school did not close.