Thinking Outside the Box

A key strategy for making small community schools viable is making better use of the facility and co-locating other services with school property. For example, a walk-in medical clinic and dentist located on (or in) a school site can provide additional revenue to the school district while enhancing the central community aspect of the school as well as making better use of under-utilized facilities.

To make these types of creative approaches work however requires a great degree of coordination and cooperation between school districts and municipalities. The challenge is that these two public agencies report to different masters: one a school board and the other a council. Both have very different mandates. One exists solely to provide education services while the other provides community infrastructure, planning and protection. They rarely deal with each other as business partners.

It is not impossible to make these types of arrangements work and it is being done in other areas (check out the Smart Schools on the link list). The trick is to think outside the box. We, as those who elect both school boards and councils, can make a difference by asking councillors and trustees to consider community-based options rather than school closures as solutions to funding challenges.

Note: The Saanich School District has made some effort in this regard by locating the new school near a recreation centre. Unfortunately, the recreation centre and new school site are not in an established compact community. It will be located in a low-density sub-division where there still will be few opportunities to walk to school and even greater demand for vehicle transportation (for all those students in Saanichton). The new school location would make perfect sense if Saanichton Elementary did not have to close to make the new school happen.