While B.C.'s rural education funding announced Wednesday won't affect School District 57 schools, its rural communities hope it's a sign of some stability for their schools and a change in approach will be the new reality.
The Ministry of Education signaled it would look into a strategy alongside its ongoing Rural Education Enhancement Fund.
That model should account for the boom and bust of rural communities so districts aren't making short-term decisions, said Valemount secondary school's principal.
While the fund this year is directed at nine schools facing closure in the Kootenays, Quesnel, Okanagan, Campbell River and Bulkley Valley, murmurs of a similar conversation have happened in this district in the face of declining enrolment.
"I think it is an excellent start. What it will allow is that money to prevent school boards from having to make knee-jerk decisions based on maybe short-term crises, which all districts are having now," said Dan Kenkel.
Not so long ago, Valemount was struggling with class sizes. But the community is back on an economic upswing so Kenkel thinks its schools should be safe. Using the Osoyoos school closure as an example, Kenkel said the fund could be a buffer to prevent hasty decisions.
"(Osoyoos) was a funding decision," he said. "This is kind of a way of being able to say okay the funding in the district is now a major part of the conversation but maybe not all of it."
To qualify a school must be facing possible closure and meet the other criteria to access funding, a ministry statement said.
"(School District) 57 will have to determine if any of the schools in their district are slated for closure this year and meet the criteria to be eligible. If so, they can then apply for this funding," said the emailed statement.
The ministry has said the fund would be "ongoing" and confirmed by email a further $2.5 million has been allocated for the next school year. The amount committed to the nine schools saved this year is an estimated $2.7 million.
Last year, School District 57 reviewed a long-range facilities plan that showed declining enrolment and degrading buildings. Its rural schools in particular were underused, with those in the Robson Valley and Mackenzie's secondary with less than half the number of students they were built to accommodate. Mackenzie elementary was one of 21 schools closed in the district since 2002, but the community has seen a resurgence with Morfee elementary at full capacity.
"The challenges are in many districts that funding is tight and the supposedly low hanging fruit is long gone," said Henkel in reference to Premier Christy Clark's February 2015 remarks that districts trim from their budgets to find the province-ordered administrative savings, an amount that totaled more than $1.3 million for SD 57.
"So real decisions and real cuts that affect kids in classes are now a reality for many districts."
The McBride Secondary Parent Advisory Council has been fighting for "long-term systemic change" to rural funding, so its president said she was excited to see the province is taking a second look at its approach.
"The issue is declining enrolment and or fluctuating enrolment in smaller communities," to coincide with the boom and bust, said Karen Dube.
"That needs to be recognized from the province first and then a trickle down to the school districts - that rural schools need a different kind of funding in order to keep a level playing field with all our students across the province."
"One has to recognize if you don't have a viable school in your community, you risk losing the heart of your community," she said. "We know that rural B.C. is a boom and bust cycle so if we say in the short run we're going to close schools then we handicap those rural communities form redeveloping and booming again... It's a vicious cycle."
Last year, School District 57 handed one-time funding of $75,000 to each rural secondary school, which it couldn't match this year. Kenkel said that saved them from a tight spot, keeping the Valemount school from radically changing how it delivered programming.
This year the district launched a rural task force that came up with several recommendations for ways to better support schools and manage funds.
Dube said she's encouraged by comments from Education Minister Mike Bernier around changing the current rural funding formula. In a Thursday editorial, Bernier said "as an MLA and as a minister I have seen that our current funding model may create challenges for rural districts."
But Dube also doesn't negate the impact of a government heading into an election year.
"Personally I think that always gets the ball rolling and it is what it is. We're not going to say no, it definitely greases the wheels," she said.
SD 57 board chair Tony Cable, however, was frustrated by what he sees as the political nature of funding decisions ahead of the election year. First the reversal of this year's administrative savings after schools had already budgeted to make the cuts, and then this fund after schools held painful consultations and made the unpopular choice to shutter some buildings.
The big question for Cable is what about next year and the year after that.
"That's a bit of the cynicism involved, because if it's just a bit of money before the election and it's not going to carry on, so it's not going to really help," he said.
Cable said he and others keep coming back to the idea of a long-term sustainable budget process so districts can plan five years into the future.
"It's just like a yo-yo. They take money out, they put money in," he said, adding they hope for "a little predictability."
School districts will have an opportunity to provide input into this process, the ministry said.
That strategy will look to "generate a better understanding of rural schools and the critical role that they play in local communities, the challenges that districts face, both educationally and financially, in running schools in small communities, and identifying some long-term recommendations for the sector."
A key part of the conversation is pushing against what Kenkel called a deficit model approach to rural education.
"So it's not what we don't have, it's the great things about small schools and the incredible advantages that being a rural educator and being a rural student can bring to learning," he said.
The idea that people choose to live in smaller communities and therefore also choose worse services fails to understand how the province works, says Kenkel.
"The people that live in rural communities service the highways, work on the railways, provide that sort of communication and transportation infrastructure that is vital to making the whole province work and in fact is kind of the veins and arteries of our province."
