Re: Dunster Fine Arts School.
The news out of the Sept. 28 SD 57 meeting that the board had sold the closed Dunster Fine Arts School to a parent society is both good news and a disturbing sign of the future.
The good news is that the school board, who closed the school in the spring due to a lack of funds to keep it open, was able to extend a mortgage to the society, so it may attempt to educate the children in their community. For the parents and the kids, the news means they can leave their tent school and move indoors before the snow flies and avoid having small children take long bus rides on winter roads.
The disturbing part of this otherwise good news story is how things got to the point where a public school board has provided the mortgage funding to run a private school in a community where it could no longer afford to offer full education.
A ministry funding formula that creates a situation such as this is either broken beyond repair, or is performing exactly as it is meant to do if the goal is to promote driving kids and parents out of the public education system.
A parallel in the health system would see health authorities forced to rent out their taxpayer-built surgical facilities to private clinics due to a lack of resources to perform public operations.
Far fetched? Don't bet on it.
Tina Cousins
Prince George
