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Review committee has plan to save Edenwold School

The Prairie Valley School Board decided Oct. 11 it would review the school, which this year has 35 students.

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The committee that’s reviewing the possible closure of Edenwold School has a few ideas that it believes could save the school.

The Prairie Valley School Board decided Oct. 11 it would review the school, which this year has 35 students.

“We are optimistic that there’s a lot of good reasons to keep Edenwold School open,” said Jared Clarke, who chairs the review committee and the Edenwold school community council.

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Enrolment has dwindled since 2007, when 63 children attended the school. Built in 1987, the school has the capacity to hold about 96 students.

“I’m quite a proponent of keeping the rural area going and the best way to ruin it is closing the school,” said RM of Edenwold councillor Dwayne Radmacher, a member of the review committee.

In a letter forwarded to the school board last week, the committee suggested that students from a nearby town could attend Edenwold School next year.

Clarke said there are seven students from Edgeley, 20 kilometres east of Edenwold, who are bused to school in Fort Qu’Appelle, 22 kilometres northeast of Edgeley.

As the school board will cease busing Prairie Valley students to Regina schools come June 2019, Clarke said Edenwold could take those students and alleviate pressure on some of the division’s bigger schools.

In 2016-17, 140 students were bused into the city on one of nine routes, from rural communities surrounding Regina. The number of students taking the bus to Regina schools is declining, though — about 109 this year, 82 next year and 13 in 2019-20.

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Further ideas to make the school viable include housing early childhood education programs and partnering with Muscowpetung First Nation on collaborative reconciliation programs.

In the letter, the committee also requested cancelling the school review process. The board declined.

“It is important to note that we are still in the initial school review stage,” board chair Janet Kotylak said in a prepared statement.

The board will consider the committee’s ideas after its full report is submitted.

“The board wants to reinforce that the review process is part of its due diligence and we are committed to carefully considering all pertinent information,” said Kotylak.

The school review committee also consists of school community council members Dana McGunigal, Ashley Gayton and Robyn Shiplack, RM of Edenwold resident Nancy Porter, village councillor Paul Boehme and village resident Dawn Blaus.

A public consultation is scheduled for Nov. 29, 7-9 p.m. at Edenwold School.

The school review is scheduled to wrap up on Feb. 1, at which point the board will decide whether to consider closing the school or discontinuing any grades. A final decision would then be made by April 30.

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Clarke said Edenwold School provides a quality education that is unique. Currently there is one split class for kindergarten to Grade 2 students, and another split class for students in grades 3 through 6.

“You have younger students interacting with older students in ways that you wouldn’t get on a daily basis in a larger school,” said Clarke.

His kindergartners are already picking up on punctuation, a Grade 2 lesson, by osmosis.

Plus, having a small school helps create a tightknit community, said Clarke.

As of Sept. 22, 386 children attended Balgonie Elementary — the nearest school to Edenwold, 18 kilometres south. There were 359 children attending Fort Qu’Appelle Elementary, and 255 children attending Indian Head Elementary.

amartin@postmedia.com

twitter.com/LPAshleyM

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