City supports local school boards against amalgamation

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Lindgren said narrowing down the school divisions to one large one or a few bigger ones doesn’t serve the purpose of providing high level and quality education. He believes locally driven and responsive school boards are able to quickly adapt and respond to changes within their local communities.

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“I am going to keep saying this, they are locally-elected people that we [the province] are removing,” Lindgren said.

The councillor added even though he made the motion to support local school boards, the rest of council was right on board with him.

“I am very passionate about it and I believe in [it] strongly,” Lindgren said. “What our community has to say matters and how we see things is how it should be for our community. All of us [council] decided and voted unanimously to support that perspective.”

The motion put forth was to draft a letter of support against amalgamation which will be sent to the ministry. Lindgren couldn’t get into the specifics of the letter because council needs to discuss the situation further.

Lindgren said he appreciated the ministry allowing the public to submit concerns online but was a bit torn on the timeframe they provided.

“Sometimes it’s easy to forget,” Lindgren said. “Those types of submissions can slip your mind. I worry people aren’t fully engaged and we aren’t getting the full community input. My hope is after this they are doing wider public engagement into this. I haven’t heard anything so that is a little worrisome for me.”

When asked what assurances the Ministry of Education can give these local communities and boards their voices will be heard and taken into consideration it released this response:

“The Government of Saskatchewan is looking to put students first by ensuring that resources allocated to education stay in the classroom. Efficient and effective delivery of education is critically important to the government.” 

Deputy Premier and Minister of Education Don Morgan appointed a six-person advisory panel to consult with key stakeholders on the options presented in Educational Governance Review Report.

Over the past month, the panel heard feedback from both the public and the education sector on the various governance options presented in the report.

The panel met with more than 40 stakeholder groups over the course of the consultation period. In addition to the face-to-face meetings, panel members received more than 3,000 online submissions from the public.
 

Greg Higgins is a battlefordsNOW’s reporter. He can be reached at ghiggins@jpbg.ca or tweet him @realgreghiggins.