While some Morinville parents are putting “for sale” signs up on their homes due to the lack of a secular education option, Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools is still working on the problem.
Specific discussions will take place once the results of a survey to gauge interest are ready, which is expected around the end of May.
There is a difference between five interested families or 50, says the school division.
Less interest could mean busing kids out to another jurisdiction or distance learning while a higher level of interest could result in something set up closer to home, if not within Morinville.
David Keohane, school division superintendent, said this was the case in many of the division’s programs.
“As is the case with any programming that any school division will provide, they’ll look at the extent to which people are interested,” he said. “And then they will provide programming based upon an appropriate use of dollars to support that program so that a high-quality outcome can still be met.”
While publicly funded, the Catholic school division will not provide a secular education option itself. It is, however, searching for a third party to provide the option on its behalf and is meeting with other school divisions. It met with the Sturgeon School Division last week.
Keohane said that, in the absence of the survey results, it was largely an exploratory meeting.
“We were having some very broad conversations about programming and what Sturgeon could see as being their level of participation in this, in partnering with us,” said Lauri-Ann Turnbull, GSACRD board chairwoman. “We’re taking that back to our board table and we will have some discussions.”
GSACRD has met with at least one other group, but will not say who that was.
Turnbull said the school division’s goal is to reach the best possible results for these children in whatever form that might take.
One concern some Morinville parents have expressed is whether educating their children in another jurisdiction would mean disenfranchising parents from voting for trustees, an issue Turnbull is less concerned with at this time.
“Their needs would be met by whatever school division comes forward and provides the program. They could approach those trustees from that school division,” she said. “They would represent any student within their schools.”
As for voting for a trustee or running to be a trustee, Turnbull noted the next election is 2013.
“In the short term we need to find out what we’re doing in September,” she said.
Keohane said the school division will certainly try its best to ensure that timeline is met in what has been a difficult road to walk.
“We recognize that it’s not our mandate to fulfill but in the interest of being [a] good community partner and to try to be as helpful to these parents as possible, we will work to try to find somebody,” he said.
