Re: Gish kids could move (St. Albert Gazette, Jan. 24).
This is not the first time Mr. Wowk (Barry Wowk, superintendent of the St. Albert Public School District) has considered moving kids away from their local school in Akinsdale.
Several years ago, I was part of a parents' group who fought to ensure E.S. Gish School remained available to children from our local community. At that time, the problem was too few kids attending the school! The proposed solution was to move local children to another school. Then the district would stream children from elsewhere into Gish so they could consolidate a couple of specialized programs and re-balance the student population.
Now, there are too many children at E.S. Gish, but my feelings from that time remain valid. The only thing worse than having local kids without a neighbourhood school, is having a neighbourhood school without local kids.
One part of this problem is that we have a seriously flawed capital budgeting process that has prevented the school board from properly planning for student growth.
However, a more fundamental problem is at play. In the name of offering choice to parents, we have created several education streams within the public system. This is tantamount to embedding a private school mentality within the publicly-funded system. The logical outcome is segregation. The suggestion that local children in the mainstream public system leave their local school is evidence that our schools are becoming segregated based on religion (Logos), and elitism (Cogito). Meanwhile, the mainstream school program that strives to create welcoming, inclusive, well-rounded citizens, has become second-class, with children shunted around the district based on the whims of special-interest groups. This is the dark side of school choice.
When we last worked with Mr. Wowk on this problem, he indicated that the junior high students from Gish were the best-behaved ones in the district. This was in large part due to the K to 9 nature of E.S. Gish School. He believed in this model of schooling, with younger and older kids in the same school. He indicated if parents would support the school, he would support the parents and keep our kids at Gish. Well, we supported E.S. Gish strongly; has that commitment from years ago now expired?
The proposal is that Akinsdale kids settle for second-best because some religious/elitist programs want the space. That's not the Alberta that my grandparents envisioned when they helped to build a strong, community-based, parent-controlled school system in this province. While this is not a problem of Mr. Wowk's making, it is his to solve. I suggest that moving local children to distant schools is not the right answer if you support strong public education.
Jim Menzies, St. Albert
