School District 27 started consultations back in February to determine if four schools within the district would or would not receive additional funding called the Rural Education Enhancement Fund (REEF).
“Earlier this year the Board of Education announced that the school district intended to apply for REEF for four schools as a way of accessing additional funding for the district,” said Kevin Futcher, secretary-treasurer of SD27. “When the board conducted public consultations at each of the four schools they communicated to staff, parents and other stakeholders that the intent of applying for REEF was to obtain additional funding for the school district as a whole.”
The four schools were Dog Creek Elementary/Junior Secondary, Likely Elementary, Big Lake Elementary and the only one in the South Cariboo, Lac la Hache Elementary.
All four have had historically low enrollment numbers but are not threatened with closure.
“It’s not a closure process at all it’s just an option for our district to get more funding to make it more feasible to keep rural schools open,” said Kristy Davis, principal of the Lac la Hache Elementary School. “It’s not like the funding goes directly towards one school or another, it goes into a district ‘pot.’”
Lac la Hache was the only school denied the funding but will still get supported by the district ‘pot’ the funding goes into, said Davis.
“I’m focusing on the positive that out of the four applications that were submitted three were received and that funding will go to keeping all rural schools open,” said Davis, adding there is no real impact on the school.
Futcher said the Ministry of Education communicated that Lac la Hache Elementary School did not meet the criteria for REEF.
In total, $601,000 was allocated to the district in additional funding next school year.
The school has 23 students enrolled for the 2017-18 school year, ten more than the school projected.
“I’m hoping we keep increasing our numbers,” said Davis. “Our population is increasing and I think a lot of people are moving in from the coastal areas and things like that, so there’s a lot that small schools can offer that big schools can’t so I think it’s good they get to stay open.”
