Golden Hills School Division is hoping to find a solution to the Wheatland East School debate.
    Wheatland East has been a challenge for the Division for years. The area, which includes Rockyford School, Acme School, Hussar School and Central Bow Valley School in Gleichen, has for years, been facing declining enrolment and aging infrastructure.
    This school year the division has made a concerted effort to understand the forces and wishes of the parents and the community in hopes of finding a way to continue to deliver effective education in the area.
    They have compiled surveys of the wishes of parents from the four school communities as well as from community members, and are planning to present what they have learned to the community at an open house on Monday, March 19 at the Strathmore Civic Centre.
    Superintendent Bevan Daverne says there may be a possibility of some consensus.
    “If we look at the four communities, and we look at our overall response from parents, about three-quarters of the parents are willing to support, in some capacity, a stand alone K-12 school located in a particular location,” said Daverne. “I don’t think we have ever had the hard and fast data on who would support what.”
    According to the survey of parents from all communities, 42 per cent of the respondents said they are only able to support a stand alone school outside the community of Standard; 26 per cent said they would only be willing to support a school located inside Standard; 16 percent said they prefer a location in Standard, but would be willing to support a stand-alone school; eight per cent said they are happy with the school inside or outside a community and seven per cent said they would prefer a stand-alone location but would be willing to support a location inside Standard.
    Right now Standard School is the most populated school in the region, boosted in numbers as over the last few years junior and senior high students have been streamed in from the other area schools.
    “Their situation is a little different. That is part of the meeting, we want to see exactly what they are feeling,” said Daverne.
    The school division also surveyed community members at large, and found that parents showed more support for a consolidated school.
    “Part of the reason is parents have kids right in the school so some of the challenges we are having, they are seeing today, whereas some of the broader community may not have that direct information,” said Daverne.
    Stripping the issue down, he says the school division has two options.
    “We either have some sort of consolidation, or we go back to each community with what we have and work the best we can to support a school presence. The difficulty we are seeing is there have been an awful lot of students who have left our schools already and those trends are not changing,” said Daverne. “We have about 300 students between the four communities left right now, and there are 150 students that we know of who are coming into Strathmore or Drumheller schools…That’s a lot of people making alternative arrangements. We think if things get smaller it causes more people to make decisions and you hit these tipping points.”
    In the later scenario he says there is potential that some communities may not be able to support a school.
    “We just don’t want to go there if we don’t have to. We would much rather have a school solution that would have broad support from everybody and be sustainable for years to come,” said Daverne.
    He adds they do not have any projections that show future growth in the area.
 Daverne said part of the strength of the survey is its transparency.
    “We want it to be so there is no surprises about the information, no perception we want to keep anything from anyone. We want our parents to really understand the circumstances and want them to have as an informed opinion as we can get them to have. It is very important to our board to know that if they did ‘X’ who would support that? If it is not enough, we should know that,” said Daverne. “We want to make sure if we go ahead, the board has confidence it is a good idea, parents think it is a good idea and see it as a solution. If that information is being shared transparently…if we have a circumstance that we need to work with the county on some land, all of that should be transparent as well, there shouldn’t be any surprises.”
    This Monday night’s meeting is from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Strathmore Civic Centre. Interested East Wheatland parents and community members are invited.
    The results of the surveys are available by going to www.ghsd75.ca and clicking on the “Wheatland East Information” link.