What if this idea of closing four of our existing schools to go build a new joint school in the field in South Hill close to 15 Wing was truly a bad idea for all the reasons that Mr. Radwanski is talking about?
What if indeed our community would be much better to keep those four schools we have and renovate them according to our needs, instead of destroying them and in doing so change the life of those neighbourhoods by eliminating all the good things that those schools and their playgrounds brings to the community? (Student could be moved to a temporarily location if big renovations need to be done.)
I truly don't believe that at this point in time, the greatest ideas to stimulate the economy of Moose Jaw is to go build a big school out there in an empty field, hoping that doing so will help to attract a new residential development like the building of the Sunningdale school did for us in the early 1980s.
Many provincial and municipal politicians and many school board trustees want us to believe that this is the recipe for success and that this new school will be the envy of anyone else in the province.
I truly question the validity of those statements.
I was at that PSSD board meeting in September 2019 when trustees voted to accept the suggestion of the location of this proposed joint school that was brought to them behind closed doors by the accounting firm KPMG a few hours before the public board meeting took place. All trustees only had a few hours to go through the information they received before being asked to vote on it.
I do wish that those two meetings would have been presented directly to the public via the internet and via our TV community channel. I also wish that anyone could re-look at those meetings if there was a video archive section of all our school board meetings on their web site.
At that meeting I remember our past trustee Mr. Tim McLeod trying on multiple occasions to stop Mr. Jan Radwanski from sharing his point of view about this project by bringing out many different points of order that were all rejected by the chair. Most of the other trustees who spoke, like Mr. Lew Young were all pumped up about this concept that building a new school on South Hill would for sure create the perfect scenario for recreating the residential development that did happen after the building of the Sunningdale school 40 years ago.
Almost everybody (except for our past trustee Mr. Brian Swanson) we're very anxious to vote in favour of accepting this proposed location for the school and they were also very anxious to bring this choice of location to the City Council ASAP. (We could smell the provincial election coming soon)
Mr Swanson brought to the attention of all trustees that this proposed location for the new joint school that they had just found out about a few hours before should be brought to the public for feed- back before moving ahead with it. He stated that as trustees who get paid $ 1300.00 a month, it was the trustees’ duty to first let the community know about the choice presented to them so that the community would have the chance to express their point of view about this proposed location. His motion was defeated.
I do believe that Mr Radwanski is right about not building this new school on South Hill for all the good reasons he has brought forward. I also do understand from the story I heard that some school division for instance may not have been very good at investing in maintaining their property over time and some may be very pleased about this new deal of building a new school and getting rid of the old one.
It’s sure not the first time that Mr. Radwanski has taken the time to share his wisdom with us. I remember him coming to city council during our debate in regard to building the indoor soccer field at the end of town. He pointed out that there was no city transit that was servicing that area and because of this we surely would not get the best return on our investment by investing our money there.
Can you imagine what would had happened if we had taken the time to find a better place for the soccer field. We could have build this new sport facility where the old Civic Centre was. We could have helped the Town 'n' Country Mall dearly by doing that. At best, we wouldn't have had to move our social services to the Town 'n' Country Mall many years later to try to save it.
My point is that keeping the economy going is good but we truly have to be very wise in regard to what we choose to do and when we choose to do it. The indoor soccer field is in my view a good example of how some of us can get too over-excited about some ideas to the point where some of our actions do cause some long term very unpleasant negative side effects.
Paying to bring all the infrastructure necessary to build this new school out there on South Hill in an empty field hoping that it will attract new development doesn't seem right to me at all at this point in time. I am also not a believer that this new big school with a thousand people in it is what our very young children and our older students truly need, let alone our community as a whole.
Some may like the ideas of gambling our money and talent on a new possible development that this new school may or may not bring. Some may like the money that the selling of those four schools could bring, and our school board may like not to have to spend money on maintaining those old buildings.
From what I am seeing, I wonder who truly cares about our existing neighbourhoods and who truly cares about the real need of our children and of our city's future. It is truly not about keeping the economy going in the first place. It has more to do with what our students and our existing neighbourhoods truly deserve. We all should [listen very carefully and] maybe take a lesson from what Mr. Radwanski has been sharing with us all.
I personally think that first of all, we should consider the idea of getting rid of all Catholic school boards and integrate them with our public school board before we put any shovel in the ground. Doing so would change completely the logistics that we use to see which students would go to which school. Our education system should teach the basics of all religions to all our students according to their ages.
In my view it should be up to the parents to decide what kind of religion their children will practice at home and the church of their choice should be supporting them in any way they wish to do so.
It would be good if our lawmakers would think twice about this new school idea and truly open their minds & hearts about what Mr. Jan Radwanski is telling us, as well as being truly open to others new ideas like the one I talk about myself and any other ideas that may show up in the near future.
We may be better keeping what we already have & have an open and transparent comprehensive review of this project like Mr Radwanski is asking for. There is truly no rush to go build that school right now.
Thanks for having taken the time to hear me out.
Michel Labonte
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
