The purpose of this letter is to raise awareness and ask for support for rural education.
Can School District 48 please answer: How can Kindergarten to Grade 7 continue to be delivered at Blackwater?
I am a parent of a Grade 5 child who goes to Blackwater Creek Elementary School, a small school just north of N’Quatqua/D’arcy with 23 students enrolled in K-7.
Initially, the focus of the school was primary aged kids. Since 2017, kids in intermediate grades have been allowed to attend. SD48 now says intermediate enrolment was a pandemic measure. However, as a parent, and a member of the PAC, this definitely wasn’t made clear.
Now that the pandemic is over, we are being told that intermediate grades will need to go to Signal Hill next year.
This means one and a half to two hours on a bus each day for our kids. For impacted families, it also means losing a physical community space for us to come together and connect.
What SD48 is missing is how much we see ourselves as a unique and vibrant community, different from Pemberton. We value our relationships to each other as a community of kids and families. We love the teachers, bus driver, and education assistants who work at the school. We want more of this unique, multi-age learning environment, and a focus on emotional self-regulation, critical thinking, and a growth mindset.
We are a small group of families with 14 kids who will be impacted by SD48’s decision next year.
While SD48 has met with us and answered some of our questions, they appear unwavering in valuing a centralized economy-of-scale approach to our kids’ education. They have focused on showing that 20 kids and one teacher at the school is preferable.
They have not yet answered how continuing K-7 with more than 20 kids is possible.
Quality education costs money, regardless of where and how it is delivered. We want to assist the school board in finding the additional money and infrastructure that would be needed to sustainably support more students.
Please help our families raise awareness about the change for intermediate kids at Blackwater next year. Please support our request that SD48 help us figure out how K-7 can continue at Blackwater Creek Elementary.
