EPHS 2018

My area is getting a high school. It took years of petitioning the school board but a few years ago the provincial government announced it would go ahead. Even after that, the parents and community members who wanted the high school built faced backlash on social media and even a last-ditch attempt to shut the whole process down in the school board last spring. Finally an area has been chosen and approved. Now the boundary is being set. I attended the first of three public consultations on the boundary and was surprised to find members of the neighboring community there, questioning the decision to build the high school in the first place. Now there is even a petition circulating from those parents who are panicked, thinking that their children will be bused into our community for high school. Nothing could be further from the truth. The high school is going to consist of the same population the local junior high school current holds. That means, in case you missed it, that no children will be bused in from the neighboring community. Period. My daughter will not have to wake up to go to high school for 6:30am and miss any chance at after school activities because she must get a bus back home. Instead she will get to enjoy the type of high school experience that I had; a local high school for about 500 students. Will it have all of the same activities as a high school of 1500 students? No, but it will have activities, a short walking commute and  the opportunity for my child to get extra help after school if she needs it. My high school had next to no extra curricular budget, yet we still had a debate team, school choir, a provincially-ranked band, drama club, newspaper, student council, cheer squad, cross country team, rugby, hockey and soccer teams. If that little rural school can do that (and most of the funds to support these teams were raised by fundraising efforts), I am confident this high school will be able to offer most of those activities.
The parents opposed to this idea are also looking out for their children. No one wants their child travelling to school by bus if they can help it. We all are aware of the drawbacks. At the same time these parents are also faced with their own local issue. Two high schools within a kilometer of each other and not enough students to fill both. Currently that gap is filled with the children from my area. That would come to a stop with the new high school, meaning one of these two high schools will need to be "reorganized" into something else, a vocational school, or something else. Those that went to the school that is likely to face the major change are upset their children won't go to the same high school they did. Things change, and if they looked at the situation without personal investment they would see how ludicrous it is to bus 60% of a school's population from a neighboring area when there is sufficient numbers to have a high school of its own.
Thankfully, this petition will go no where. The organizers state no public consultation was given. That is incorrect. If they missed the years of school board meetings about this issue, and the community meetings that followed, well that's a shame their voices were not heard. It's a bit late to the party when they stick their hand up and claim now, after a site has been approved, and building contracts handed out, that they should be consulted. If you didn't have the interest or the time to bother with this issue in years past, and now are only involved because someone implied it might involve you, then that's too little too late. Decisions like this can only be debated for so long, and trust me, this decision has taken long enough. These children and this community deserves its own local high school. It's happening and I for one will be there to applaud its opening in 2018.