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Secession efffort fails: St. Mary's to stay with Living Waters
Joe McWilliams
Lakeside Leader
Catholic electors in and around Slave Lake made it quite plain last fall that they wanted St. Mary of the Lake School to join another school division. They voted 70 per cent in favour of withdrawing from the Living Waters division.
However, the will of the people did not prevail. St Mary’s remains in the Living Waters division, after ward representatives failed in several months’ worth of attempts to convince another Catholic school division to accept Slave Lake.
“We communicated with eight jurisdictions,” says Bob Osmond, one of the three-person team of ward representatives who took on the job of finding a new school division. “Some of which were at very best a very long shot, but four or five were quite legitimate. But in the long run, nobody would talk to us.”
Osmond won’t speculate – on the record – about why the door was so firmly closed to the Slave Lake effort. He does say it came as a surprise, given that the early indications from some of the school divisions – including Holy Family in Peace River – had been quite positive.
“I would not have gotten into it at all if I hadn’t though it was a sure thing,” he says. “It should have been a done deal.”
Osmond notes the “overwhelming” mandate of last October’s plebiscite on the question. “In reality,” he says, “we were withdrawn at that point.”
But increasingly, as the months went by, the reception by other school divisions cooled off. Finally, with the provincially-mandated Apr. 30 deadline looming, every door was closed. And no explanations were forthcoming, despite requests.
“We never got the rationale,” Osmond says. “In the official sense, we still have no idea (why we were rejected).”
On the other side of the fence, Living Waters superintendent Carol Lemay is delighted to be moving forward with St. Mary’s still in the fold.
“We’re happy,” she says. “We’ve got a lot of initiatives that are great, and over time they will build achievement and build success.”
As well, “we’re looking forward to getting input into the new school.”
The ‘new school’ refers to a proposed Jr/Sr high located across Hwy. 2 on lands designated for that purpose. The province has already dedicated $13 million for construction, and Lemay figures the school could be ready for use by the fall of 2009.
There will be some fence-mending to do. Asked if Living Waters learned anything from the Slave Lake revolt, Lemay had this to say:
“It’s critical that there be positive, two-way communication and that all people involved in supporting schools need to find ways to resolve problems together.
“School boards all over are experiencing these problems,” Lemay continues. “But in order to be successful you need positive input from the community.”
Osmond thinks so too, but is less optimistic about the prospects.
“Communication with all aspects of the community (by the school division) was poor and negative,” he says, which led, he adds, to the effort to withdraw in the first place. “It’s four years until we can do it (have another plebiscite). again. There’s no indication it’s going to be any more clear or positive.”
Lemay is clearly eager to put that history to rest and forge ahead with the goal of making a new school that fits the needs of the community. It will be “dynamic and I think pretty alternative,” she predicts.
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