 So welcome to the webinar Strategies to Promote Rural School Sustainability. Thank you for joining our webinar series. This is a partnership between the local government department to deliver webinar topics related to local government and community leaders across BC. We hope that you'll find the series to provide new information and enable discussion between experts in academia, industry and government in an affordable, accessible and sustainable way. As Darby already mentioned, the webinar will be recorded and archived on both the rural BC website and the local government department website so that it will create a lasting resource for communities and regions. Following today's presentation we would like your feedback so you will receive a survey where we're asking for your input into today's webinar but also future topics of interest. I'd like to thank today's presenters for joining us. We have two people who are on the line and their names are Gary Champagne who is the Chief Administrative Officer for the District of Wells. We have Kim Campbell who is Secretary-Treasurer of the School District Number 50 in Haidawai. And then within the room we have Claire Averson who works for the Ministry of Education. She's the Executive Director of the Cross-Sector Strategic Initiative Branch which includes portfolio responsibility for healthy schools, neighbourhood learning centres and support for vulnerable students. With Claire today we have Ben Hyman and Phillip Davidson. Ben is the Director of the Cross-Sector Strategic Initiative Branch and Phil is the Policy Analyst within the branch. I'd like to thank the presenters and we're just going to move to the next slide and I'll give you a little bit of an overview of what you can expect in terms of the agenda. So we've just had our introductions. We're going to move to the presentations from the speakers that have just been outlined and as Darby mentioned we'd like to save considerable time for questions and a dialogue with you in just a few minutes for closure. So with that I'll hand it over to Claire. Thank you very much and thank you for joining us to talk about our ongoing work to develop neighbourhood learning centres. But I gathered before I began I had some responsibility for introducing some poll questions. And so there are two that we're going to ask of the people participating. So the first one is why you're interested in today's webinar. Sorry Claire, if you could just please indicate here, you being the audience, please indicate which of these answers the question appropriately for you. Sorry Claire, I guess I'm trying to get into reading the question for you. Why are you interested in today's webinar? I'm generally interested in rural schools. I work for a rural school. I work in a rural community concerned about possible school closures. And I'm interested in learning more about how local governments and schools work together. So please answer those. Now we are going to take a tally of these once we get to a consensus and it looks like there isn't much movement now so we can jot these down. Okay, thank you. And our next question is your community experiencing challenges keeping schools open. Again, if you could please just both appropriately. So maybe we're there. People may be changing their mind a little bit. Great, thanks very much. Thanks Claire. Great, those poll questions are a really interesting way to start and I'm heartened to see that the majority of folks indicated that they're interested in learning more about how local governments and schools can work more effectively together because we're very interested in that. We hear from school districts that it's difficult working with municipalities and we are community municipalities that it's difficult to work with school districts and so we're trying to figure that out and we're certainly going to be really interested in hearing from our colleagues from the municipal sector around how we can better support and further that relationship. So thanks for joining us to talk about our auto going work to develop neighborhood learning centers. Some of you will be quite familiar with this concept. Probably every district in the province has schools that incorporate some aspect of a neighborhood learning center approach and there is a really large number of schools who have some kind of joint youth agreement with municipalities which is great. We just like to make that more uniform across the province. So the next slide, Darby. So on the slide of the vision statement, this isn't a new concept. It really builds on the historical role of schools as the center of community life and building on the community school movement of the 1970s. It's essentially a way to revitalize the whole idea of schools not just places where students learn the curriculum but also places where the whole neighborhood can access learning and community services. And with an NLC approach, we want to extend the concept to all schools, not just community schools, places where schools can support communities as determined by how the communities would like to be that space used. Next slide. So I won't read what's on the slide, but generally it illustrates, through various government announcements, a couple of these are thrown speech references, another budget speech reference. It just demonstrates government's interest in using schools more fully to accommodate a wider range of programs and services for the community students, parents, families, both inside and outside of school hours. I mean, that's billions of dollars in school buildings and they really have quite modest usage. Don't challenge me on that, Ken. And we'd like to see them more fully used. Next slide. There are two paths or main facets to neighborhood learning centers. One is a capital project, so government is willing to build capital space specifically for community use. And the other path is a non-capital one and they feature very similar things. We both are looking at extended hours of operations, so beyond 8 to 4. We're looking at consulting the community around how that space is used, not just assuming about how they'd like to use it. And we are also looking for policies at the school district and school level that support that broader use. Next slide. Next slide just illustrates some of our engagement efforts. We have started with our own education sector, but we are hoping to extend that well beyond. We've, as illustrated there, written to all our government colleagues and had bilateral meetings with the ones where this work is most closely aligned with their mandates. We've had an education stakeholder's form and in fact we've had one sort of early days and a more recent one specifically focused on how to effectively engage that sector. And then there's a bunch of other efforts. I mean, the point here is that we really looking not just to promote this but to engage the broader sector, the broader government sector, education sector, interest in the NGO sector, the municipal sector, as well as the business sector. These efforts will continue, but you can see where we've been. Some of the concerns that we've heard during our sessions have been with respect to collective agreements and liability issues. And we're trying to capture and share how those issues are managed by various schools and districts because there will not be one side involved and there are really crazy solutions out there and we're trying to capture those and share those. One of the things that we're trying to do with this initiative is really shift the school culture, which is huge. So it is no longer thinking of schools only for education purposes but for broader programming and services. So that classroom may not only be used for a single purpose. It might have multiple purposes. So you don't want to underestimate that and we're really trying not to. Leasing and rental cost is also an issue. Schools aren't expected to take on additional costs associated with this initiative. It's intended to be more cost recovery but there's some sensitivity around that, particularly policy implications, for instance, on easy ones that are considered early learning in childcare. If the costs are very high, then it's hard to attract the service providers. So there's different tolerance levels and different and appropriate levels for leasing and rental costs. And once again, we are trying to understand how that works in the various districts and schools so that we can capture and share that. Once again, there won't be one side fits all what works and how it applies isn't necessarily what will work and damage. One of the other concerns has been raised in terms of issues is other policy directions. For instance, we have carbon reduction policies and we have policies around reducing operating costs and now we're talking about keeping our lights on and our heat on for extended hours so we recognize that there's some possible confusion there so we're looking to address those where possible. We put workload. We hear that principals have huge responsibilities in the system of principals and other administrators and this might seem like an additional burden and so we're trying to figure out how that works and once again, there is no one model there but trying to capture how it's working in different schools and jurisdictions to be able to share those. Community schools is one model but they're present in centers that doesn't have conditions more than one model and the last concern, not surprisingly, is funding and so we'll move to the next slide not that I don't want to address that but just the next slide specifically speaks to funding. We recognize that this initiative needs reversing and we're looking to address that. School community connections which provided $10 million in funding and has been administered by UBCM and D.C. School Trustees Association and that provided grants up to a maximum of 30,000 per district which is not a lot but from our understanding is that those grants were hugely helpful in supporting consultations and other small projects to support that collaborative working and use of school space. Government's property disposal policy has also really supported this initiative so school districts can no longer dispose of school property without having to be approved by the minister so once again, in large measure these schools in play to support broader community use and part of the work that we're doing to address this issue includes building a case to support resourcing. We recognize issues such as coordination and wear and tear on space but there are real costs associated with that and we'll talk about this when I take on one of the subsequent slides but part of that work includes better understanding what exactly is happening within schools because schools are owned by school districts and they make those decisions and so a ministry does not necessarily know any precision what's going on and we're trying to address that. There are also a variety of other grants that have been used with success to leverage this initiative and we have some links to those on our website and I believe that the rural DC secretariat website also has some references to grant sources. The United Way has also been actively involved in a number of school districts and a number of community schools and they offer some support and funding opportunities and there's another couple of local funds I'll just mention a couple and once the Aviva community funds there's a link to that on our website and I know that Roslyn's secondary school is one of the three finalists for one of these grants and the Royal Bank Foundation provides some grants for some after-school usage and as the Pepsi has a new grant program and I think that there are actually advertised on TV as I spoke last night so there are some sources of funding and we're trying to make that use for people to access. So next slide. So in terms of strategy to overcome some of the concerns and challenges that we identified in the previous slide part of that includes engaging the municipal sector and we gave a workshop up at UBCM's annual convention at which we had our minister not only attend, she saved the whole time and so we recognize that engagement is a huge important aspect of this strategy and we will certainly be very interested in what the people involved in this webinar have to say in terms of how to best engage with them and to support furthering of this initiative. Communication, strong relationships amongst the four players are key to the success of this initiative and these require good ongoing communications like all relationships and we recognize that and are trying to perform that and we also recognize that these efforts need the addition of clear official qualities and we are working on those both to remove the barriers to the establishment of neighborhood learning centers as well as to promote them and we've also been actively working on tools and resources to support this work so school districts vary in terms of their size and capacity and so we're trying to support those that have more limited capacity and looking to the larger districts to help in that work that includes sharing some best practices that includes some templates for things like joint use agreements or contracts of various nations contracts of various nature we're helping schools and communities understand how to do community consultations and to truly work in a collaborative style and we're providing other resource kits for schools to support that work and so as I've already mentioned some of the continuing work includes developing an inventory of activity as well as space that's available so we're working with a couple of our key sector groups including our secretary treasurers and our principals and administrators to better understand what space is available and what kind of services are already currently operating in schools we need not to support the resources so the inventory is a key part of the business case which is also identified here we're trying to not only order from the fabulous creative work that's happening in the district but also trying to share some of those stories because they really do look very different and some of them are just so inspiring so we're trying to collect those and create those share those and those are on our website so we're feeding them onto the website regularly and actively trying to collect those I think I've already mentioned the community of practice though the real learning is peer to peer so the school districts have more to learn from one another than they probably have to learn from the provincial government so we're trying to create a space and opportunity for that and to allow the leaders to profile some of the creative things that they've done and I've already talked to a fair amount about a big part of the work that we're promoting engagement and that's not just promoting this initiative but actually trying to create some shared ownership so within our sector we've really heartened by how quick the various stakeholder groups were willing to step up and lead the various pieces and I think that Ken's participation in this session as well as the session at UPCM is a testament to that as well as the work of his association to help with that inventory and building the business case and so but our engagement efforts extend beyond our own sectors they include other ministries and local government is going to be huge and once again I'll repeat our interest in knowing how to aid the municipal sector how we can support and add value and then we have not done much in the business sector a little bit more in the NGO sector but those will be key areas for us as well so this is our last slide and I repeat what was in the presentation and so I'll just name that with you I gather questions are at the end and so that we'd like to turn things over to Ken Ken I believe you're next up Ken if you could please hit start 7 and mute your line Can everybody hear me? Sure can go ahead Great thank you we see ourselves as a leader here our project was a joint project between the school district obviously the Ministry of Education and the village report Clements so people get a sense of what we're talking about Heidegwe it used to be called the Queen Charlotte Islands too but that name has now disappeared we're an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean we're about a five to six hour ferry ride from Prince Rupert in case anybody was wondering where we are Port Clements is the town in the middle of Graham Island and on massive inlets an inland village it's also on the ocean and does that tides population of approximately three to five hundred people and the main industry there is logging and I should probably say was logging just a bit of background for you the village report Clements in 1998 began a process to put together a community multiplex facility to the society and raise some money they put out an RFP they realized quickly realized the amount of money that they had raised that the kind of building they wanted to build was well beyond their means and here's a look at what was the village office in Port Clements that was part of what they were trying to replace a school board involvement we as a school board began to be concerned about maintaining an elementary school in Port Clements it was a school that was built for about 150 pupils and had declined to about 40 students and the school district then met with Port Clements Council to explore the viability of having a multiplex building and a school together the mayor of the day actually went to UBC and talked to the then minister of education and the premier Mrs. Bond and the minister of education was supportive of the whole concept and so there's a look at the school and I know as you look around the province you probably see many schools that look like this one of the advantages that we had in Port Clements is that we had a standalone gym and in the picture that you see you can see that standalone gym on the left-hand side and that was actually retained as part of the multiplex project so some of the things that we had to begin to think about as a group both the village and ourselves when we began talking about sharing a building was who would own the building where would it be located how would the building be insured you know once completed who would maintain the building and do such things as cut the grass and clean the floors how would future renovations be handled what effect would existing union contracts have on a shared building especially since the village didn't have any unionized employees we also have to consider third parties here because we were planning on a shared school and public library and so the Vancouver Island Regional Library and their board had to be involved and how would a shared public school library work although there had been some examples already it was a challenge that we were faced with one of the things that we discovered early on was that we had to be involved with everybody and keep them up to date on the progress we had to also keep the provincial funding organizations and our parent organizations like our board in the Ministry of Education online a concern raised by teachers of course was student safety if you're having a public building with the public coming in and out what effect would that have on students and then there were considerations like the construction phase of the project like who would make decisions about extras how would cost overruns be handled and who would actually sign the contracts with engineers and consultants in time we overcame all of those obstacles and answered all of those questions I would tell you that the project and obviously questions continue to come up that both the village here was how the funding was was gathered for this project a local trust on the island Gwai Trust provided us with a million dollars they had already committed that to the village as part of their multiplex program the Ministry of Education put just under a million and the province through its infrastructure put in 1.6 million dollars as a school district we added $200,000 and we did spend a fair amount renovating the gym as well the school community connections grant at that time was $200,000 and we applied that to the project and locally the village of Port Clements over the number of years they were talking about the multiplex gathered $312,000 as well so we created a building committee it included the mayor and two village counselors community member and it was interestingly enough it was one of the original community members that were part of the multiplex society and of course the village administrator from the school board side we had a principal, a teacher a support staff member a member of D-PAC a trustee and of course myself on the committee so what does our multiplex include if you look at the slides as you're going through them you'll see some of the construction it was a wood frame construction and you'll see construction of the project ongoing in picture form as you're looking at these slides the school is made up of three classrooms now an administrative office and school washrooms the municipality part of the building is made up of municipal offices as well as council chambers and then we have shared and community part in the building a public library a senior's center a daycare a commercial kitchen and a shared staff room now that daycare has expanded now because we also have a strong start at Port Clements so the daycare is a daycare and our strong start the construction was interesting as well because what we chose to do is rather than hire off island contractors we bought all the lumber on island we actually hired local people so we used local materials and local people on island and they under the direction of our project manager did the actual construction of the building the initial construction started in 2008 and the school and municipal office moved in on January 1st, 2009 and the building was officially opened on April 1st, 2009 the building is right in the center of Graham Island and so many people now use this building for meetings because coming from Masset or coming from Queen Charlotte it's halfway between roughly and people use that building as a meeting place so what were the benefits to the community obviously we replaced that old municipal office which was almost about to fall down we replaced our old school facility and again we chose to demolish that by local contractors it provided a permanent daycare space for youth at preschool and now our strong start program there's a permanent room for seniors they've now added some equipment in there and they actually run movies in there on a weekly basis obviously for the school district in the village there was a huge reduction in fuel and utility costs and there's sharing of space we share a staff room we share the gymnasium during school obviously the school books it but after schooling in the summer it's booked by the village staff and of course there's the daycare and the shared library and so as I said there's expanded use for partnering groups who hold meetings to view some of the keys that I feel were keys to the success of this project obviously there was a growing need in the community both by the village and by the school district there was also a fear of the people that part permits that for example if they didn't do something or didn't get together with the school district and have a project like this that if they didn't do anything something would be done to them there was an absolute willingness to work together everybody was focused on what the goal of this project was and the committee worked really well together one of the things that we were faced with obviously was the view of your own institutions in other words your sacred cows and people often said in our meetings well we always did it this way and of course you have to look at that way now and I would tell you that most people both in the committee and in the community were pretty open to doing that we obviously needed support of the elected officials both the ministry of education the board and village council were all squarely behind this project the other thing is that we took the Obama approach because many people said to us oh you can't do it and we were saying yes we can and yes we will build this project and we did in light of opposition for many people what I'm going to show you now are some pictures of the building this is actually the school entrance to the building and this is the side view showing the library which is the metal silver looking part of the building in the background and this is the village entrance to the school the silver piece that you see is the actual council chamber and this is another side view and you can see in the background the actual gym and this picture was taken on the left-hand side there's still a corner of the old school which has since been torn down here again is the view of the entrance with the gym in the background and here are some of the classrooms now I would tell you that these pictures were taken early on there's certainly a lot more artwork and stuff up in the classrooms now than there was in these early early pictures I'm going to show you this is the picture of the day care and now our strong start room this is the picture of the shared library and we're standing on the school side there's an entrance from the school side of the hallway into the library we did wrestle for a number of months with a band of two Maryland regional library about having a shared library in fact initially they wanted a wall down the middle of the library and we've convinced them and their executive director and the board that in a small community like this we were able to share both the school and public library and what you're looking at was the public part I must tell you that Bureau certainly came to the table once the school was open because they provided the Village of Park with almost a whole new set of library books this is a look down the hallway you're looking from the school side and you can see at the end of the hall the door is closed and that separates the municipal shared side of the building this is a look at the municipal office you're looking at the secretary and the administrator this is a look at the public library from the hallway and their book display case this is a look from inside on the school entryway looking outside and towards the gym this is a look again at one of the classrooms and finally here's a look at the council chambers and I think that completes my presentation thank you for visiting thanks very much Ken great presentation and now we'd like to move things over to Gary in Wells Gary could you please hit star 7 we still can't hear you can you try that again star 7 we are online? we can hear you now the Wells Barkerville Community School is located in the district of Wells small municipality about 80 kilometers east of the city of Cornell is the only school in North Caribou servicing about 500 residents of the semi remote Wells, Barkerville and Bowen Lakes region the school initially constructed in the 1940s was unfortunately built to the standard of those times with little attention paid to matters such as insulation and energy efficiency thus it was very expensive to operate the school does however have a very functional layout with two active classrooms and a large kitchen on the main floor as well as a library with a computer center upstairs there are three vacant classrooms as well as an early learning center for our strong start in other preschool programs rounding out the facility is a 4,500 square foot gymnasium annex that was added in the 1960s currently children in grades K through 7 attend the school and are normally instructed by a single teacher with curriculum enrichment provided through the involvement of parents and other community volunteers now the story of how the community came to own the school would be a presentation in itself suffice to say that in 2002 the Cornell School Board announced their intention to close the school and bus our children to Cornell some 80 kilometers away from the school so that they could officially oppose the closure using every legal means at our disposal but without any success in altering the board's decision by the spring of 2003 we were out of time being within weeks of the school closure fully aware that without the school we would not have a viable community the municipality stepped in and initiated negotiations with the school board having young children on the bus for three hours a day from there we negotiated a simple two-page letter of agreement that has successfully defined our community's relationship with the school board for the past seven years the details of that agreement the Wells solution always follows the town would buy the school along with all the school board property and Wells for a dollar the school district would continue their elementary school program in Wells for the rent for the area of the school they used the term of the agreement would be for ten years there were escape clauses for both parties should enrollment fall or building costs dramatically increase there was a provision to allow other uses of the school by the town or third parties that also recognizes the need to ensure that any such use did not interfere with or present a hazard to the students and finally there was a defined assignment of costs for the operation and maintenance of the building and the school district for their educational programs now historically the building had been very expensive for the school board to operate with most of the costs related to the being related to the antiquated heating system and the lack of insulation consequently following the transfer of the property to the town we went to work to correct that situation we started by insulating the school roof and walls and then created separate heating zones and powered demands we carried on making improvements last year when we completed installation of a state-of-the-art geothermal heating system this was a major project costing approximately a half a million dollars which took two years to complete along with the heat exchangers you see in the slide the project also involved extensive upgrades in the classrooms and the drilling of sixteen heat exchange wells in the school guide each about 300 feet deep to optimize the benefits from what was now a community facility we converted the school basement into a community fitness center that is both well used and generates revenue for the town we also upgraded the school playground addressing neglected safety issues and replacing out-of-date equipment as the school property was fairly large and underutilized we turned part of the surplus grounds into community green house, gardens and a recycling center all of these capital improvements were accomplished at little or no cost to local taxpayers by sourcing financial grants available only to local government in terms of the stability of the education program of the school once the school situation was resolved we were again able to attract young families with children to the community as a result our student numbers have doubled since 2003 in contrast to many other often schools with falling enrollment strong numbers in our preschool programs our future enrollment levels will not be a problem but independent of the elementary school usage operating costs for the building is still an additional financial burden to the community as such we have promoted alternate uses for the facility that can coexist with the primary educational function in the summers we now lease much of the building to the island mountain art society for their workshops and educational programs they also use the school festival in August which this year was recognized as one of the top 10 music festivals in Canada in the spring the school gymnasium is used to house school groups from around the province who come to visit nearby Bakkerville historic town as part of their educational program the school offers a low cost option for open night stays bringing in about $4,000 annually to offset building costs in the winter additional revenue to the classrooms which are rented out to local artists as studio space so how is all this worked out financially relative to our population it has not been cheap we are in effect being doubly taxed for public education property owners in wells must still pay provincial school taxes like everyone else but in addition also must pay about 10% of the local municipal taxes to operate the school for 2010 that was on average for a total of $4,000 but each year the amount of local tax money needed has been dropping and we are again projecting lower costs in 2011 primarily related to the change over to geothermal heat but the really important thing about all this is not on a balanced sheet in saving our school we are absolutely convinced that we saved that community once the school issue was resolved our population declined reversed as new businesses opened our community can do attitude emerged among many residents that has helped drive numerous public and private projects and has helped remake wells as a desirable place to live although no community should ever have been placed in the position we were placed in given that we were then saving the school was probably the most important action we could have taken to ensure the continued viability of our community and that's it, thanks for your informative presentation so with those done now we'd like to turn to our session time if I could just point your attention back to the feedback button in the top right hand corner of your green on the toolbar if you have any questions can I ask you right now if you please go to that change your indicator from green to purple which is question and ask your questions great I can see we've got one already Ken Campbell one of our presenters Ken could you if you haven't done so already hit star seven and direct your questions to whoever it may be well I'm going to ask your question to Gary Gary is the school district still paying the salary of the teacher that is at the well school did you hear me okay? yeah we can hear you now go ahead Gary okay great yes the agreement is that all costs associated with the educational program are covered off by the school district the town covers off all the O&M costs for the building and the property thank you thanks Ken Ken if you could change your indicator back to proceed and Renee you're next if you could hit star seven please Renee if you could please hit star seven so not town seven but star seven please I heard something there that might be you hello go ahead I just wanted to thank the presenters and wondering if a copy of this presentation is going to be available after the webinar is complete yes absolutely we on our WorldBC website we will be archiving this presentation so we'll have the slides and the audio and the discussion period it will all be all be available there as well as some of the supplementary materials that we have so the URL for that is www.worldbc at dove.bc.ca so the resources we do indicate I believe at the end of this presentation great Renee if that answers your question you can indicate your back and Art you've got a question I believe please hit star seven if you could please hit star seven and again that's not town seven but star seven we can hear you now this is a question for Ken he might have mentioned it in his presentation I guess I should know just from reading our local observer but who is owning the multiplex building and what is the arrangement for the non-owner in terms of contributing costs so the owner is the school district because it's on school district property and there's no cost to the village except for their portion of utilities so the way we calculate that is the we actually have a formula that changes based on the square footage of the rooms being used so the board pays for all the utilities and then builds the village for the cost of their portion they also receive revenue from Vancouver Island Regional Library Board for having the public library okay thank you thanks for your question Art Chris Bohn please start seven and ask your question hi thank you for the presentation I actually have two questions the first is in the first presentation I think there was a reference made to tools and resources specifically a joint use agreement template and I was wondering if that is available and if it isn't currently when it might be available so we had it winding its way through some approval processes but we have shared a draft when it's been requested so we're happy to do that so that we could simply send you an email then Claire and to ask for a draft with us great thank you very much the other question I had was we know from researching some other models across the country in some of the eastern provinces they've had some success building what they call service plus centers that actually saw schools not only have a neighborhood learning component but also have a service center approach where you could drop in and access a range of government services wondering what the thinking is in this province around that concept and if there was consideration of that model we have been interested in and had some discussions with shared services BZ and the libraries are also I've looked at BAM here libraries have also been interested in doing something similar so there's been a pilot with the government agents in seven or eight communities across the province to look at that very idea what kind of cross training can happen between public library staff and government agents to co-locate so it is on the radar and of course we're really interested in libraries being public libraries being co-located in schools so they all are a nice step and we have one more question in our shared table here is that okay? Go ahead Chris. This is Tina Watt, a long range planner at the city of Prince George further from Chris's question in regards to service provision I guess some of the probably pooled we're thinking of is they're already closed and looking at the various different uses that could potentially go in there and working in partnership with the school district but my concern with the servicing aspect is to where the location of these schools are if you're introducing for that commercial office use so in any of the research moving forward on this as something to consider is that mind use planning perspective is how your maybe this is one of those questions of oh this is how we've always done it but there is also concerns from existing residents within that neighborhood that would have concerns having a commercial office use to map servicing. There are other services that are different from office uses and could detract from other revitalization projects for example. Just a comment. Absolutely and that parking would be an example of a change use so yes, that's on our radar. Thank you. Thanks very much. Jim Newman if you could hit star 7. The question for Gary Champagne in Wells and it's just wondering was there any economic development correlation done between the increase in taxes to the community and the new families that were attracted to the community because of the school being there and any new businesses that opened. I have to say there was no formal formal analysis done but at the point where the school was closing the community was essentially at probably it's one of its lowest points our population was dropping businesses were closing families were moving out it's it's difficult to put numbers to it but I mean there was a clear change once the school was secured everything changed I guess it's an easy way to put it and everything has been pretty good since so it was one of those situations where it was like a turning point in the community and part of that might have also been the result of the fact that the community came together so well in terms of common goals to save the school and that energy was transferred into the community in positive ways. I don't think that really answers your question but more or less the answer to your question is no there was no formal analysis done we're just not in a position to do that sort of thing we're all okay thank you Gary and Jim, Jim for your question Jim if you could change your indicator back to green if you don't have a further question and Chris Bohn I'd ask the same unless you do have a question for us we're certainly very keen to have any questions you may have please don't be hesitant if you have any questions let us know please start 7 again and ask your question can you hear me? please go ahead we can again if you can and I guess I'm moving a little bit beyond poor clinics at the moment and I'm thinking of the town of Masset and I think there's some real possibilities there because of the strategic planning session I just attended at the high school which did identify for more involvement in the community and the learning process which really ties in with this neighborhood learning center and of course we have a library as well and the synergies of bringing the various facilities together at the high school possibly and I know there's been some discussion of even combining the elementary school to Hagan with the DOS in high school has there been any discussions ensuing about expanding that concept to Masset or Charlotte for that matter? actually with where we had the most discussions is with SandFit because in other island there really needs to be a school there but again they're in the same situation that poor Clements was and that we've got a small school and their school population fell to 28 students this year so we really have been trying to work with the municipality there in SandFit about sharing you know both in Masset too at to Hagan and at GMD of course those were schools that were built for three and four hundred students and we're now down to 110 students in GMD and just over 107 students in to Hagan so you know these are ongoing discussions that we need to have with the communities but at this point there has been no you know no decisions made about closing schools or any of that kind of stuff in fact the Board hasn't even discussed those issues I realize it's not about close closure schools but the dialogue that took place with the strategic planning process up at Gotham really indicated both from the administrative feature side right through the family side right through the student side and through community organization side that there's a need to integrate the school with more community based kind of connection in terms of learning process to improve the opportunities for the kids through the learning process and maybe by you know maybe looking at this from a different perspective you know so we don't shut down doors just look at us creating a whole new learning environment which sort of will promote better education within that community and provide more facilities particularly to provide more public facilities as you know we've lost our recreation center and sort of build those kind of synergies that make the community a little massive somewhat more vital which could help start rebuilding it by attracting people to move back rather than moving out where I'm all for that and we have taken some tentative steps we are now doing a day care for example along with our strong start into Hagan and we've moved out of what was the old learning center and that's available for rent or even for recovery of cost for a community facility we did talk with the college there but they decided not to move in so yes those discussions need to happen and I agree that we need to work with the community to do that kind of thing but I would honestly tell you at this point there have been no plans made great thanks very much thanks Ken Jim Newman you're next please start seven we're still not able to hear you it might be working is that you know are you there are you there yeah we can hear you now go ahead alright this question is for Gary Gary from your presentation it seemed to me that there was a little bit of your community kind of battled every battle to to keep your school so my question is do you have any suggestions on how to approach school administrations or trustees do you kind of think out of the box to consider alternatives to school closures well that's a very good question and to paraphrase our situation we've been through a year where I mean we were fighting the school board tooth and nail there were demonstrations hunger strikes it was pretty intense in the end what it came down to was administration and just putting our cards on the table and having administrative to administrative discussion as to how we could solve this problem in a business like fashion and that's really how the agreement was finally formulated so in a way we have to park a year's worth of conflict essentially and sit down in fact we actually hammered that agreement out over a cup of coffee one afternoon in the superintendent of school's office and then brought it back to our respective political groups and got the board and the council to agree to it so I guess the advice would be sometimes it's better to just go for the business solution right away although perhaps the political bodies might not have been as willing to seek a settlement if we hadn't gone through that period of struggle so it's a difficult call I think each situation has to be assessed on its own merits so in your situation the bottom line was dollars and cents to the school board and how you could help them to fix their dollars and cents issue in a matter of speaking yes it was also in terms of the town's perspective it was the survival of the community it was at stake so we were heavily motivated to find a solution on the other hand from the school board's perspective I think they were heavily motivated to make the problem go away so together we were able to echo what was a relatively simple agreement and as I said it was basically a letter of agreement and it stood the test of time we're going into year 8 now with that letter of agreement it's got a 10 year term I've had some preliminary discussions with the current school board superintendent and they seem to be quite happy with the agreement as it stands and I don't think there'll be a problem in getting it renewed. Thank you. Thanks Jim thanks Gary Chris you're next on the list Eric Seven. This is one of the new students with Chris and this is a question for Claire we have a number of schools that have already closed in our community and I'm just wondering if you have any examples of other communities where their facilities have reopened or in the process of reopening under this type of model or another model. I'm going to ask Ben or Phil to remind me the name of the school Vancouver Island that's closed and then reopened it's on our website you're going to challenge me we can get back to you though Chris because there is an example of a school that's closed and has reopened that would be great thank you Ben you've got a question well I don't have a question I just wanted to make a comment to Jim's question and Gary's response you know we ended up in different places certainly Wells and Fort Comet but you know what the impetus was still the same and there was still a desire of the school district and the community in both cases to end up working together to provide a solution and as I said in my presentation you know the real desire of the people in both the school board and the community with the support of the ministry to do a solution seems to work and while our examples are very different certainly the results and the reason that we ended up in that place were very similar questions out there comment we do actually have a few questions perhaps we could propose a view we do have a couple questions here we thought we could ask these back to you please respond to these how often do your community schools and local government interact is there is there anyone there that could speak to that particular question or is that a question for the audience here is there anyone there that could speak to that question and in their particular example well I don't want to it's Ken Campbell again I don't want to you know we don't do it enough I mean we were forced to with Fort Comet because we're in the same building as them so we see them quite often but it needs to it should be done more often in my opinion please go ahead please art if you hit star 7 anybody there go ahead okay I hear on the islands working in all of the communities I've often found the schools and I don't have involvement with local government but certainly working with lots of nonprofit organizations and other local groups I know there's been a level of receptiveness by the schools to allow local groups to use them out of school hours often when they plead bankruptcy or some other form of no-money other schools do kind of help out in helpful kind of ways so one thing that I feel is it's not sort of a coordinated thing it seems to be very ad hoc and it certainly could be helpful for schools in rural areas which are facing various kinds of challenges among them potential school closures to take a more proactive be more proactive about getting the community to use those schools and working with community groups not just with the municipalities to discover how that could best be achieved Can I start? Wendy, are you there? Could you please hit start seven and make your comment can you hear me now? Yes, please go ahead I work in a community school and the local government that I most often interact with is the Parks and Recreation Department of our municipal government and that works out quite quite well in terms of day-to-day communication we try to work collaboratively we're on Vancouver Island there's a joint use agreement for space in the schools between school the school district and the local municipal government I haven't been able to get my hands on it and have a look at that and I don't know how successful it is in satisfying the needs of both groups but I think that somebody mentioned that communication was one of the strategies I think that there is a room for a lot of improvement there and I think that the school community connections concept is the way to go for that especially as we have a lot of smaller communities and we're always interacting with each other so it makes sense to be consulting with each other on all these topics as well I do have a related question in that I'm interested in how community schools as they exist now fit into the neighborhood learning centers and we don't have in our area the same needs that have been shown by the two presenters today which is really interesting but also really dramatic closures to be faced and strong, strong needs aren't as great but we don't want to lose what we have and we want to keep the positive things that the community schools are already doing in our area and it would be interesting to know how we can do that within the neighborhood learning centers concept thanks thanks very much Wendy so it's Claire here and I can respond to that but first before I do I just want to let Chris know that Rob Ron is the school that closed up in Campbell River and then reopened and there's another example in the north of the province and we'll figure that one out and get that one back to you but in terms of how community schools fit within the neighborhood learning center paradigm they are a part of the mix but the way we think about them is it is a model that has largely coalesced around schools with large populations of vulnerable students and it has a coordination function and services to support those students and whereas neighborhood learning centers is broader than that it's intended to support the general population that it isn't a model of functioning or a governance board it can look lots of different ways and sometimes think of them as a continuum and at the one end of the continuum are community schools that are fully fleshed out and developed model but really are only one so we would certainly count all community schools as neighborhood learning centers but not all neighborhood learning centers are community schools so that's how we distinguish them we are working really closely with ACPCS which is the association of community educators and in fact we're there doing some contract work for us and to support this initiative and we have learned lots and have used lots of examples of how they work on our website and they include lots of stories on our success stories so I think that's the distinction in terms of continued support for community schools I don't think we're going to see government specifically supporting a model like that that's something that's negotiated with school districts and I don't see that changing and certainly there's probably 100 community schools approximately in the province and so clearly there's quite strong interest in community schools and lots to be learned Does that answer your question Wendy? I think so Thanks Claire, thanks Wendy Is there any other comments, questions you know there was another question there that touched upon but how often have your community schools and local governments consulted with each other regarding community use of state Is there anyone who wishes to comment to that or any examples within their community? Another question I would be interested in putting out there for either people to answer for those who are online or to answer afterwards is how government can engage better within the municipal sector to support this type of work and so advice on how to do that would be appreciated Hey please, star 7 we're still not able to hear you so that's star 7 please We'll be trying but it still doesn't seem to get there Are you there now? I'm just going to open up all the lines right now so wording out there everyone We can hear you Just a moment The conference has been unmuted All lines are now open Renee, please go ahead Hi, can you hear me now? We can hear you now I just had a comment with respect to engaging local government with this issue One of the challenges that our board faces and I'm sure we're not too unique in this is the concern about getting too involved with supporting the schools because basically it accepts the provincial downloading and puts the onus of funding for schools in local government and there's some philosophical discussions that happen around our board table about whether that's appropriate we certainly see a role in trying to keep our communities and especially our rural communities active and vibrant and see education and schools as a key part of that but philosophically it's been something that our board really challenged with is how involved that they want to get with this It's clear, I mean if I could respond a little bit I can appreciate that perspective what we're trying to get to is the better use of the space not necessarily offset costs for schools but also the broad vision would be that it wouldn't be just consultation around how schools were used it would be the broader community, so how that space is used and sort of that broader ownership of those public spaces I'm not explaining that very well but for instance if the municipality had a greater need for recreational space before building something new and separate they would look to the school whether you use that space differently or add to it versus doing something separate because that's how we're trying to see that but certainly I appreciate your perspective Great, thank you Vinay and Allison Any more questions out there, comments You heard a little background noise there I think, I'm not sure if it was comments, Paul, Matt, Jan for further comments, questions We would like to sincerely thank the presenters that joined us today, Gary and Kim on the line thank you very much and Claire and your team in the room we really appreciate that these webinars would not be possible without you and thank you to all the participants that have joined on the line just a reminder that you will be receiving a survey and we strongly encourage you to give us your feedback the only way to make these valuable and meet your needs so we look forward to receiving that and with that we will sign off and say thank you Thank you Maybe you can send a reminder that if you want to download any of the handouts online that those will be available probably for the next 15 minutes and then only by emailing us