The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Dear Editor: Thank you for printing my rather lengthy letter of November 6 and permitting me a few additional comments. In my original letter I questioned the ability of Creighton to save any money when they try to operate a school with 30 or 40 students per grade. With the diversity required for a good education today, students need many options to prepare themselves for university or the world or work. It is financially impossible to offer classes to 10 or 15 students or less. The only way Creighton would save money would be to have larger classes and offer little or no choice of subjects to students. I would like to make some additional comments at this time. Mr. Brown stated in his Reminder article that a high school of 120 students would be above average in size in Saskatchewan. Perhaps, but in the south many schools are 15 or 20 miles apart. School divisions designate one school for university bound students, another for vocational or general students, and perhaps designate another school for special programs, etc. Unfortunately Creighton would not have the luxury. If you are a parent in Creighton and your child required Calculus, Physics, or Chemistry in order to attend university and the small high school is not able to offer it. What do you do? Another concern is the lack of critical competitive mass. By this I mean that presently there are over 100 students in Grade 12 at Hapnot. They compete with each other in a healthy way. There is a goodly number of hard working high achieving students who act as role models. To illustrate the importance of this critical mass, I give the example of Snow Lake and Leaf Rapids. During the 21 years I was an administrator at Hapnot, the graduating students from Flin Flon, Snow Lake, and Leaf Rapids competed for the most prestigious HBM&S scholarship named the W. Green Award. See 'Students' P.# Con't from P.# Hapnot won the award 20 times out of the 21 years. Yet the combined enrollment of Snow Lake, Leaf Rapids was probably 30% to 40% that of Hapnot's. By numbers they should have won the award every three years or so or seven times over the years I was principal. Why didn't they? They had some excellent students, but I don't believe they were pushed, they didn't have the academically challenging atmosphere required to push themselves to be their very best. This seems to be the same as athletes who do their best with competing with other world class athletes. I am also concerned by statistics from small high schools in southern Manitoba, which I believe will be similar to small high schools in Saskatchewan. The provincial average for students continuing on to post secondary education (university, college) is about 20-25%. In small community high schools the average is 10-15%. At Hapnot the average has been over 50% for many years. If the Creighton School Board is concerned about the extra space at the Community School and want to make efficient use of their money, what about renting the space to government agencies or other groups as has been done at Ruth Betts School and the old Administration Building. I suggest the Creighton Board could discover the viability of a small high school by asking the grade 10 and 11 students at Hapnot and Many Faces what subjects they want next year. A timetable could then be created and the board would know very quickly how many teachers they will require and what subjects they could or could not offer. I would also suggest asking the students what they want. In closing I urge the school boards of all the communities to be creative and show leadership in solving this problem. A joint board of governance with representatives from Denare Beach, Creighton, Flin Flon, Big Island, and Bakers Narrows is needed to allow parents to participate in their children's education. This model is already in existence in Lloydminster on the Saskatchewan/Alberta border. Yours in Education, Glenn Smith, Hapnot Principal (Retired)
