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Letter to the Editor

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.

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 Sir: The public is quick to criticise spending at both the Federal and Provincial levels. It is difficult to sympathise with this criticism if we sit back and allow unwarranted expenditure at the community level. Because we live in communities which straddle a provincial boundary we see endless duplication of services between Creighton and Flin Flon. Whether or not this duplication is warranted is debatable. Does the combined population of Flin Flon and Creighton warrant having two post offices, two fire services (three if you include HBMS) or two police stations? Now we are faced with the possibility of Creighton School becoming a Pre-kindergarten to Grade 12 facility. Let's look at this logically. The population of Flin Flon and Creighton is declining. Nowhere is this more apparent than in school enrollment across the area. Common sense dictates that as numbers decrease, schools will amalgamate. Yet we are being told that it makes financial sense for Creighton School to become a high school with perhaps 100 students all told in grades 10 to 12. At the same time this is going to result in a reduction of 100 students at Hapnot Collegiate. It goes without saying that a reduction of 100 students at Hapnot is going to result in either reduction in choices or increase in taxes to maintain those choices. The educational opportunities for our children are going to be diminished. The proponents of this plan maintain that they will be able to provide the Creighton students with the same level of choices that they currently enjoy at Hapnot at less cost. This is nonsense. One of the advantages of a larger facility is that more choices are available. This is true not only for academic courses but also for cultural and athletic choices. A lot of the financial advantage to Creighton apparently will result from grant money. Last time I checked, grant money came from the government which came from us, the taxpayer. The Creighton School quite rightly points to the nurturing atmosphere at their school and its importance to the aboriginal community. This is the most valid point they make and it really does need to be addressed. So what do we do? The taxpayers of Flin Flon, Creighton and Denare Beach must insist that the issue be resolved in a manner that continues to provide a high level of educational opportunity to all high school students at a single facility that also allows and encourages the needs of the aboriginal community to be addressed. The taxpayers of Creighton and Denare Beach need to be represented on the Flin Flon School Board. The provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan need to be involved. We are allowing the artificiality of the provincial boundary to distort the fact that we are actually one community. It is in all our interests, but especially those of our children, to recognize this. Ð Sincerely, Buz Trevor

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