Please mark Monday evening, March 7, on your calendar. That’s when School District 73 trustees will meet at Clearwater Secondary School to decide if they will ask the Ministry of Education for permission to transfer Dutch Lake School to District of Clearwater.
We want them to say yes.
Why? Because moving into Dutch Lake School would provide the Community Resource Center with its best option for long-term survival and growth.
We’ve written editorials before about how we see the CRC as a critical piece of the mechanism as Clearwater and area re-invent themselves for the 21st Century.
Education is key for an individual’s being able to adapt to change, and it is key for a community’s ability as well.
According to census data, this area has generally lower levels of education attainment than the provincial average . You even have to put up with the editor of the local newspaper who doesn’t have a journalism degree (“country trained” is the term – it used to be a compliment).
At the same time, we have any number of people with amazing practical skills – skills that, if developed properly, could be marketed worldwide.
We don’t need a MIT or a Harvard (not that we would say no if one were proposed). What we need is a small-scale, locally controlled community education facility where local people can go to upgrade their skills, and to teach their skills to others. In other words, we need the CRC.
Why can’t the CRC stay where it is? That building belongs to School District 73 and our understanding is, with Raft River Elementary getting close to capacity, the school district would like it back sometime soon.
Moving into Dutch Lake School would allow the resource center to partner into a multipurpose regional community center. Possible other functions could include a museum and archives, recreational facilities, and the municipal and ICBC offices.
Other potential partners, not just for the community center but also for the CRC in particular, would include Wells Gray Community Forest Corporation. The community resource center needs more secure sources of funding. WGCFC, once it gets better established, will need legitimate community causes for it to devote surplus funds to. It sounds like a potential match.
Such a partnership between CRC and the community forest could extend beyond the financial. For example, the resource center could use WGCFC terrain for teaching courses and conducting research.
Another potential partner for the CRC would be Thompson Rivers University’s education and research station in Wells Gray Park. The residents of the Valley have a unique heritage in the park and such a partnership would enable them to reap greater benefits from that heritage
