Vote ‘yes’ to keep talking
On April 6, voters across this area will be asked to weigh in on a question that has long been posed to superintendents of the Abbotsford and Colby school districts. “When are you going to consolidate?” is a phrase they hear on a regular basis. Unfortunately, it is not a question they are truly qualified to answer.
It is up to the residents of the two neighboring districts to answer that question — one that has been nagging this area since at least the middle part of the 20th century. The prospect of combining the Abbotsford and Colby districts has never really gone away, not completely. It’s always lurking in the background. Whenever a new co-op sports team is formed or a teacher leaves one district to work for another, the question gets a little louder, at least briefly.
We believe it is time to go beyond idle chatter and confront the consolidation conundrum head on. With that in mind, we recommend voting “yes” on the advisory referendum question that will be on the April 6 ballot. The wording of the question was carefully crafted by the two school boards to make it clear that saying “yes” only means you want to see “further exploration and research of this idea.” It even stipulates that “another community vote” will be needed to go any further than the exploration stage.
It’s hard to say how an affirmative vote could do any harm, either to taxpayers or to students, staff and others involved in the two districts. In fact, getting the ball rolling on a long overdue discussion will empower local residents by giving them a voice in a hugely consequential decision. The superintendents of the two districts say public feedback will be instrumental in guiding the exploration process. Based on what they’ve said, we can foresee a citizens task force being formed and surveys being taken to find out where the current generation of parents, teachers and community members stands on this perennial debate.
Of course, answers to big questions rarely come cheap. Time and money will need to be spent to get the best possible data so that eventually a decision can be made on whether the two districts would be better off operating as one. It’s worth nothing that each of the districts have previously expended plenty of time and money preparing for past referendums, whether it was Abby’s 2008 vote to build the new elementary school or the 2016 Colby ballot initiative to pay for a host of facilities upgrades.
Recent efforts by Abbotsford district officials to raise money for a new pool and a multi-purpose dome have shown that community members continue to stand ready to support their local public schools. As Abby’s enrollment keeps growing, the need for more space and quality staff will only get more pressing. This makes the question of merging with Colby a more urgent one to address, just to make sure available classrooms and other facilities in the area are being fully utilized.
School consolidations in this area have not always been successful, of course. Anyone who has been around long enough knows the sad story of the Dor-Abby experiment, which failed after just three school years. The pages of our archives from that time period can teach us lessons about what went wrong. The question of where to build a new high school was left unsettled before Dor-Abby was formed, and that eventually proved to be the district’s undoing.
However, this line from the April 21, 1960, edition of the Abbotsford Tribune still rings true today: “Consolidation should be for the purpose of providing a higher grade of education, and should not be done just to be able to build a building or to benefit a small area or group of people in the district. It is time to set aside these petty differences.”
The Tribune-Phonograph editorial board consists of publisher Kris O’Leary and editor Kevin O’Brien
