The Dunster Fine Arts School Society is continuing the fight to keep its 27 students in their community, following the recent decision that no classes will be taught in the building for the 2010/11 school year. 

Bryan Mix, secretary treasurer of School District 57 confirmed that there would be no curriculum offered by the district for the coming school year. The decision was made on March 30 by the school board that the school would be closing. Since then the society has switched its focus from getting classes to run again this year, to purchasing the building for the 2011/12 school year. 

“The main thing being right now is to try to get the building and land and go from there,” said Chris Taylor, former president of the school’s Parent Advisory Committee, who now heads the society. 

Mix said the decision was based on the high cost of running the school for such a small amount of students. A school board report saw enrolment at the Dunster school was expected to decline to about 14-15 students in the coming years. Mix said Dunster is not alone in its loss of their small school.

“Small rural schools are closing all over the country,” he said, adding that schools like the Dunster Fine Arts School are expensive to keep running. 

The building itself, which was built in 1954, is in need of repairs, but Taylor said they are ready for that challenge. 

“Obviously there’s some work to be done in there but nothing we can’t handle,” she said. 

Both the school board and the society have had independent engineers audit the building. The school board was told the building had a 23 per cent audit score, which means the building is in poor shape. 

One particularly hot issue surrounding the school is that the land it sits on was initially donated to the school board from the community. Taylor said the playground, gym and other infrastructure was put in by community donations and manpower. 

“That was all donated by community money and community built,” she said. 

Mix would not comment on any negotiations on the sale of the land citing privacy regulations the school board has in place for property matters, adding that the decision to release any information about discussions between the two effected parties can be made by the Dunster Fine Arts School Society. 

Taylor said the society has an issue with the sale of land that was donated by the community, and they hope to address that at a future meeting with the board. 

“There’s a bit of a grey area there,” she said. 

Handing the land over to the society is something that has to be handled as per government regulations surrounding the transfer of land, Mix said. 

“The law of the land is important,” he said. 

The staff that was at the Dunster Fine Arts School have all been placed elsewhere. Mix confirmed that many of the teachers went to schools in McBride. 

For the upcoming school year the 27 students will be bussed to schools in either McBride or Valemount, depending on what each parent decides. Another possibility is home schooling. 

“I know that there’s been quite a few people that have spoke of home schooling,” Taylor said. 

The bus ride to either town is a minimum of a half-hour, possibly more for students further away. Taylor said parents just want their kids closer to home. 

“It’s not even necessarily the bus ride that’s the issue, but people want their kids schooled in their own community,” she said. 

For now, Taylor said they are working on communicating with the school board to develop a plan. 

“We are actually still trying to get a face to face meeting with the school board,” she said. 

Mix said the school board would also like to meet with those involved to discuss matters privately. 

“We hope that we can get into some sort of private discussions with them,” he said.