Despite closing its doors to classes last fall, the Dunster Fine Arts School remains open for concerts, workshops, floor hockey and other community events.

All of the events held in the community-owned school, formally known as the “core” of the community, are fundraisers to pay the mortgage, utilities, insurance and upkeep.

The next fundraiser, a concert by bluegrass and country duo Pharis and Jason Romero, is Feb. 4.

Seth Macdonald, who does the sound and lights for the shows and is also a parent of a former Dunster school student, said concerts usually attract about 50 to 100 people from around the valley.

But, he said, even with a turnout like that, it’s hard to make a profit.

“At this point, any funds that we raise go pretty much to paying off the mortgage and paying for the heat and upkeep of the building,” said Macdonald, whose daughter was home-schooled by volunteer teachers at the school, along with six other children, last year.

Macdonald said what the community would really like is to get some funding or to make enough money to reopen the school, in some form.

The school was shut down by School District 57 before the September 2010 school year began. At that time there were 27 students enrolled. 

Following the closure, community members protested by organizing a sit-in. On the fifth day, the school district obtained an injunction, forcing them to leave the school gymnasium.

In November of the same year, the community purchased the school from the district, but by that time, 20 of the school’s former students had already been enrolled in schools in either Valemount or McBride, leaving only seven to be home-schooled by volunteer teachers at the Dunster school.

The home-schooling program lasted until June of 2011, at which point another family enrolled their three children in a school in Valemount, leaving only four students in Dunster.

Macdonald’s nine-year-old daughter continues to study at home through a program called Self Design. 

Beginning this month, part of her program will include an art class at the school with the three other remaining students.

Macdonald said he’ll keep his daughter home as long as that’s what she prefers. But what he really wants to see is the school return to the community so she can be educated in Dunster among her peers.

He said the re-opening of the school would also breathe life back into the community. 

“It’s almost as if we have a missing lung now,” he said. “ Dunster school was to us the centre of our community.

“When it closed, or became barely operational, it took that community aspect away from us. It seems almost as if all the young people have left. That’s the hardest thing. There’s no children around hardly. All of a sudden we’ve become this bedroom community and it was never meant to be that way.”

Macdonald said there are a lot of ideas floating around as to how to get the school off the ground, but he thinks the real push will come a couple of years from now when a whole new crop of kids will be ready for kindergarten.

“Within a year or two we’ll have another 10 kindergarten students, so that’s kind of exciting. There’s a few young ones around,” he said. “I sort of foresee within that next couple of years that that will be where the real push comes from to reopen the school, almost starting from scratch.” 

To support the operation and maintenance of the school, check out Pharis and Jason Romero on Feb. 4. The doors open at 7 p.m.