Domain School to close in June

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This article was published 13/03/2019 (2438 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Due to dwindling enrolment and less provincial funding for school divisions, Domain School will close after the end of this school year.

Red River Valley School Division trustees passed a motion to close the school at their March 11 meeting after receiving ministerial approval to do so late last month.

“We just couldn’t fund it,” said superintendent Brad Curtis. “It was strictly a fiscal decision.”

Curtis said closing the school will save the division approximately $200,000 in 2019-20.

Nine students now attend kindergarten to Grade 8 in Domain School and receive instruction from one full-time and one half-time teachers. Division projections show eight students expected to attend in 2019-20. At a community meeting held on Oct. 30, 2018 to discuss the school’s future, the division presented figures showing the cost of education per student is now $19,963, compared to approximately $7,880 per student attending J.A. Cuddy School in Sanford.

Curtis noted that two of this year’s nine students come from outside the division’s boundaries. About 13 students living in and close to Domain now attend other schools within RRVSD.

“The (Domain) students can all be accommodated at nearby schools,” he said. The cost of bussing the students will remain the same as all are already being bussed.

Curtis said the division will use the Domain building for divisional staff purposes in 2019-20.
He said he will be meeting with all the Domain students’ parents in the next few months to discuss the changes.

Curtis said it was a tough decision to have to close the school that’s been part of the community for many years, but with an $800,000 decrease in provincial funding for the coming school year, there was no choice.

“There was a time when we had flexibility in our budget,” he said. “It’s not getting easier. There’s not much left to cut while still providing services that students need.”

“This two per cent provincial (funding) cap is challenging.”

All seven of Leslie Enns’ children have attended Domain School, with two now in Grade 5 and 7.

She said, while she understands why the decision was made to close the school, she’s sad to see it go.

“It was a wonderful little school,” she said.

Division cutting costs
The division’s total budget for 2019-20 is approximately $32.6 million compared to about $32.1 million in 2018-19.

Curtis said as well as reducing the cost of operating Domain School, the 2019-20 budget contains reductions in staffing and bus costs.

“We’re not hiring at the rate we normally would,” he said, with seven new full-time teachers instead of 11 to be hires across the division.

Rather than buying three new buses to meet the normal replacement rate for the division’s fleet, two buses will be purchased in 2019-20. A new bus costs about $100,000.

The division’s One To The World project that sees over 1,300 computer tablets provided to all Grades 6 to 12 students is also being scaled back to include students in Grades 7 to 12.

The overall enrolment within RRVSD is expected to increase by seven students to 2,271 in September, with 13 more attending Oak Bluff Community School, eight more at J.A. Cuddy School, nine more at Starbuck School and one at Sanford Collegiate.

According to the division, the owner of a home within RRVSD assessed at $200,000 will see a drop of about $24 in education tax compared to the 2018-19 rate.

RRSVD trustees passed the 2019-20 budget on March 11.