CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Kellerton’s Two Small Schools Debate

For over a century, the hamlets of Pine Hollow and Ashgrove have each maintained their own elementary school. The Kellerton School Division is now contemplating closing both and consolidating them in a single new building on the edge of Kellerton, about twenty-five kilometres from either hamlet. Between them, the schools enrol just 110 students from kindergarten to Grade 6, in classrooms that once accommodated twice that number.

Trustee Diane Mercer, chair of the facilities committee, finds the arithmetic unsentimental. Both buildings require new roofs, boilers and accessible washrooms, at an estimated $4.2 million, whereas provincial funding is reserved largely for new construction. Consolidation, she adds, would deliver a proper gymnasium, a science laboratory and a full-time music teacher in place of an itinerant one. “Small schools are charming,” she observes, “but charm doesn’t pay for a boiler.”

Rob Sinclair, whose two children attend Pine Hollow, never disputes the buildings’ condition; his quarrel is with the division’s accounting of human costs. His six-year-old’s fifteen-minute bus ride would lengthen to nearly fifty minutes each way. He calls that “a punishing day for a child who can barely tie his boots.” He foresees a wider unravelling besides: once the school disappears, young families stop arriving, and the store and rink follow.

Ana Pereira, who teaches a combined Grade 4–6 class at Ashgrove, is ambivalent. She treasures knowing every family by name, yet three grades in one room leave her overextended, particularly in mathematics. On balance she favours consolidation, conditional upon written limits on class sizes. Nor does the promised music teacher reassure her. “The division made the same pledge during a merger elsewhere,” she recalls, “and two years later it had quietly evaporated.”

Dr. Paul Lindqvist, a rural education researcher at a regional university, cautions against fixating on size, since evidence that small schools achieve superior results remains inconclusive. Prolonged commutes for the youngest pupils are another matter, eroding their sleep and all but precluding after-school activities. His compromise would keep kindergarten to Grade 3 in the hamlets and bring the older grades together in Kellerton, though he admits, “It’s hardly the most economical arrangement.”

I grew up in Ashgrove, and my grandchildren attend school there, so I read this with great interest. Ms. Mercer’s numbers are unanswerable: both buildings 6. Choose…are short of teachersshould pass to new ownershave become money pitshave lost music programs. But a gymnasium is cold comfort to a six-year-old facing 7. Choose…a class of thirtya much longer journeya travelling teachera hamlet without a store.

Even Ms. Pereira, who 8. Choose…juggles several gradeshas children at Pine Hollowchairs the facilities committeestudies rural schools, would accept a bigger school only with written limits on class sizes.

That is why Dr. Lindqvist’s idea appeals to me, since the little ones could 9. Choose…stay in Kellerton until Grade 3take a shorter routelearn under a music teacherstay near home at first. Yes, it would 10. Choose…cost more than one schoolsettle class sizesleave older pupils on long ridesdo nothing for the store, as he admits; I can live with that, and I suspect most grandparents could too. Small places lose more than a building when a school goes, and no spreadsheet captures that.