The 2016 Rural Education Symposium offers a beginning; making connections and advancing the rural community voice, advancing collective advocacy and building capacity for rural school, recognizing that motivated individuals are the engine that drive change, as we mobilize singular efforts into a collective movement provincially.
2016 Symposium voice of the participants as a call to action:
Rural community members (parents, municipal leaders) can be collaborators by becoming engaged and communicating with Trustees, and attending school board meetings
Rural communities need to market their community, job opportunities that are in the community for secondary students and local employment post-secondary
Develop a Rural Education Centre, through this initiative create partnerships with conservation authorities, municipalities, local business, farms/agriculture sector, and the school board
Encourage and promote urban and rural student interactions
Rural education is fundamental to rural Ontario; make this an election issue, for example; protest at Queens Park, write letters to MPP’s, invite MPP’s to public meetings
Encourage urban centers to be aware of the issues in rural Ontario, farmers feed Ontario cities
Be proactive; support or develop a “School Advisory Committee” connect municipal and parent leaders, working together serves as a unified voice, increases communication and a broader knowledge of the issues, challenges and options
School funding formula restrictions: school boards are limited, Ministry education policy prevents meaningful dialogue (top-up funding is being phased out)
Rural communities need to understand the informal culture of school boards, to know what the drivers and values are
Increasing public awareness of the rural voice through social media
Continue this dialogue, schools are an asset to the local community, rural communities must also band together
Be a rural school advocate, no one can be apathetic!