SOUTH DUNDAS, Ontario – In a letter to South Dundas Township council, the doctors of the St. Lawrence Medical Clinic expressed their objections to the Upper Canada District School Board’s (UCDSB) Peer Accomodation Review which proposes to close 12 schools across the Board by July 2017.
“Realizing that bureaucrats align school closures with savings, it would seem prudent that the examination of the savings attained by closing schools be balanced against the broader costs of such closures to children, families and the economic costs to the communities affected,” the letter reads. “If this proposal is carried out, communities south of the 401 between Prescott and Cornwall, (approx. 90 km) will have only 2 primary level public schools (Iroquois and Rothwell-Osnabruck) and no high schools within their communities.”
The letter goes further and predicts real costs to the healthcare of students if these schools are closed.
“Because the students are away from their own community, there is less time and incentive to participate in sports or activities which are vital to developing a healthy life style and well being,” the doctors say in the letter. “Adding an hour to an hour and a half takes away from family time, study time, physical activity, and after school play, causing a further increase in the risk of childhood obesity, which is an ever increasing problem as it is. The long term implications and economic costs of this medical problem have obviously not been considered in the UCDSB decision.”
Even more than the immediate impacts on child healthcare, the doctors of St. Lawrence Medical Clinic predict a decline in healthcare in rural areas for years to come.
“As physicians, we are acutely aware of the difficulties of attracting new physicians to rural areas,” the letter states. “Given your proposal to transport children significant distances for their education it will be less likely that new physicians with young families will choose to settle in a community affected by these proposals. This will therefore negatively impact the access to health care for all members of the community.”
In its closing, the physicians claim that small rural communities have been “unfairly and unjustly targeted and who stand to lose far more than a school in the process.”
The full letter has been posted on the St. Lawrence Medical Clinic Facebook page and can be read here.
