Time to dream

Sep 12, 2007

When children went back to school this month they were sent off for more reasons than imposing the 3Rs – and some peace and quiet on the home front.

Before the sliding glass doors of the big yellow buses swallowed their children whole, parents thought at least briefly about their offsprings’ future.

The journey to school can put them onto roads to far off places, or give them the tools to blaze a new trail home.

There’s just something about schools and dreams.

This fall, and this fall only, we all get to dream about the possibilities that a school can bring.

If you haven’t heard, there’s $18.5 million burning a hole in the Near North District School Board’s pocket. Funds intended to build a new high school for Almaguin. Hopes are that it will be open in 2010.

But before the shovels hit the dirt, or pens mark the easels, there is a moment to savour, to get excited about. To let the limits of our imagination fall away.

Like young ones running their fingers over a bright new backpack wondering about the friends to be made and the teachers to impress, we all have a chance to dream about what this school could be for Almaguin. Soon enough architects, engineers and contractors will fill our proverbial backpack up with homework.

At this stage there is no right or wrong, bad or good – just possibilities.

The new high school is going to sit on the same piece of property the old one now sits on. Might as well, the property is a tried and proven location.

But what else can go there?

For this one moment we in Almaguin should all presume that we and future generations deserve more. We deserve a theatre. We deserve a pool and exercise area. We deserve a well-stocked, well-connected and well-lit library.

The list could go on, but the point is that dreams are the starting point. This community – from Kearney to Loring – should dream together about a shared facility.

And why wouldn’t we?

There can be no rational argument against dreaming about the possibilities of what could be – of what we can achieve. To not dream would either be cowardly or to not care. Hardly examples we want to set for our children.

Accountants and bureaucrats get paid for their doses of cold water. Let’s not do their job for them nor even give them a place to start.

The other half of the coin is that the business of building schools has changed. No longer can trustees include those extras in a school and take out a loan to cover the difference. And what is considered a frill – a permanent stage – has changed. To build something worthy of Almaguin, Almaguin is going to need to get involved.

The Near North board is also about to embark on the next phase of the school closure process. As the public consultations start any small community’s facility that heads for the chopping block will have no shortage of defenders telling trustees and administrators how important their school is to them.

The same goes for this new school. We need to show how important it is to the community of Almaguin.