When Prairie South School Division approved their 2017-18 operating budget, Director of Education Tony Baldwin said one of the bigger decisions they made was in relation to transportation.  

"There are big changes in how we deal with rural catchment, how we deal with grandfathered transportation arrangements," said Baldwin in May. 

Since learning of those changes, one affected community is lobbying PSSD to rethink their decision. 

A number of families in Briercrest, a village of 159 (according to the 2016 Census) located about 40 kilometres southeast of Moose Jaw, are unhappy that the division is going to eliminate bus transportation to Moose Jaw schools from the community. 

Since the Briercrest school was closed in 2007, the town has been considered a "dual-catchment" area, with PSSD providing transportation from the Briercrest area to either Moose Jaw or Avonlea schools. 

With the 2017-18 budget, the Moose Jaw transportation option will be eliminated, though any students currently enrolled in Moose Jaw public schools will be "grandfathered" and will still receive transportation, though direct pickup from each household/farmyard will end. 

“We have to drive them to the nearest alternate pickup site, which will be at a farm around here," said Briercrest's Stephanie Funke, who has two children that attend Moose Jaw's Lindale elementary school. However, Funke's two-year old daughter won't have that option once she becomes of school age. 

"We we'll have to send one kid to Avonlea and two will still be allowed to attend Moose Jaw schools, she explained. 

For Baldwin, he said it was just another difficult decision for the PSSD board of directors, given a 4% decrease in provincial funding this year. 

"We think it’s about 350 miles per day (that buses won't have to travel), which corresponds to about an $80,000 savings throughout the school year (by eliminating dual catchments division wide)," he stated. "It’ll save us a teacher for sure, which is a unit of measurement we used to build our budget because the board was really committed to keeping teachers in the classroom.”

The one exception will be for students wishing to take French Immersion, which is not offered at Avonlea school.  Any new students wishing to take French Immersion can enroll in Moose Jaw's Palliser Heights elementary or Central Collegiate high school, and will be eligible for bus transportation from a designated pick-up spot near Briercrest. 

“We we still have a school division to run so we want to make sure there’s good access to programming for kids," said Baldwin.

Funke says they've been told by Prairie South that the French Immersion families will be reimbursed for mileage to travel to and from the bus stop, and wonders how much that will cut into the transportation savings the board says they will realize.   

“It’s not saving them any money to come into town," she said.

Funke says about 10 Briercrest students are affected and, after a pair of village meetings, a group is going to attend the next Prairie South board meeting June 13 in hopes of getting the transportation decision overturned.  

“We have about 65 division-wide.  Some are individual students that live on a farm, and there are others situations like Briercrest where there is a cluster of students in a small town.”