The Concept of a Community-Operated Public School for Margaree

At the day-long workshop on June 15th, participants established critical issues and priorities and identified opportunities and strategies for realizing the common goal of maintaining P-12 education in the Margaree community. The workshop unanimously passed a resolution to prepare a strategic plan for P-12 education in the Margarees that would enhance the current education system and that could be administered either by the Strait Regional School Board (Option 1) or, alternatively, as a community-operated public school independent of the School Board (Option 2).

With this clear mandate, the Margaree Education Coalition prepared a brief strategy for education in the Margarees and presented it to the newly amalgamated Strait Regional School Board at the October 1996 public consultation meeting in Margaree Forks. At that meeting, Margaree's two Home and School Associations and a number of other organizations and individuals also presented briefs and comments, all opposing the board's plan to close Margaree Forks District High.

Protest Against the Regional School Board's Restructuring Plan

After the October 9th consultation meeting, the Margaree Education Coalition continued to lobby School Board members. About 250 parents and children demonstrated at the School Board offices on December 4th, and presented to the School Board a petition of 756 signatures of parents and citizens not willing to allow their children to be bused outside Margaree. Around this time, the School Board received ninety requests from Margaree parents for home schooling application forms.

On the morning of 9 December, 1996 seven high school students, all of them leaders at Margaree Forks District High, surprised the community by taking over the school building. They wanted to make clear their determination to be educated in their home community and to urge the School Board to vote against the school closures outlined in its restructuring plan title The Future Is Now!!¹¹ The Board nevertheless voted in favour of the closure principle. After the seven students left the building on the morning following that vote, the entire student body of Margaree Forks District High joined their protest with a one-day boycott of classes.

The actions of the "Margaree Seven" spurred protests in other schools and helped galvanize a number of communities to resist school closures and busing. Through the facilitation of the Extension Department of Saint Francis Xavier University, twelve communities met together in January to discuss strategies for preventing school closures. The region-wide Education Coalition, which had representatives from all four counties within the Strait Regional School Board (spanning a distance of more than 300 kilometres), was formed to exchange information, consider strategies, and support one another's efforts to resist school closures.