Conclusion

Governments and school boards in the Maritimes have been struggling to solve the problems of delivering an effective public education system with decreasing revenues and increasing costs. This is particularly true in rural areas. As long as education funding is based on student population, Maritime communities will be threatened with school closures whenever enrolments decline. Once closed, community schools have never been reopened under the public system. Communities that have lost their schools fall into social and economic decline from which they may never recover.

It has been the endeavour of the New Learning project to demonstrate that these problems can be solved, and that communities can thrive through the development of community-based solutions. The New Learning project proposes that we need to get better at running small schools because students learn better in their home communities and all generations of citizens benefit from the local development and life-long learning that is nurtured through community-based education.

The differing needs of students demand a diversity of programs and structures. The New Learning Guide presents basic information on current opportunities to improve and enhance public education in the Maritimes. The Guide contains an overview of the range of alternatives that may be employed and it proposes that each community is best equipped to determine the form of education that will most effectively serve its students.

The Community-Operated Public School proposal has been presented as an example of how local resources can be used, not only to preserve the benefits of community-based education, but also to enhance the public education system. This example of a charter-type school may be applied to schools in the Maritimes that have become nonviable under the public system. The concept of the Community-Operated Public School is a challenge to governments and school boards to rethink the dominant restructuring plans that call for the closing of community schools and the busing of students to central schools far from home.

The establishment of alternatives such as the Community-Operated Public School requires change in provincial laws governing education. The New Learning Guide articulates strategies for awareness-building, organizing, and advocating for such change.

The New Learning project is a work in progress. It is designed to be an open "tool box" of information to be used by individuals, organizations, communities and governments to create better education systems in the Maritimes and beyond. The concept of New Learning will continue to be developed in the new millennium, as students, teachers, parents and communities employ the opportunities of our democracy to create avenues to successful learning for present and future generations.