The Gronlid Central School will close July 2022. (Angie Rolheiser/northeastNOW Staff)

By Angie Rolheiser

Empty Hallways

Gronlid School will close its doors after 2021-22 school year

Oct 22, 2021 | 3:08 PM

The current school year will be the last for the Gronlid School north of Melfort.

Enrolment is sitting at 18 students from grades one to seven, but the school fell below the threshold of enrolment to stay open about three years ago. At that time, the North East School Division (NESD) worked with the community to put a plan in place through a sustainability review.

“For the last three years we have been operating with enrollment below the threshold to keep a school open in Saskatchewan,” principal Cassandra Neufeld told northeastNOW. “We have done a really great job accommodating what we needed to do to make it a good learning environment for the students and also make it a feasible thing for the school division to do.”

The review process recently came about again, and a decision needed to be made by the School Community Council.

“We just don’t meet any of the criteria to stay open and so our local SCC opted to vote to close the school instead of going through the review process,” Neufeld said.

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The time will be used to plan for the futures of students, such as where they will go to school, what bus rides will look like and for the community to plan what will happen with the building.

On Oct. 19, the North East School Division board made the final decision to close the school in July 2022.

Most students currently enrolled in Gronlid live in the Melfort boundaries so they will attend school in Melfort.

“This area of Gronlid stretches toward Nipawin and Tisdale as well so we do have some children that will be able to attend Nipawin schools as well as Tisdale schools,” Neufeld said.

The news although impactful, comes as no surprise to the community and school families.

“It was inevitable that it was going to come to this, and it just happened to be that enough time had passed that it was time to review again and so here we are and we know that this is the future,” Neufeld said.

Current staff at the school consists of two teachers, a teacher aid, administrative assistant and a caretaker.

Over the years, Gronlid School has had an outdoor focus as part of their learning.

“It is a really special thing that we do here to balance learning in the classroom with taking it outside and we bring what we learned outside back to the classroom,” Neufeld said.

Community partnerships and connections have been established by the school through outdoor learning.

“It has been a fantastic way for students to learn about what they need to learn in the curriculum but also about their community and their place and nature,” Neufeld said. “Just all of the pieces and wonderful things that come from being outside.”

Questions have been coming in to the school through families and community members since the final decision to close the school came down on Tuesday, according to Neufeld.

“People are curious as to what is going to happen and at this point in time, we are just starting to assemble what that will look like,” Neufeld said. “We don’t have a lot of answers at this point, but it is certainly something that our community will be involved in.”

Meetings will be made public so the community can be part of the process.

“This is really big for the community and is an impactful change,” she said.

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angie.rolheiser@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @Angie_Rolheiser