The School Board Trustees from SD74 met on Jan 5/2021for their standard monthly meeting. Many items were presented and talked about during this meeting, the Ashcroft Elementary School parts are in the latter half of this write up.

There was an in depth presentation given by the Secretary Treasurer Lynda Minnebarriet in regards to the renovations that took place in the now Lytton K-12 school, Unfortunately their power point presentation is not accessible by the HON.

Here is an excerpt from the Ashcroft Cache Creek Journal from September about this to give a little context “The renovation project to convert Kumsheen Secondary School (KSS) in Lytton to a K–12 school is well underway, with the work scheduled to be complete in December 2020. Students in grades K through 7 have returned to Lytton Elementary until the work is finished, at which time they will join the secondary students at the newly-converted KSS, and Lytton Elementary will be closed. 

The new school will be the third largest K–12 facility and amalgamation in School District No. 74 (Gold Trail). In 2010 Clinton Elementary was closed and students were moved to a converted David Stoddart Secondary, and in 2015 Ashcroft Elementary closed, with Ashcroft Secondary converted to Desert Sands Community School”. End of excerpt.

A main topic of discussion was the Ashcroft Elementary School building which is now the Ashcroft HUB; The actual motion on the floor was: “Over the last several years, the Board has reviewed surplus properties no longer required for educational purposes and disposed of properties to allow funding and staffing to be focused on open schools. Since 2013, the Board has disposed of nine properties. The Board has approved proceeding with a property disposal process for the former Ashcroft Elementary School which includes hearing from local communities on the potential disposal. The building is currently leased to the Ashcroft HUB Society. It is recommended that the Board meet with local Indigenous communities and municipalities and hold a public meeting to gather input on this topic. It is likely that the meetings would occur via Zoom. A process to allow for written feedback to be submitted would also be available. The Board would then consider the community input when determining next steps in the disposal process. Approval from the Ministry of Education is required before the property can be disposed of or sold.

With the Recommendation: "THAT the Board of Education approve proceeding with a community consultation process on the possible disposal of the former Ashcroft Elementary School.” End of motion"...

In the first question period Juanita, the chair of the HUB society board spoke about all of the good things that the HUB has done for the community since it started, and she reminded the trustees that the HUB is currently in the middle of a 9 year lease with the school district, she also asked that this motion be tabled until things are in a more certain time (meaning when COVID is done).

Trish from the South Cariboo Elizabeth Fry Society thanked the HUB for stepping up when COVID started, and helped to create the local area helpline, and stepped up when the food bank needed space to store food over the last several months.

When the main discussion started, Trustee Trill recused herself. Trustee Ranta was first to speak and put the motion on the floor for discussion, and was also the first to say that she wanted the beginning of the disposal process to take place (the first step being public consultation). Orra Storkan was the only trustee member that did not show outright support for this motion.

Many of the trustees did mention that there had been an influx of letters showing support for the HUB, and that “they look forward to many more”.

Once the motion had passed, there seemed to be confusion from the trustees about what this motion meant, as each trustee had a different idea about that. Trustee Aljam spoke about just straight out selling right away, Trustee Casper stated that there are many different ways to dispose of district facilities, Trustee Storkan asked several times about time frames and how this motion actually starts, trustee Ranta just wanted the proceedings to start, and Chair Remple on more than one occasion had to remind the other Trustees about what this motion actually means.

There were talks about the facility still costing the school district $27,000 a year in maintenance and grounds keeping fees, and since the school district was not benefiting directly from the HUB this is a good time to look at this process.