PEI's Declining School Enrollment - An Opportunity?

The PEI Government has just released an excellent report on the School Enrollment Question. You can find the link to the PDF here.

As the chart shows, we are at a Tipping Point where the enrollment drops below numbers that can sustain the infrastructure.

A simple way out is to consolidate even further ending up with a few large schools and very very long bus rides. But as the report says very large schools do not often produce the best results. Closing many smaller rural schools may also spell doom for the community and drive yet more people to Charlottetown. The politics of closing local schools are tortuous.

I would like to offer up a few ideas for having our cake and eating it too.

• See Schools as the Hub of a  Distributed local local economy - To cope with the new energy reality - it will be best to push work and activity out to the communities - telecommuting - local local food, local local power etc. In this context, the school expands its role in the community and becomes the hub of all local social and work activity

• Use the web to gain diversity and resources - In the era of the one room school literacy was far higher than today but the price paid for more cohesion at the school - where children walked to school - where parents did work for the school - was that the social world was very very small. The web can extend the walls of a school not only to the next community but to the world. The one room school was also very dependent on the quality of the one teacher - again the web can open up the school to thousands of teachers

• Change the Model of teaching to facilitation - The industrial model of grade by grade and teaching at pupils is a product of the industrial school design that we have made the new normal. Have a look at this picture by Harris of the One room School: See how the teacher is not trying to teach at the entire room. See how the pupils have organized themselves into learning groups. see how some are teaching each other - see the interaction that is going on - see how some are on their own!

If you look into the "pattern" here - you will see a very different philosophy than the mass market model. I see a model very much more attuned to our own times and needs. I see the Web attached to this old/new idea. I see much lower costs but much better results.

I think what we are facing in schools is the same that is facing newspapers, TV, Car making etc. The industrial mass market process of building a very expensive Factory no longer works. Those that rely on the mass market factory - the printing press, the Studio, the production line and the unions and the work habits are dying. They can't maintain an ROI that will keep it going.

Instead - the web and the idea of a network is coming  up with a new more organic and distributed model that does make economic sense and also fits the people better.

I doubt that trying to keep the mass market factory model will work for our kids. After all it is a mass model.

I suspect that we can all win by exploring a network model. Please let's acknowledge that the factory model is failing everywhere and that we can best look at the alternative. Here are some suggestions

1. Let's experiment with a New Type of One Room School in one or 2 places. Here is more on why this will be worth while
2. Let's pick a community - why not Kinkora! - and test the idea of the school becoming the centre of the community and the buses the core of a new public transport system

Here is how I see this coming together - how we tie the new energy reality and demography into one big idea

Globe and Mail Online - APRIL 1 2019 - JANE NBOKO
PEI FARM INCOME BREAKS ALL RECORDS

The revolution is here. In the midst of a global melt down in farming all over the world, PEI gross farm income broke through the $1.0 billion mark for 2017.  Not only is PEI’ s farm sector booming but PEI is now 100% self-sufficient in electrical power and is 40% self-sufficient in fuel. With oil prices after the Iran war at $200 a barrel, energy self-sufficient PEI has become one of the most attractive places to live and work in North America.

Last year the population reached 212,000. Most of the new immigrants are young.

This shift in demography has eased the aging crisis that is confronting most of the developed world. At the centre of all of this is the “New Farm” a product of the Independence PEI Plan.

Governments and farmers all over North America and the world now routinely visit PEI to find out how they too can do this. Today we are making the same pilgrimage ourselves.

The Webster operation in Kinkora is a typical “New Farm”. We visited the patriarch, George Webster who still lives on the property of the farm that is now run by his sons and nephews. We met him down the road from the home farm in Maple Plains where we can see in microcosm the secret of the PEI revolution.

“As you can see on this part of the property we have 2 V90 turbines that are part of the Kinkora Energy Corporation’s (KEC) 12 V90’s. The Webster Farm has a direct income stream guaranteed for 20 years of $40,000 from these two turbines and, as an owner of the KEC, we receive a dividend each year from the larger system.

The KEC also put the old Scales Pond hydro plant back into action. Our local wind farm and Scales Pond supplies the wider Kinkora area with all its electrical power. With our wind and hydro, Kinkora was the first community on PEI to have 100% locally owned electric power. We are well on our way to be independent in biodiesel and in local heat as well.

This year we are growing a new high yield canola. We sell the canola to the KEC crushing plant in Kinkora on the site of the old Esso where it is made into biodiesel. We buy all our biodiesel from KEC - so in effect we buy from ourselves

Each Watershed on PEI has a small scale oil plant so our logistics costs are very low. KEC is in turn part of the PEI Independence Energy Alliance (PIEA) fuel network. All our Watersheds and our local watershed based businesses are connected in an Island wide energy network. Across the Island there are straw and methane operations as well.

You will see that all PEI school buses are painted green. This is how we started our biodiesel business. We used the demand to supply our school buses and to heat the schools to kick start our local fuel system.

Adjoining the school, and sharing its heating system, is the Kinkora Food Corporation (KFC) that is part of the PEI Independence Food Alliance (PIFA). Here we locally process food from farmers in our watershed for sale to the school system and to our local market. This was all part of our plan to give our kids a healthier start in life and to create a local processed food capability. Our children get access to a real breakfast and a real mid day meal. Parents and local resident can order meals online that are delivered
by the bus on the way home. All Kinkora residents own the KFC so we feed ourselves with real food grown locally.

When we started the menu was very modest. We stuck to the kind of food that my granny used to cook. By doing this we could use 90% local ingredients and we could use the skill of the typical person in our community. But as we learned more, we have expanded beyond a simple and narrow range to the kind of menu that everyone here can enjoy. Chef Michael Smith has been huge help as has the Culinary in town that has outreach courses for our staff.

We use the green buses not only to deliver our kids but to deliver everything and everyone locally. It’s funny how blind you can be. We had this local transport system sitting in full view! The school buses now work 7 days a week & 12 months of the year moving people and goods around locally. We also have an Island wide shuttle service. Kinkora is linked into the rest of the Island by a fleet of biodiesel and hydrogen buses. The hydrogen comes from the larger wind farms on the North Shore. It’s like having the trains back! We have cut the use of private cars down by 40%.

Kinkora is busy again. My granddaughters, and nearly all my young nieces and nephews, work now locally. Kinkora had become a dormitory and we had been losing our young to the west. As so many local businesses related to energy and food have sprung up, we can now employ most of our residents in good jobs here back in Kinkora. It is becoming a real community again.

We farm quite differently now. Our fields are much smaller than they were 10 years ago. They look more like they did when my father farmed. If you look over there into the lower ground, you will see trees and a water meadow. This is not wasted land. This is part of the local water buffer system that the Webster Farm also gets paid for. The Webster farm is a member of the PEI Water Alliance (PWA). PWA is responsible for all water on PEI and it has an attractive incentive plan that pays me and other farmers to improve water quality. We got this idea from upstate New York that has been paying its farmers for years now rather than having to pay for a water filtration system. Being a good land steward has become a good business.

Oh I nearly forgot - the potatoes! We still sell some of our crop to the processor. But now even he has had to radically change his business. Since McDonalds responded to pressure about how the Burbank was affecting the environment, the Green Fry, made from earlier maturing varieties, has become the new standard. We harvest now in late July and have a cover crop sown in time for winter. My fry business is about 25% of my gross and only 15% of my net. McCains also process my table stock for the Food Trust
that sells high end fresh pack to the supermarkets. With so much food now grown locally, there is not much of a market for bulk potatoes anymore.

My potato costs have dropped by 50%. Because we don’t grow the Russet now, we use smaller & less expensive equipment. We only store for very short periods now. My input needs are way down as both the pest and disease pressure has dropped. The PEI Independence Investment Fund (PIIF) helped finance the conversion on much of my potato storage into a pellet factory and a natural fuel storage facility.

We are running a series of tests on coppicing and on fast growing species that we can convert to pellets.  I have high hopes for this new line of business as we will have to reduce our traditional wood burning. Pellets are a lot easier to use and to store and the incentives for all Islanders to move to pellet is building the market. Over 50% of Island homes heat at least partially with pellets now.

We are doing so well because most of our market is internal to PEI. While the outside world is reeling, we  are making a good living by providing each other with what we all need the most.

What a change for a man my age. It all began back in 2008...........”