School district resumes local parents meetings

By Tara Nelson

A series of community meetings examining issues surrounding Point Roberts primary school will continue this year.

Blaine school district superintendent Dr. Mary Lynne Derrington said she and school board member Red Goodwin plan to meet with Point Roberts community members during the coming months to improve the communication between parents and school officials.

“Last year, myself and a board member started coming up here and talking to the community,” Derrington said. “We wanted to continue those meetings.”

One of the challenges in the Point Roberts area is how to address the issue of lack of enrollment. Enrollment for kindergarten through third grades dropped from 24 students last year to 10 students this year likely because of the elimination of one teacher and one grade. As a result of this, many parents are shipping their third graders to Blaine and more are pulling their second and first graders out of the school early.

Parent teacher organization (PTO) member Linda Hughes, said she suspects a large number of those parents are sending their children to private schools or home schooling them. She said she thinks approximately 30 children in Point Roberts are being home schooled and another possible 30 are being schooled in private schools such as the Tsawwassen based South Pointe Academy in British Columbia. A survey would help correct or confirm those numbers, she said.

“We know families who have either moved to Canada or have either taken up a second residence there so they could put their children in Canadian schools,” she said. “We feel there’s a significant population we’re not meeting.”

Hughes said the PTO helped start the meeting series a few years ago in cooperation with Derrington and said she thinks they are a step in the right direction.

“I am looking forward to it,” she said. “It’s a great little campus and we’ve got to do everything we can to support it. If we teach them well, teach them young, it will be a win-win situation for everybody.”

The first meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, October 19 at the Point Roberts primary school and will discuss educational needs of students who live in Point Roberts and the possibility of creating a survey to gauge those needs. It will also explore future meeting topics. Former meeting topics included transportation, food service and technology. For more information, call the district office at 360/332-5881.