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Better Farming
February 2017
RURAL
SCHOOL
CLOSURES
M
ajesta McClure and Wayne
Elder met at Chesley
District High School in
central Bruce County.
Now settled with three children
and 65 beef cows on the farm where
Wayne grew up, the couple had
assumed their children would follow
them to CDHS. This fall, for the
second time in five years, the Elders
have had to fight for that idea.
Their old high school is known
now as Chesley District Community
School. The school got its new name
when the Bluewater District School
Board’s last accommodation review
juggled local facilities to include
children from kindergarten through
to grade 12.
This fall, the school became the
focus of study again. The school
board is considering a proposal for
the Chesley/Paisley area that could
close the only elementary school in
Paisley by 2018 and move all Chesley
secondary school students elsewhere.
The issue is more than simple
nostalgia for the Elders. They identify
the school with the qualities of
community and family life they hope
to maintain, such as growing cattle
and crops in an area of the province
where their forebears have thrived for
generations.
The McClures ran a historic, local
feed mill. Wayne is a 2002 graduate in
agriculture from the University of
Guelph. He farms with his father,
Keith, whose early education oc-
curred in a one-room school about
two miles away. Elders have farmed
here since 1861.
Wayne rode buses to school when
he was a kid, as do his two school-
aged children now. They attend
Sullivan Community School, a small
elementary school just north of the
Grey County village of Desboro.
Chesley family faces possible loss of local
school and agriculture curriculum
The Specialist High Skills Major Agri-Business program is based at the Chesley Community School.
Here, students can learn about agriculture.