Mr. Speaker, last night the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board, at the request of the Nova Scotia provincial department of education, voted to put five small rural schools on the path to closure.
When you close a small rural school and it is the only school in that community, it makes it very difficult for a small rural community to grow. It makes it difficult to attract new, young families to rebuild the rural economy. I call upon the minister of education and the school board to work with those communities and do what they can to keep at least one school open in each of those small rural communities.
Closing a small rural school when it is the only school in the town has the same effect on that community as closing every school in the city would have on Halifax. It would be devastating to the city of Halifax, but the same thing happens to a small rural community when all of its schools are closed.