Why bother?

How does that old saying go? He who has the money makes the rules (or words to that effect).
That’s obviously the case with the Ministry of Education, which denied the Rainy River District School Board’s application for funding to build a new Donald Young School in Emo.
The future of DYS, as well as Sturgeon Creek in Barwick and Crossroads in Devlin, has been a topic of hot debate since the public school board first gave the go-ahead to hold formal accommodation reviews for all three schools back in June, 2011—spurred by the fact DYS had been deemed “prohibitive to repair” by the ministry some eight years earlier.
And as expected, parents, former students, staff, and community leaders vociferously supported keeping their respective schools open. So effectively, in fact, that trustees, at their meeting on Feb. 4, went against administration’s recommendation to consolidate the three schools.
Instead, they voted unanimously to keep DYS, Sturgeon Creek, and Crossroads open, as well as pursue building a new DYS on its existing site—contingent, of course, on Ministry of Education capital funding approval.
Well, evidently the ministry didn’t like that decision because the funding did not come through. And now the board essentially is back to where it was in 2003.
It’s unknown whether the ministry would have considered DYS a high enough priority to warrant funding for a new school this time around had the board gone against public opinion and approved consolidating the three district schools into one.
Reading between the lines, however, the ministry made it crystal clear that any funding for a new DYS down the road hinges on consolidation.
Which begs the question: why bother having these accommodation reviews in the first place if the ministry already had determined the acceptable outcome?
Sure, it appears more funding will be available to the board in the coming years for school repairs—but that’s just throwing good money after bad for a school deemed “prohibitive to repair” some 11 years ago.
The same holds true for Sturgeon Creek and Crossroads if—as the ministry indicates—their days are numbered anyway.
Most galling, though, is that all the work of the respective Accommodation Review Committees over the past three years was for nought and public input means squat.