Perfect partners

One of the many impacts of the impending closure of three elementary schools here is the future of Fort Frances Nursery School, which currently is housed in Alexander MacKenzie, one of the schools on the chopping block.
Needless to say, the nursery school’s board has been studying options to keep this valuable service going here—and just last month asked the Rainy River District School Board to proceed with an extension on the J.W. Walker expansion project to house the school once Alexander MacKenzie was closed.
Trustees agreed, in principle, provided the public school board wasn’t on the hook for the additional costs.
Problem solved? Not quite. The nursery school board has since wisely realized that while parental support was there to run the program, facing the costs of maintaining a building was an entirely different kettle of fish.
Now there’s word the nursery school board has opted, instead, to look at hitching its wagon to the Fort Frances Public Library, which also is looking to expand down the road.
Granted, while there are still plenty of i’s to dot and t’s to cross before anything formal can be arranged, such a partnership between the nursery school and library appears to be a perfect fit. The library has been focusing on so-called “early years” education of late, with its “Mother Goose” and “Tales for Twos” programs, among others.
As such, many youngsters already will be very familiar with the library before heading off to nursery school, whose purpose—preparing youngsters for the formal setting of school and structured learning—is the logical extension to what the library is doing.
Clearly, this is a win-win situation. The nursery school gets a permanent home while the library, with such a partnership, likely could access more or larger government grants to help fund its expansion.
The rest of us win because these two excellent community assets will continue to thrive in Fort Frances.