Two more school boards in southeast Saskatchewan are talking about amalgamation. Weyburn Public School Division No. 97 and Prairie View School Division No. 74 will hold public meetings next week to explore the possibility of combining operations.

The Weyburn meeting will be held on Tuesday, March 25 in the Weyburn Junior High gymnasium at 7 p.m. The first Prairie View meeting will be held on Monday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m. in Ogema. Its second meeting will be held Wednesday, March 26 in Milestone School at 7:30 p.m.

Jan Chell, Weyburn Public's director of education, said Thursday that school divisions in southeastern Saskatchewan began holding talks with one another on amalgamation over a year ago when the province put the pressure on to get the number of boards reduced by 25 per cent.

Now Prairie View and Weyburn Public are the two divisions left talking with one another in this area, she said. Most of the other boards have ruled it out for the time being, she said. The three Catholic boards serving Weyburn, Radville and Estevan will amalgamate as Holy Family Catholic School Division, and Weyburn Central School Division will amalgamate with Radville School Division. Its new name is South Central Board.

Prairie View serves 600 students from the six communities of Yellow Grass, Milestone, Lang, Pangman, Ogema, and Avonlea. With Weyburn's 1,500 students, the new school division would serve about 2,300 students at most.

Prairie View education director Georgia Joorisity said Friday it's important the public knows these are informational meetings. "We're talking about the possibility of amalgamation, to see what we have in common." The board is still reviewing other possibilities than amalgamation with Weyburn Public, she said.

One of the key issues in the public sessions will be concern for student services, said Joorisity. In preliminary talks between the boards, Prairie View trustees found the two boards seem to think along the same lines as far as the values and philosophy for students, she said.

School closures will also come up as an important issue, she said. "It's a question always asked by small rural schools in amalgamation talks." Prairie View trustees have not discussed a moratorium on school closures but it may be something they will have to talk about, she said.

Chell said Saskatchewan is an anomaly with all its school boards. "We stand out in Canada as the last province with a large number," said Chell. Information from a Saskatchewan Learning website shows that while Saskatchewan has 100 boards for a population of less than one million people, Manitoba has 37 boards for 1.1 million people, Alberta has 62 boards for 2.9 million, Ontario has 72 for 11 million people and B.C. has 60 boards for 3.9 million.

Consultants from Saskatchewan Learning will make the presentation in Weyburn. But since no decision has been made to go ahead, there will some questions that can't be answered yet, said Chell

The location of a joint central administration office is one of those questions. Chell said even with amalgamation, the number of Weyburn students means the new building purchased this winter from EnCana by the Weyburn Public Board for $600,000 will be needed. The Milestone central office could remain open, too, she said. "It's hard to say in advance what the new board would decide," she said. The new board can have a maximum of 10 trustees, according to provincial legislation.

Since cost savings are not the prime motivation for amalgamation in Saskatchewan, Chell is certain there will be no job losses, which is apparent from other amalgamations. "There won't be layoffs. I'm not aware of any amalgamation where jobs have been lost. The reality is that at the school level, not much changes. It's in the streamlined administration where change can be seen but only over the long term," she said. "The bigger the system, the more efficient the administration."

The combining of two school districts means provincial grants could be combined and the new, larger division is more likely to be able to afford to hire experts in curriculum development and other areas, she said. The consistent population decline in this area makes it more difficult for smaller divisions to continue to afford the expertise they need, she said. "The world is changing and our expectations for our children are rising but the capacity to meet those expectations declines with declining enrolment."

Chell said both boards are just trying to maintain what was in the schools years ago. Weyburn's decline in school population is minimal compared to the decline in the rural areas but large increases in population are not expected in either area in the future, she said.

Joorisity and Chell said both Weyburn Public and Prairie View receive a similar percentage of their total costs from provincial education grants and both have almost the same mill rate, two factors that might make amalgamation smoother.