One week from today, on Wednesday, June 15, a new school board will be chosen to formulate the new huge Southeast School Division, to look after the immense region that will formed by amalgamating all public school boards in the southeast.

With the election coming halfway through the year, this will give the new board half a year to organize before taking effect on Jan. 1, 2006. Some of that will be with the assistance of the existing school divisions - which, the government should note, have been working just fine as they, as most of them have already amalgamated boards into their current configurations.

The trustees who will be elected to form this huge school division will have a heavy responsibility, particularly as there will be fewer numbers to represent a large population. For example, for the five elementary schools, the junior high and the Comprehensive high school in the city of Weyburn, there will be just two trustees; for subdivision 6, which includes several towns and villages such as Goodwater, Ceylon, Lake Alma, McTaggart, Yellow Grass, Pangman, Ogema, Oungre, Radville, Gladmar and Minton (with schools in six of these communities), there is only one trustee to look after all the schools and school children in that area, same with subdivision 5.

Besides pointing up the gross unfairness of this new system, this places an onerous responsibility on the trustees who are elected.

Among those responsibilities will be to speak up for all of those people and schools, bringing their needs to the larger board and ensuring local concerns can be dealt with. For many of the smaller schools and their communities, the most pressing concern will likely be how long their schools will be allowed to remain open. Even in the city, this will be a pressing concern with the facilities review recently undertaken, proposing to close Haig and possibly also Souris, and move the junior high into the Comp school.

Many, many residents oppose this and are concerned about this, and the elected trustees need to be as well.

There will of course be organizational concerns to deal with, such as where the board offices will be located, and who the administration will be, but of greater concern should be educational issues, melding policies from the current boards in with the other boards, and ensuring funding levels to each of the schools in their area are adequate to maintain or improve the programs that they offer.

It has been proven over and over that bigger is not necessarily better; while the government seems unable to grasp this concept, it will be up to the new board and its trustees to overcome the immense obstacles such an unwieldy-sized school division will place upon them.

In a similar way, the individual trustee will have a huge job just to be able to represent the concerns of their local area. This also presents a large responsibility on the voters in each area, whether in the city of Weyburn or in the outlying rural area. It really does matter how they vote, and it is vitally important the right person is elected to do the crucial job of representing such a large group. - G.N.