A group of around 30 parents from Hochfeld filled the Garden Valley School Division board room Tuesday night during the board's monthly public meeting.

The parents were there to present a number of concerns to trustees, and also propose what they feel would be a solution.

Hochfeld school is a grade 1 - 8 school with three classrooms, one classroom consisting of the school's grades 5 to 8 students. The school has a total population of sixty-one students.

Rosemarie Friesen, chair of a community committee formed last fall to address the concerns, led the presentation.

Friesen says some of the concerns include having fewer extracurricular opportunities for their children, including no band program or second languages, or the opportunity to play on sports teams. The fact the school does not have a library or have access to a program like Reading Recovery were also mentioned as concerns.

"As parents, we're concerned about opportunities for our children, especially when kids are getting to the upper grades in elementary school, things like second languages, sports teams for our kids, and then having four grades in a classroom. It just brings a lot of academic and social concerns."

When discussing these matters with the parents in the community, Friesen notes the transition from grade 8 to grade 9 was also a big concern for their children.

"It's hard to go to high school and try out for a team when you've never been able to play on a team and you've never played in a gym where's there's sufficient space to set up a volleyball net to play the sports adequately. We feel that by junior high kids need more room and they need to be able to learn these skills. These are valuable skills."

Friesen says as a committee and as a village they are proposing that their junior high students be sent to Prairie Dale School in Schanzenfeld, which is a middle years school. She feels that the solution would be a "win-win." "We would keep our 1 to 6 kids in the village, which we do love, but then allow our older kids to have those opportunities equal to all the other kids in the division."

Friesen says they are looking forward to hearing how the board will respond. She added she is very thankful for the school division, the teachers, parents, and the community of Hochfeld.

Meanwhile, GVSD Board Chair Laurie Dyck says it was great to hear voices of parents at Tuesday night's meeting. "They were well organized and had done some homework. Their presentation had lots of things to consider. We will take their presentation and put that to our Education Committee and see where the next steps go."