Fuel for School

As you already know, we live in the middle of nowhere.
Not too far away, just in between everything else.

Remote is great if you like the quiet and the stars.
There are, however, disadvantages when it comes to civil infrastructure.
School is one of those disadvantages.

We knew when Auren was still just a baby, that we wanted him to go to the schools in Haliburton.
Strictly speaking, we reside within Peterborough county.  That means that his schools should be Buckhorn primary and Lakefield secondary.  
But the Haliburton schools are much closer physically.  We didn't want him to endure an agonizingly long ride on the bus every school day for more than a decade.  So we enrolled him in Haliburton knowing that we would have to drive him part of the way.

Auren is picked up and dropped off in Gooderham which is about 23km round trip or ten minutes one way.
That means that he is in the van for ten minutes with us and then another 25 minutes on the bus.
I'm pretty sure that he prefers the bus ride over the van ride.

Our commitment is that twice a day we travel in order to get Auren to and from school.
I don't like burning the fuel.
The time I don't mind spending.  I consider it an investment in his education.
The alternatives are too weak to seriously consider.

I don't know how far they would send a bus from the south.  I suspect that they would expect us to drive him out to the end of our concession road.  And then he would spend too much time on the bus; much of it with no other kids.
The other option is homeschooling.
That has been a debate in this household for quite a long time.
That would save on the driving, but it would trap Auren here.  
I believe that he needs to get out and experience a daily change of people and scenery.
I've been out there lots already.  I'm ready to be trapped here.

So we'll drive him to the bus stop.  I am thankful that we don't have to drive him to the school.




Long ago, there was a school just up the road from here.
I mean up the concession road; about one kilometer.
It would have been closed when the people left this area.
Just like the the primary school in Gooderham that's been closed due to lack of enrollment.


I would like to see the rural landscape re-populated with homesteaders.  I think that we would breathe a collective sigh of relief as de-centralization relieved the pressure in the cities.
Maybe then we'd see de-centralized schools where children didn't need to travel so far to be educated.  
Schools where children could still learn valuable social skills while bearing individuality in the absence of mass education.