I agree with much of what he (and especially his daughter) said.

My wife and I are just two among thousands of people who moved here for the schools, and are shocked that the Halton District School Board is planning to rip these away from us.

We would not have moved here if the schools were set up in the way the Board has planned. If we had wanted our kids to be educated in an impersonal, institutional setting, we would have stayed in Toronto.

So I have to respond to this comment: "I do not doubt for a minute that the Halton District School Board acted in the best interests of the children in its own judgment based on optimum school sizes and its funding formulae."

Here's the issue: it's not good enough that the trustees thought they were doing the right thing. Not by a long shot. We all know what paves the road to hell.

Anyway, who knows what they were thinking?  They certainly didn't have a debate on the options in any kind of public fashion. Was it education? Was it finances? Was it influence from the Board staff? Was it the Town? Was it the Province? Was it lobbying from COCA? Was it circling the wagons around Trustee Philippa Ellis? Did they flip a coin?

Were they so sick and tired of the problem that they just wanted to make a decision, any decision?

We had a public process for a reason. It was to get the issues out in the open. We needed to have all the necessary information to make that process meaningful. In my opinion, that didn't happen, because the radical solution that trustees unanimously supported - without debate - was never advanced.

People in this community are rightly outraged at the trustees' arrogant assumption that they know what is best for us. With all due respect to Trustee Ellis, I choked when I heard her quote John F. Kennedy in her pitch for the K-8 structure. Please, get over yourself!

We have some of the best schools in the whole region, despite the enrolment issues and the board's underinvestment in the facilities. Where is the crisis - educationally - that justifies a radical solution?

When I presented a delegation to the board on May 20, I said that we all recognize there needs to be change, but we do not need to reinvent the wheel. It ain't broke.

There is enormous determination in this community to resist this decision by the board. They need to hear in an unequivocal fashion that we do not accept, and will never accept, this sledgehammer solution. The time for sitting on the fence is over.

Greg McGinnis