A long-planned agreement has been all but finalized in a formal meeting between the Long Plain School and Portage la Prairie School Division. It's been passed as a motion, and trustees consulted with other school divisions with similar arrangements to formulate a local version. Superintendent Todd Cuddington shared the news at Tuesday night's Portage la Prairie School Division meeting.

"Essentially what it is, is an extension of the existing partnership that's already in place for many, many years where students from Long Plain community have come in and completed their education at PCI," says Cuddington. "Through conversation with the leadership in Long Plain, we were wondering if we could build a closer relationship. And now with the expansion of the community into the urban reserve, the Keeshkeemaquah, the next logical step was to address some of the funding disparities."

He notes students from Long Plain will now have more available for their education, including industrial arts, home economics, and expanded opportunities for sports and extracurricular events. Cuddington says Long Plain teachers will also benefit with participating with professional development the divisions offers its teachers. He explains this will make for a stronger partnership than what's already in place.

Long Plain Councillor Liz Merrick has the education portfolio and weighs in on the issue.

"It's been a long process," says Merrick. "We started about 2016 just kind of sharing ideas and stuff. And then we just thought that we'd go into a formal relationship with the Portage School Division when Todd and Pam Garnham came on. It's all of the good of our students. It's not about staff, it's not about council, it's not about the school division and stuff, it's all about doing stuff for our future."

She notes Pam Garnham visited Park West in Waywayseecappo to learn how they were working a similar partnership. Merrick says a starting basis for our agreement was garnered from talks with Chief Clearsky. She adds they went from there to get Indigenous Services Canada involved where help from a regional level entered the process as well as the national level in Ottawa. Merrick says it was a tremendous learning experience.

There is a formal signing of the agreement planned to take place next month, hopefully, December 5, with both provincial and federal representatives in attendance, and local leadership from Long Plain and trustees from the School division.