Maxwell closure is simply wrong

I too am a parent of a former Maxwell student. My daughter, Teresa, was a classmate of Emilie Cooper.

In addition to sending Teresa to Maxwell, our family has provided financial support to enable other students to attend Maxwell.

Through Teresa and our financial support of other students, our association with Maxwell spans more than a decade.

I would, first, like to express my sincere gratitude to Carol Cooper for her service as Chairperson of the Maxwell Parents Association this past school year.

This has been a very trying year, and Mrs. Cooper has overseen the affairs of the MPA with great care and dignity. As a distant parent, I have particularly appreciated Mrs. Cooper's admirable work to keep us well informed of developments in efforts to keep Maxwell open beyond this school year.

However, when Mrs. Cooper says, "We believe the National Assembly recognized the strong real estate market in the Shawnigan Lake area and felt that this would be a good time to liquidate this asset, with the monies received helping to pay down the debt the school had accumulated."

I feel compelled to say that the "we" in her sentence does not include us.

Maxwell International was named after Canadian Baha'is William Sutherland Maxwell and May Maxwell. Their daughter, nee Mary Maxwell, was the wife of Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Baha'i Faith. Baha'is speak of and remember Ruhiyyih Khanum, as Mary Maxwell was known amongst Baha'is, with a rare reverence.

Ruhiyyih Khanum laid the cornerstone at Maxwell International more than 20 years ago, and no Baha'i I know, least of all any of the members of the Canadian National Spiritual Assembly, would forsake that legacy in order to take advantage of a favorable turn in the local real-estate market.

Governance is never an easy task, and there are times when one must simply make a very difficult decision knowing full well the adverse effects that decision will have on the individuals involved.

I have full confidence in saying that theirs, as members of the National Assembly, was an agony no less than ours as parents, students and staff.

The key to Maxwell's success has always been enrollments. It's a problem that others and I have attempted to solve for more than a decade, and one for which we simply have been unable to find an adequate solution.

It is a problem that none of the proposals set forth this year managed to address in a coherent and efficacious manner. This, more than any other factor, tipped the scales.

Thus, to say that Maxwell's closure is simply wrong is to lay moral blame at someone's feet when, in truth, there is no one deserving of that blame. We have all done our best to turn Maxwell into a self-sustaining endeavour.

We have simply failed.

Richard Schaut

Woodinville, WA USA