Parents in the tiny eastern B.C. community of Dunster, south of McBride, have occupied the local elementary school to protest its closure.

Parents started their occupation of the nearly 100-year-old Dunster Fine Arts School on Monday, the last day of classes.

Trustees with the Prince George School District voted to close the school and five others earlier this year as they confronted a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall.

Parent Ken McNaughton said his daughter is the third generation of their family to attend the school. His father started elementary school there in 1928.

"It's a total injustice to close this school that is our anchor," he said.

Parent Christine Taylor said the closure must be reviewed. She would like to see a publicly funded school provided for the estimated 30 students before classes resume in September.

School district chair Lyn Hall said he would consider a new funding model being used elsewhere to help keep the school open.

He said the board is looking at a model used in Wells, B.C., which would allow the community to pay for the school building and its upkeep while the school district would pay for the teachers.

"What happens in Wells is that the school district leases the facility [and] provides the educational programs, which we would do as well, but they don't own the facility. So that's the difference," he said.

"They incur little to no cost in the operational piece around the facility [but] they are still responsible under the school act to provide the educational programs."

Hall said that reopening the school under the new model wouldn't happen until September 2011.

But protester Chantal Swets said that's not soon enough.

"But that gives us a gap year and what are we going to do with a gap year?" she said.

"We have our kids needing school in two months' time. We thought we would just continue occupying the building … all summer long and in September, if things haven't moved along, we'll start educating our kids in a different fashion."

If no resolution is reached, the school district plans to bus students to a school in McBride, about 30 kilometres away.

With files from The Canadian Press