Lutsel K'e mother sends sons to study in Yellowknife in wake of mould issue
Family considering leaving the territory if classroom conditions back home don't improve
Kirsten Fenn
Northern News Services
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A Lutsel K'e family whose children have relocated to Yellowknife to complete their education after mould was found in their community's school says they are contemplating moving from the territory altogether if things back home don't improve.
Hureliel, left, Angie and Jonah Deranger are seen outside St. Patrick High School on Oct. 19, where the boys have been going to school since leaving Lutsel K'e in September. - Kirsten Fenn/NNSL photo
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"I wasn't given any other option," said Angie Deranger, who put her sons Hureliel, 16, and Jonah, 15, on a flight to Yellowknife last month to enrol at St. Patrick High School.
"They felt like they weren't getting their education."
Since arriving in the city on Sept. 26, Deranger's boys say they have been learning more, getting involved and studying in a functional environment.
"It's better than Lutsel K'e. There's actual classrooms," Hureliel said, adding there is also "way more opportunity" here.
He now plays on the St. Patrick volleyball team and is also involved in soccer.
The GNWT temporarily shut the doors of Lutsel K'e Dene School on Sept. 8 after mould was discovered in a corridor of the building during renovations three weeks earlier.
Parents and community members are angered the government did not inform them of the discovery right away and kept children in class for several weeks before determining whether the school should be remediated.
Students have been going to class in buildings scattered throughout the community, many of which aren't a suitable study environment, the boys said.
"They're not proper classrooms. You've got to walk to a different place all the way across town," said Jonah, who was studying in a boardroom in Lutsel K'e.
Sending her boys to Yellowknife has been a financial burden and hard on her family, but she said she felt she had no choice.
Her eldest son is in Grade 12 and needs to get his education in order to go on to post-secondary studies in the next few years.
Besides having to go to school in different buildings because of the mould, she said he doesn't get the level of instruction he needs because he is the only Grade 12 student in a class full of younger grades.
"The high-school program in Lutsel K'e is failing because there's no differentiation between the grades as there should be," Deranger said. "The teachers are doing the best that they can."
But her sons' studies can't wait, which is why she decided to send them to Yellowknife.
The two boys are now living with an aunt in town, but the move has put a great financial stress on Deranger's family as they live off one income so her husband can take care of their youngest children.
She's had to pay for flights, food, cell phones, school registration fees - and she misses her boys.
"It feels like we're missing part of our family," she said from Yellowknife on Wednesday while visiting them for a few days. "But overall for my boys, for them, they are enjoying themselves because they're in a functioning school and they're getting the instruction they need."
Although the school in Lutsel K'e has re-opened, Deranger said she is worried about sending her other five kids back to school and has been thinking about moving back to Edmonton if that's what it takes to secure their education.
She said she wants to see a better school and more teachers in Lutsel K'e.
"I just hope that in the end that this doesn't happen to any other schools or any other smaller aboriginal community, because it's not great," she said. "I hope there's a positive outcome."
