Hay River wants middle school
Parent groups are looking to take grades 7 and 8 students out of Diamond Jenness

Maria Canton
Northern News Services

HAY RIVER (May 24/99) - After a survey revealed cocaine use and students bringing guns to Diamond Jenness Secondary School, the Hay River District Education Authority is making a move towards middle schools, says the vice-chair of the DEA.

David MacDonald says the issue is really one of age and the maturity differences between the Grade 7 and Grade 12 students at the school.

"The problem is not the education program at all, it's the gap in age and maturity, and that tends to get emotional when you're dealing with parents," says MacDonald.

Last week, parts of a Pride Canada survey were made public by the Concerned Parent Action Committee in Hay River, in which students responded to questions of drug, alcohol and cigarette use and threatening behaviour patterns.

"We have 11-year-olds in with 18-year-olds at DJ and our (CPAC's) main concerns are with the social environment at the school and the peer pressure that goes with that," says Dean McMeekin, spokesperson for CPAC.

"We presented the survey to show a comparison of what negative influences and peer pressures are in a high school as compared to keeping the students in one more year of elementary school."

Because Hay River does not have a junior high school, CPAC was asking to keep students in elementary school for an extra year before integrating them with the older students.

But at last Wednesday's DEA meeting, and in light of the survey, the DEA made a move to explore the option of a middle school, which would keep students from grades 6, 7 and 8 together.

The DEA has until October of 1999 to work out the details in order to have the school in place for the fall of 2000.

"We've thrown our support 100 per cent behind the DEA," says McMeekin. "We want to be involved and make sure everything goes as quickly as possible."

The PRIDE survey is a Western Canadian survey, conducted jointly between the school and CPAC.

This is the fourth year the survey has been used to compare DJ to other schools in Western Canada.

"The results indicate that Diamond Jenness is no worse than any other school surveyed. It's just the students entering Grade 7 that we are worried about, because they're so young," said McMeekin.

The survey results that were presented are a compilation of the past three years and the numbers presented were a basic average.

MacDonald also says the staff at DJ does as much as it can for all of the students. "They're fantastic, supportive and put in a lot of extra hours, but there is only so much they can do."