Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 14/99) - Educators across the North are trying to make sense of the recent territorial budget and the effects it's having in their classrooms.

Mary King is a volunteer at Princess Alexandra school in Hay River and this spring helped organize a group of concerned parents to make their voices heard at a territorial level.

"I guess as you work in the schools you begin to realize that teachers are facing multi-level classes with few assistants," she said. "I knew how parents were talking and we decided to have a meeting."

King said the result was a grassroots parents focus group "with no president, no secretary and no money" -- but rather with time, energy and concerns.

"I'm a grandparent," said King, "so I had the time to go into the schools and see the conditions."

Hay River MLA Jane Groenewegen tabled a letter from the group in the legislature during the budget debates -- at a time when people began speaking of a crisis in education across the territory.

"I realize the situation is about more than just funding and involves parental awareness of what's happening in the classroom, too," said King, "but we became aware that the budget had been passed and that the recommendations of the Ministers' Forum (on Education) were not really going to be adopted."

King said the group is currently working hand in hand with the schools in the region to statistically record conditions the teachers are facing, particularly with regard to multi-level classes.

"Looking at the reading level in three Grade 6 classes with 70 children, their reading level by the end of the year should be at almost Grade 7 level," she said, "but we found 10 at the grade level, 37 below it and 22 above -- and one of them at a Grade 12 level."

King made it clear the group is not out to point fingers and blame anyone, but rather to push for changes of a positive nature.

"I think our mission is not to enrage the public, but rather to talk to the minister and the department," she said.

Up in Fort Good Hope at the Chief T'Selihye school, principal Dudley Johnson said they are also coping with multi-level classes and a shortage of special-needs teachers -- as well as cuts in teacher funding.

"The situation is getting worse because of education cutbacks and a low morale around teachers, who aren't returning because they've had their pay frozen and housing is a problem," he said. "The teachers can't see the point in coming up here. We had 1,200 applications last year and only 300 this year."

Johnson said funding is proving to be more of a problem than ever.

"I do everything in my power to raise funds in the community -- begging," he said. "We recently raised $80,000 for a workshop for the kids, but I find my time is being taken up more with raising funds when it should be taken up with school matters."

Seamus Quigg was sympathetic to his principal's predicament. Sahtu's board of education director, Quigg said the numbers of classroom support staff in his five schools "are not anywhere near where they should be, or can be, with current funding."

Quigg called the Sahtu a "microcosm" of the NWT, sharing problems common to communities across the territory. But he added that a meeting he'd just had with Education Minister Michael Miltenberger at least gave him some hope for improvement.

"The new minister seems very interested and got a good grasp of his portfolio very quickly," he said.

In general, however, educators across both the NWT and Nunavut have proven reluctant to talk about specific problems they face, saying it may appear they're criticizing their "bosses" -- the local school board and the government.

Contacted on Thursday, even Donna Stephania, principal of Kugluktuk high school and president of the Federation of Nunavut Teachers, said, "I'm not prepared to talk about these issues."