Parent asks what's wrong with education system
Dave Sullivan
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Apr 25/01) - A Yellowknife parent is questioning the city's education system because her children can't attend a school at her doorstep.
"Why would I want to bus my children to another school when I've got one across the street," Carla Shuparski wonders.
Shuparski wants to send her 10- and seven-year-old daughters to Ecole St. Joseph a stone's throw from home, but the overcrowded school recently decided to stop letting in new students.
Portables are being added but student numbers will still be capped at the current 615 for at least the next two years. The 21-year-old building is supposed to hold 585.
Shuparski's children go to N.J. Macpherson school in the Yellowknife No. 1 School District, but working single parent prefers the Catholic school system.
"I want my kids to have the religion background."
With Catholic Ecole St. Joseph across the street, Shuparski says it's ridiculous for her children to be bussed to William MacDonald school, where they'll soon end up as they get older. Her babysitter lives nowhere near that school. She says the Catholic School Board may pay to bus the children to Weledeh school but it's too far, and Shuparski prefers not being subsidized by taxpayers for transportation that shouldn't be needed.
"Why would I choose William MacDonald or Weledeh, when I have St. Joe's right at my doorstep. These options do not solve my problem."
Ecole St. Joseph recently started keeping a waiting list, according to principal Flo Campbell. So far not many names are on it, and it will be impossible to know how long the wait will be until a survey determines how many current students will return in September, she says.
Priority goes to existing families, then to those with children split up at different schools, with third priority to families new to Yellowknife.
"We will take your name and should we have any space we will look at each situation on a case by case basis."
Yellowknife #1 School District Superintendent Dr. Judith Knapp says that the 14-year-old N.J. MacPherson school and nine-year-old Range Lake North school, both near Ecole St. Joseph, are both "just about at capacity."
School officials agree what's really needed is a new $11 million school, but the Range Lake residential area won't soon be on the territorial government's list of places to build one. Nowhere in Yellowknife is a school planned over the next five years, Education Department spokesman Janet Leader says.
She points out that Yellowknife recently received about $30 million worth of spending on schools, including the new Weledeh School and extensive renovations to Sir John Franklin high school.
"If you're sitting in a community like Fort Smith or Fort Providence, you could easily argue that's not fair either," Leader says. "Other communities have needs that have to be factored in."
When the government looks at population trends, overall growth is projected without looking at needs of individual school boards, Board Superintendent Kern Von Hagen said earlier in April.
Department of Education budget analyst Chuck Tolley says school enrolment in Yellowknife has been very stable at around 3,600 over the past several years, but, "certainly the Range Lake area doesn't have enough space whereas other schools are sitting with 60 and 50 per cent capacity."
William MacDonald school is just 60 per cent full, and Koinonia Christian school plans to re-open in the fall.
That school was open two years before closing for the current school year.
Tolley says it's difficult to predict enrolment for privately-run Koinonia and two other privately-run city schools.
