Paul Bickford
Northern News Services

Hay River (Oct 28/05) - The Hay River Metis Council wants to set up a program to help students suspended from school.

Council president Danny Beck says the idea is to continue the students' education during their suspensions. "So they don't lose any education they do have."

Danny Beck: students should still learn while suspended from school.

Beck says he is not questioning schools' disciplinary rules. "We're not knocking their policy for kicking them out of school," he says. "We're concerned about what happens to them when they're out of school."

Beck says the program would be for all suspended students, not just Metis students.

Beck says, according to information he has received from parents, approximately 28 students - 90 per cent of them aboriginal - were suspended during the 2004-2005 school year from Diamond Jenness Secondary School.

Greg Storey, the school's principal, is not sure where that 28 figure comes from, noting there may even be more than that suspended during a year.

However, he notes the vast majority of suspensions are for a day or two for such things as smoking on school property, and there are often no students suspended at any one time.

Storey suspects the 28 number may be based on his estimate that there are about 24 teenagers no longer attending school in Hay River.

"Were they suspended? No," he says, noting some students may say they were suspended because it is more socially acceptable than to say they dropped out.

The principal notes some groups in Hay River are considering the idea of a so-called storefront school, which would help those students in a less rigorous environment than a regular high school.

Storey actually worked at such a storefront school in Ontario and supports the idea.

Under the Education Act, a student can be suspended from one to 20 days, but long suspensions - for having drugs or a weapon in school or intimidating other students, for example - are rare, he says.

Storey says 85 per cent of students have never been suspended and never will be.

As for actual expulsions from school, he notes that has happened at least twice at Diamond Jenness in the last five years for what he describes as a serious safety incident or a series of escalating incidents.

The principal is willing to discuss the Metis Council's idea. "I'm really interested in that."

Beck has submitted a funding proposal to Human Resources Development Canada, and already has two portable classrooms which housed the old Ecole Boreale.

The proposal calls for the program to have a teacher and a co-ordinator.

A motion was passed in support of the program during the Oct. 19-21 annual general meeting of the Northwest Territory Metis Nation in Fort Smith.