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    Overcrowding at Ecole Boreale, the French-language school in Hay River, was the subject of an NWT Supreme Court hearing on July 9. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

    Hay River French school goes to court

    Paul Bickford
    Northern News Services
    Published Monday, July 14, 2008

    HAY RIVER - The school board overseeing Hay River's Ecole Boreale is hopeful something will be done by this fall to alleviate overcrowding.

    That follows a July 9 court hearing in Yellowknife at which the board sought an interim injunction to force the GNWT to alleviate overcrowding at the French-language school.

    "I left with a certain cautious optimism," said Paul Theriault, superintendent of Commission Scolaire Francophone de Division, a Yellowknife-based school board.

    Theriault said Supreme Court Justice Louise Charbonneau did not say when she would rule on the request for an injunction, but he added she acknowledged she has to decide quickly.

    "Our best guess is it will come out by the end of (this) week," Theriault said.

    Shawn McCann, the manager of public affairs with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, said the GNWT will be offering no comment on the case while it is before the court.

    Theriault said the injunction request is just to have government act for this fall, and a full trial will take place later on the board's court action for a permanent solution to the overcrowding.

    The school board's lawyer Roger Lepage said the board proposed two temporary options to deal with the overcrowding - three portable classrooms or renting existing space in the community.

    Lepage said the government put forward a third option of using space in some other Hay River school.

    The judge can order the GNWT to find more space for students and leave it to its discretion of how that should be done, or she can order a specific solution based on one of the three options.

    "I'm confident the facts are there to warrant the court's intervention," Lepage said.

    The lawyer said the government defended itself by saying there is an insufficient number of rightholders to French-language education in Hay River to expand the school.

    Theriault said the government argued the board is responsible for its own misfortune because of its policy of admitting non-rightholders to education in French under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

    Jackson Lafferty, the minister of education, culture and employment, plans to issue a ministerial directive that no new students be admitted to Ecole Boreale and Ecole Allain St-Cyr in Yellowknife unless they are rightholders, or unless the minister has approved the enrollment of a student.

    Theriault said, if and when such a directive is issued, the school board will be back in court seeking an injunction against the directive, which he said would be unconstitutional.

    About 10 per cent of Ecole Boreale students are non-rightholders.

    It is estimated the school will have 123 students in the fall when Grade 11 is added and more kindergarten students arrive.

    It had about 93 students up to Grade 10 in the last school year.

    The school, which opened in 2005, was designed for 95 students in kindergarten to Grade 6.

    Theriault said there was no mention in the recent territorial budget of any funding in the next five years to expand the school for high school students.

    While he said there would be a substantial amount of federal money available for the project, it could not happen without territorial funding.

    Theriault said an estimate of the cost of expansion would be $10 to 12 million, which would add more classrooms, science labs and a gym.

    The board filed a statement of claim with the NWT Supreme Court on May 29 that the government has not moved ahead on planning for high school students at Ecole Boreale.

    "We're saying there has to be a long-term solution," Lepage said. "They have to build a high school wing."