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KAHBAMIUE/COLVILLE LAKE
For the first time since it was built, toilets and running water have replaced honey buckets and hand sanitizer at the Colville Lake School.

Proper bathrooms were installed earlier this fall and the school held a grand opening - complete with a ribbon-cutting and inaugural toilet-flushing - on Sept. 19, said principal Marie Laforme.

Laforme said the bathrooms have changed the school experience for both staff and students.

"They love it," she said. "At first they were pretty excited about it."

Teacher Matt Hubert agreed.

"I feel like it's a completely different space now," he said. "By the end of the day before, the honey buckets would create such a stink you couldn't even go into the bathroom."

The school now has separate bathrooms for boys and girls, although the "little school," the portable that houses kindergarten to Grade 4, still has a honey bucket.

Hubert said students now ask to go to the big school when they need to use the bathroom.

Before the bathrooms were installed, a five-gallon bucket was kept in a small storage closet without a light. A hole was cut out of the ceiling to let light in from the foyer, Laforme said.

"It stunk and it was dark in the one room, so sometimes kids missed," she said. "It wasn't nice at all."

Without running water, a water jug, hand sanitizer and baby wipes were used to wash up.

Hubert said the ability for students to properly wash their hands will also reduce the communicable diseases that can run rampant in schools, such as common colds and flus, as well as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

"The school can be a petri dish," he said.

Laforme said the school used to have an outhouse, but vandals destroyed it last year. Since then, honey buckets became the norm.

The new bathrooms are the result of hard work by many people over the years, including Sahtu MLA, Norman Yakeleya.

Yakeleya said when he was elected nine years ago, he was shocked to see the conditions at the school, particularly the lack of bathrooms.

"I said, 'I can't believe this,'" he said. "I couldn't believe in this day and age we would do that."

He said he was disappointed it took the government nine years to install the bathrooms.

"We can't put a simple toilet and a sink in a public institution when we're encouraging our children to stay in school," he said.

In May, Yakeleya brought up continuing issues at the school during the legislative assembly's question period.

He said not only did the school not have a bathroom, it also didn't have a gymnasium or proper classrooms. Students use the community centre during gym class.

More than 50 students now attend the Colville Lake School, and Yakeleya told News/North the school needs a new building.

"With the number of kids going to school, we need a brand new school with proper facilities," he said. "I'm hoping sometime in the future, the government would look at getting a proper school building with a gymnasium and all the other things you need for a good school environment."

In the meantime, Yakeleya said he is pleased for staff and students at Colville Lake School.

"It's a wonderful noise when you hear the flushing of the toilets at Colville Lake School," he said.

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