School boards close ranks in hard times
Chairpersons reflect on improving relationship between education districts
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Published Friday, January 30, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Simon Taylor says it is no secret the city's school boards haven't always gotten along.
The Yellowknife Catholic school board chair said in the past, the school boards operating in the city - which compete to some degree for funding and students - have let their differences get out of hand.
That has changed somewhat in recent years as an increasingly stingy territorial government has caused them to seek a united front and share their playbooks in tackling problems they face together.
"For many years the public school district and ourselves have actually been quite confrontational," said Taylor.
"For the last few years the boards have been actually collaborating, and I think this issue of junior kindergarten compelled us to work together."
John Stephenson, chair of Yellowknife Education District No. 1, said junior kindergarten - which the GNWT announced territory-wide last year without additional funding before shelving it in larger communities after facing fierce criticism - was indeed an issue on which the school boards could agree.
Although Yellowknife school officials agreed junior kindergarten for four-year-olds has value - and were already providing it to parents within a user-pay system - trustees objected to paying for it out of their existing budgets. After the territorial government suspended the program last fall, school districts were still required to pay for its launch in other communities - around $500,000 over two years for both Yk1 and the Catholic board, according to Claudia Parker, superintendent for Yellowknife Catholic Schools.
Suzette Montreuil, president of the Commission scolaire francophone - which operates Ecole Allain St.-Cyr in Yellowknife and Ecole Boreale in Hay River - said Stephenson can be thanked for the increased co-operation between the school districts.
"He's a great rally-er of the boards, and that's a great thing," he said. "We're not going against the other boards, we're just trying to stand up for our own students."
She said she didn't like the perception of school boards at war after the GNWT asked Yk1 to hand over a school so it could transfer it to the French school district to satisfy a court order for more educational facilities for francophone students.
"It kept looking like we were competing directly with them, and that's not what we're trying to do," she said. "We were just trying to build our own high school here, and in Hay River."
Students at Ecole Allain St.-Cyr have shared some facilities with Yk1 in the past, including a gymnasium at William McDonald School next door.
The GNWT won a partial victory earlier this month in its appeal of a 2012 decision in NWT Supreme Court, leaving only a requirement for a new gym and a special needs classroom. Parents of students supported by the French school district plan to take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, but if they are not successful Montreuil hopes the goodwill remains.
"If we have to stay with the court of appeal's decision, then we will share some facilities," she said. "I'm hoping that will mean we have a better agreement that we did in the past. But I genuinely do feel that the relationships between the boards have improved."
