Trustees retreat from plan

EEE IEE

_ to close district schools

’ Mountainview

NO SCHOOLS in Terrace
will closé next year.

Coast Mountains school
trustees have opted to keep
the status quo in place for
another year, citing growing
unease With the prospect of
creating more upheaval and
near-universal Opposition to
its consolidation plan. —

“| think the ongoing
theme that kept resurfac-
ing was, ‘Hit aint broke,
don’t fix it.” Terrace trustee
Hal Stedham said.. “People

are Willing to fight for what .

Lot.

e

they've That's admi-
rable.” ,
Terrace schools called for a
variety of changes starting in
2005, from merging schools
to opening the never-used
Elementary
on the bench.

On Jan. 15,-the board

A wide-ranging plan for:

year.
Teachers and parents in
the audience burst out into
spontaneous applause.
Trustees instead want to —
begin work on a five-year
plan they hope will bring.
more order to the district.
“Let's move to a five-—
year plan,” Bruce Martin-
dale, president of the Terrace
chapter of Canadian Parents
for French (CPF), said. “We

, Just want our program to be

strong and to continue ‘to

grow. :
Uncertainty over where

the program would be lo-

‘cated has made it difficult

for CPF to move ahead with
plans to introduce a_late im-
mersion program, he said
following the mecting.
Kitimat trustee Peter
King warned if the. B.C.
Liberals form another gov-

ff!

Lorrie Gowen

-An NDP government, on
the other hand, would force
Alcan to use power it now

generates at its Kemano to -

said. “If we close schools,
we could end up having to
open them.”

King wants to wait and
see what happens. “If we're
going to do anything, do it in
the 2006 year.”

That way, the district can
operate in “relative: peace”

-.for the time being.

“T guess the best descrip-

tion right now is we're mov-

ing deck chairs on a sinking

ship,” King continued.
Hazelton’ trustee Jessica

Mikolayezyk also blamed

' political pressure for driving

_ how

the district's haste.

“It’s not the parents, it’s
not the kids, it’s not the
teachers — it’s political,” she
said.

Mikolaycezyk criticized

the lack of information on.
consolidations . would *

affect staffing, education,

the public needs to know
that.” she said. “I haven't
got anything in front of me
to say how that works.” .
She’s also not convinced
the change is necessary. |
“Mountainview — it’s a
beautiful school, but Em not
in favour of making change
for the sake of =making ©
change.” “ —
By opting to remain with

“the status quo for another

school year. the board has
effectively escaped from
having to deal with" the is-
sue until after the November
2005 school board election.

The district originally
came out in favour of com-
mon grade groupings from
K-7 and from Grade 8-12
in the fall of 2003. The ra-
tionale was that the fewer
schools children attend: the
less disruptive. it is.

The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - A7_
www.hawkair.ca

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* spent. seven hours listening ernment after the provincial . build. another aluminum transportation, maintenance “The province’s new high Dance starts at 8:00 p.m.
to reaction to the plan from election in May, the result’ smelter in Kitimat, King and operations at the various school graduation program, ; a
school - planning councils “won't be good” for educa: _ said. on schools involved. which now begins in Grade

. Georgelin, who

and from the Terrace Chap-.

ter of Canadian Parents for

- French,

“Parents have been say-
ing just leave things alone,”
board chair. Lorrie Gowen
said. ; a
She and ‘other trustees
blamed political pressure for
driving the proposed chang-
es, particularly for opening
Mountainview Elementary,
which was built before im-
pacts of declining enrolment
and budget cuts were deter-
mined.

“Where was the . pres- ©

sure coming from? It wasn’t
coming from the parents. It
was coming from the politi-
cians,” Gowen said, voting
to leave things where they

‘are for 2005.

Trustee Nicole Bingham:
said the
timeline didn’t leave enough
time for working out practi-
cal details involved in merg-
ing schools. .

On Jan. 26, the board of-
fered unanimous support for
her motion to keep the sta-
tus quo in place for another

Bullying
a worry

THE MLA behind B.C.’s
soon-to-be proposed Safe
Schools Act says bullying is
more entrenched:in schools
than parents, teachers and
boards may have thought.
Vancouver-Burrard-MLA
Lorne Mayencourt visited
schools in Prince Rupert and
Terrace last week.
“I was, overwhelmed by
the response I got from stu-
dents in both communities,
‘who have either been’ bul-
lied, witnessed bullying or

tion” because of their educa-
tion. policies,

“The population in. Ter--

race would increase,” he

“I need to know that, what

would it look like? | think

“uh .

C 5]

10, was another rationale for —

the plan.

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Mayencourt hopes to in-

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- lature later this month.

The act is developed from
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The act would require
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