So long

Hundreds turn out to say

happy 50th birthday —

and goodbye to Skeena

Jr. High\NNEWS A5

No joy ride.

Students here say
tougher rules on licensing
will drive a very hard
bargain\NEWS A3

Pea
Ct es

Rev it up

High speed stock car

racing takes to

the trackthis = =
weekend\SPORTS B8 -

$1.00 pLus 7¢ GST
($4.10 plus 8¢ GST
outside of the Terrace area)

TERRACE

"Wednesday, June 11,2003

Four-day week

Cost-cutting should

not be the motive

By JENNIFER LANG

NO SCHOOL district should go to a
four-day week simply to save money
because it’s just too big a risk for stu-
dents, B.C.’s education minister said
last week,

School boards are required to put
student achievement ahead of fi-
nances, Christy Clark said, pointing to
the public: accountability contracts
each district must fulfil. ;

While she doesn't fundamentally
oppese a four-day week, which ap-
pears to be working in the Boundary
school district, Clark doubts it’s the
right answer for all districts,

No deal §
to merge f
animal
shelters

THE THORNHILL Animal

“My advice to every school district
is, if you want to modify your school
calendar, go ahead, but whatever. you
do, don’t just do it for financial
reasons,” Clark said. “Nobody should
modify the school calendar just to
achieve financial savings. If it could
affect student achievement, that’s just
too big arisk to take.”

Clark spoke to the Terrace Stan-
dard the day before Coast Mountains
school trustees publicly reaffirmed that
their controversial decision to approve
a four-day school week here was based
on financial reasons.

The school board hopes to save $1.4
million in operating expenses next
year. It had faced an anticipated bud-
get shortfall of as much as $5 million.

“(The decision is] up to school dis-

tricts, because they’re the people who
are legally responsible for improving
student achievement. year to year,”
Clark said.

Clark is more receptive to year-
round schooling, calling it a more bal-
anced calendar that seems to improve
the ability of students to retain what
they learn.

“We haven’t seen any evidence ei-

ther way to suggest that the four-day
week, or the change in the school ca-
lendar, would affect student achieve-
Tent one way or another,” she added.
According to the Boundary district’s
own survey, the move meant schools
didn’t have to close — and improved
student and staff absenteeism.
Marks: on provincial exams appear
to have held steady, but so far it’s too

early to tell what impact the four-day
week has had on so-called “at risk”
kids, .

Benefits of §
changes to the
school calendar
vary from district
to district, Clark
noted, Ultimate-
ly, the decision
lies with schoal
boards, she said.

“T trust that
they will make.

_the right deci-

sions in the inter-
ests of students.”

Coast Mountains trustees adopted a
new school calendar based on a four-
day week May 28.

Christy Clark

Just last week, trustees agreed to
take steps to tell the minister and
local MLAs why they chose a four-day
week — to pass a balanced budget and
avoid clasing more schools.

“I think they need to know this is
something we wouldn’t be doing with-
out a budget shortfall,” Terrace trustee
Diana Penner said,

Board chair Peter King said people
in Kitimat don’t seem to oppose the
plan. “This is one of the rare things in
12 years as a trustee that does have
some support,” he said.

Meanwhile, the ministry’s own
foundation skills assessment shows
one third of students are. failing to
meet expectations for their grade when
it comes to the basics of reading, wri-
ting and numeracy.

Trustees
regroup on
short week

Shelter will stay put — for
now.

The Kitimat-Stikine re-
gional district board deci-
ded May 24 to decline a

City of Terrace offer to ©

provide animal shelter ser-
vice for Thornhill — at a
cost of $30,000 a year.

Thornhill director Les
Watmough said the pre-
sent shelter is large en-
ough for Thornhill’s current
animal control program.

“It's a good building,”
he said. “We have good
staff down there.”

The city plans to tear
down the Terrace animal
shelter — to make way for
Wal-Mart — and rebuild it
at the Public Works prop-
erty on Graham Ave.

The city also wants to
install an incinerator.

Terrace’s offer to
Thornhill included provi-
ding dog control services
for the Thornhill area, in-
cluding adoptions and the
sale of dog licences.

In its April 22 offer, the
city indicated it was pre-
pared to absorbed the costs
of keeping and feeding
animals from Thornhill -
including destruction
costs, if necessary.

Watmough said it’s also
unlikely the SPCA -
which made a presentation
to the regional district
May 23 — will be asked to
take over the Thornhill
shelter.

He said that may only
shift the problem.

The SPCA in.Kitimat is
presently overrun with un-
wanted dogs and cats from
as far away as Hazelton
and Burns Lake, in part
due to the public miscon-
ception that SPCAs no
longer euthanize animals.

While the regional dis-
trict wants to reduce the
number of unwanted ani-
mals in Thornhill, Wat-
mough fears having an
SPCA there would only
make the problem worse.

“Our facility would be
totally overrun,” he said,
“There’s a saturation point.
I don’t know how you deal
with that saturation unless
you put animals down,”

He pointed out shelter
staff are employees of the
regional district,.s0 they

could perform other duties |

if necessary.

By JENNIFER LANG
SOME SCHOOL trustees blamed a momentary lapse of
reason at a recent meeting for confusion over’ the dis-
trict’s move to a four-day school week.

The board adopted a new school calendar May 28
with only minor changes to the draft proposal circulated
among parents and employee groups, although earlier
that night some trustees seemed prepared to reconsider
the four-day week.

Board chair Peter King told the audience at last
week’s regular board meeting trustees deliberated over
some details, including Christmas and Spring Break
dates in Hazelton, but not the four-day week itself.

King explained the four-day week was approved in
March, following a series of meetings designed to elicit
public input on possible budget cuts. The recommenda-
tions were compiled in a report for trustees.

“The board took an entire day going through that re-
port before deciding what could be done,” he said.

The board has been criticized by the teachers’ union,
CUPE and some parents for the way it consulted the
public on the four-day week.

“I’ve struggled very hard with some of the decisions
we’ve been faced with,” Hazelton trustee Jessica Miko-
layczyk said, adding she’d briefly changed her mind on
the four-day week at the May 28 meeting.

She considered the possibility that the public would
rather see the district close “a whole bunch of schools”
instead of the four-day week.

“] think for a minute last week I thought that was
achievable,” she said, adding she changed her mind
after discussing the matter with fellow trustees. “I had a

@ Musical

Z
pair
IN FINE FORM: Young performers Anna Bauer and Eden Oliver were all dressed up for Caledonia
Senior Secondary School's tinal music concert of the year on the evening of June 4. The two musi-
cians hit the stage of the R.E.M. Lee Theatre along with other members of the high school's concert
band, jazz band and choir. SARAH A. ZIMMERMAN PHOTO

lapse there.”

Terrace trustee Hal Stedham has also returned to his
original, pro-four-day week stance,

Moments after he asked the board to consider parent
Tanis Purssell’s alternate cost-saving suggestions, Sted-
ham declared his renewed support for the four-day week.

chance, he said.

Following the meeting to adopt the new calendar,
some of the other trustees urged him to give the idea a

“I’m convinced the merits of the four-day week can:
be positive and if we commit ourselves to making it
work, it can work,” Stedham said.

Thornhill trustee Lorrie Gowen promised Purssell the
board would consider her suggestions for next year.

Fungal blight killing pine forests

By JEFF NAGEL
A RAPIDLY spreading forest
disease is threatening to become
northwest B.C.’s equivalent of
the mountain pine beetle disas-
fer. .

Dothistroma needle blight is
caused by a fungus that produces
spores’ and infects lodgepole
pine, says Smithers-based forest
pathologist Alex Woods:

He said the disease has now
infected stands covering 50,000
hectares of northwest B.C., in-
cluding the Terrace area, the
Nass and high concentrations in
the Kispiox and Cranberry tim-
ber supply areas along Hwy 37. .

About three -per cent of those '
starids have lost more than. 10 ©.
to turn’a reddish brown and fall —

per cent of their trees to the kill-

er fungus.

“In extreme cases entire
plantations are dead,” Woods
said.

Two-thirds of forests in the
Kispiox Forest District had vary-
ing amounts of the blight in a
2000 survey, he said, but that
ballooned to an estimated 93 per -
cent last year,

- “Worse than that is the in-
tensity of the damage,” Woods
added. “I have not seen any
stands recovering to any extent.1
have only seen stands getting
worse,” ,

“Last year I flew over a lot of

‘the areas and realized just how

much there is and how bad it is.”
-‘Dothistroma. causes. needles

out, starting low down and mev-
ing up to the top of the tree.

“It looks like a fire has gone
through the area,” Woods said.

Lodgepole pine was long the
choice for replanting logged out
stands in the northwest because
of its profitability as a saw log.

But that policy now appears

‘to have been unwise. “Because

of the effort we've put into refor-

esting stands with lodgepole.

pine, there is way more lodge-

pole pine on the landscape. than .

historically existed.”

The government has orderéd
that lodgepole pine can now be
planted only as a minor compo-

nent of: reforestation efforts: in

the northwest, . .
One option - which Woods

doesn't recommend - is to spray
fungicide on affected stands here
as is done in New Zealand to
combat a similar forest blight.

That could endanger the Iu-
erative pine mushroom harvest.

“Spraying a broad-based
fungicide would have serious
implications for any mushroom-
picking or berry. picking,” he
said. “It’s the wrong thing to do
to try to keep lodgepole pine the
major component of these
stands.”

One measure going ahead is
the rapid replanting this summer
of about 500 hectares of severely

_affected stands with $700,000 —

approved under the province's

. Forest Investment Account.

Woods said the work involves

planting shade-tolerant species ~
like hemlock, fir and cedar
~under the dead or dying pines.

“It has to be done relatively
quickly before the brush species
take advantage of the increased
light after the pine canopy dies,”
Woods said.

“Some of them are already
too far gone and would be too
expensive to rehabilitate.”

An, ongoing replanting pro-
gram will be needed, he said.

The blight, long considered
merely a nuisance, has been
present in the northwest at a low
level since it was first recorded
here in 1963,

Its spores are released when
temperatures exceed 10 degrees

Continued Page A2