Ad - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, February 2, 2000 ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988 ADDRESS: 3210 Clinton Street Terrace, B.C. * V8G 5R2 TELEPHONE: (250) 638-7283 * FAX: (250) 638-8432 S PUBLISHER: ROD LINK EMAIL: standard@kermode.net Headhunters WITH A budget in excess of $50 million, with hundreds of employees and responsible for the education of thousands of students, Coast Moun- tains School District is a dominating force in the northwest. It’s also in trouble and facing numerous finan- cial, personnel and organizational challenges jud- ging by a comprehensive $14,000 study prepared by a. Vancouver consulting firm. The study is a fascinating document worthy of a thorough read by the school district’s employ- ees and by the parents who send their children to its schools. Meant as a guide for those now being hired to fill the district’s key senior executive spots, the report’s 18 pages, exhibits and appendices also point out just what an excruciating difficult job awaits these new senior people. Chief among the challenges is the district’s fi- nancial position. It has run three years of deficits and has cut costs to a point, the report says, its basic functions are impaired. The key problem with finances is that school districts rely on students for their money. The more students, the more money a district gets from the provincial government. But with declin- ing enrolments either through a drop in births or by people moving out, the district’s income will drop and the situation isn’t likely to change in the foreseeable future. A‘solution? Go out and raise more money, says the report. “Even a modest target of one per “qtially ‘would ‘enniéh livery.”. . ‘Now: that? s an easy thing to say. Yet place that against the innumerable bake sales, bottle drives, door-to-door chocolate sales and the like already undertaken to support beleaguered band and sports programs and there isn’t a lot of manoeu- vering room. As it is, parents and teachers are near burnout in terms of time invested for the fi- nancial return from these methods. Another solution? Since each student is worth approximately $4,000 in provincial revenue, the report suggests pursuing school drop outs, This is brutal as it gives the impression of trea- ting students as a marketable commodity in order to fill out the school district’s budget, but this new-fangled approach to old-fashioned truant of- ficers appears to be the reality of education in this | province in the year 2000. | The one comfort may be that for each drop out brought back, there’ll be one more person in B.C, given access to the basics of an education. This is, after all, the job of a school district in the first place. The question is, however, can the school district deliver the product once a drop o out is reclaimed? . fi the distriers educational ‘dei 4 PUBLISHER/EDITOR: Rod Link ADVERTISING MANAGER: Brian Lindenbach PRODUCTION MANAGER: Edouard Credgeur NEWS Jeff Nagel * NEWS/SPORTS: Christiana Wiens NEWS/COMMUNITY: Alex Hamilton FRONT OFFICE: Darlene Keeping CIRCULATION SUPERVISOR: Carole Kirkaldy ADVERTISING CONSULTANTS: Sam Bedford, Mark Beaupre & Stacy Swetlikoff . TELEMARKETER: Stacy Swetlikoff ~-.., DARKROOM/COMPOSING: Susan Credgeur AD ASSISTANT: Donna Sullivan, Kulwant Kandola Te SUBSCRIPTION RATES BY MAIL: ~ $57.30 per year; Seniors $50.75; Out of Province $64.39 Outside of Canada (6 months) $158.25 (ALL PRICES INCLUDE GST) BEM” MEMBERLOF . "B.C, AND YUKON COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION. ~_ CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION Be, PRESS COUNCL Goya 8 Serving the Tevace and Tra area. Published on Wednesday of each week al 9210 Glinton Street, Terrace, British Columbla, VG 5A2, Stories, photographs, Illustrations, designs and typestylas in tha Terrace Standard are the property of the copytight holders, Including Cariboo Press” (1889) ud, Ae Mfustration tapto services and advertising Poprod stn whole o in pat, without writen pérmisékon, i speciReally prohibited. : : Authorized &s | second-class mai Pending the Post Cilice Bepartmant, for payment af postage in cash. _, Spectal t thanks. to alt our. contributors and correspondents ys » for their time and talents Honeitinerec “Fomnen ermmes ood Fehon cent of the ministry r revenues, or $500,000, an-.. to aebe bry. tae Poetry surfaces in NDP contest VICTORIA — Just about the only prominent NDP politician who hasn't endorsed any of the four candidates for the NDP leadership is Tommy Douglas. OK, he's been dead for 14 years, but such considerations haven't stopped Dave Barrett who has been dead, politically speaking, for 11 years longer, from supporting Gordon Wil- son who joins, forms and leaves political parties be- tween breakfast and lunch. I do admit to a slight bias against Wilson as a politician. F don't like opportunists, and he's the. granddaddy of oppor- tunists. Personally, I find Wilson very likable. I've even done him a big favour in the past, but that's not for this column ’ to be told. As for the other three can- didates, Corky, ‘Byans,. isa ‘Dosa anjh., and ‘I ‘Len, We} erden, 1) ‘don't’ “consider ‘them: ‘ta, be op-, portunistic, unless you believe that wanting to be party leader at all is a manifestation of op- portunism which I don't. All three have embraced the underpinnings of their party for years. And now that the leader's position is open, they have pul their names for- ward, One can argue that they should have spoken up when Glen: Clark, the former leader ‘FROM THE CAPITAL | HUBERTBEYER _ and premier, ran the party and the province like dictatar, eventually causing the wheels to fall of the party's and the province's wagon. But as we saw in the case of another premier, Bill Van- der Zalm, the decision to get rid BEA leader i fot She taken "and ‘grab ‘the Grass Ting; = ' lightly. "And ‘When “at “last “it's un- avoidable, it's also usually too late for the party to survive the fallout. , Supporters for Wilson and Dosanjh claim that their re- spective candidate is the only one to beat the Liberals in the next election, That line of thinking is not only delusion- ary, but dangerous. Vander Zalm ‘got to be lea- der because Social Credit Party supporters saw in him the only candidate who could win the next election. He did and destroyed the party in the following five years. Clark was chosen as leader because he, too, was believed to be the only one who could lead the NDP to another vic- tory. He did and although the party will survive, it's in ter- tible shape, The question is: will the NDP make the same mistake again? A few weeks ago, I would have said yes, but I'm hot so sure anymore, First off, there are certain dynamics at play that could result in the election of Evans. It_happened when Bil! King and David Vickers were the front runners fo replace Barrett as leader. They savaged one another, allowing Bob Skelly to come up through the middle Skelly was inept, Evans isn't. Considered for the longest time an also-ran by my collea- gues, Evans has suddenly be- ‘come the object of intense media attention. “Evans a contender,” was a Globe and. Mail. front-page headline. “Corky is cooking," a colleague said to me the. other day. 1 didn't rub it in that I had said so all along. No sir. Mind you, some media ONG Oi EWayy se ~ The samé'could Heippetthig WOUIB ‘Democracy Es. coming pitothe ~'time,"With one big difference. ee types are still a little baffled by. his one-liners, like the one-he used at a candidates' forum. “We know and you know that. democracy is coming .to the NDP. ” Leonard Cohen, folks, “Democracy is coming to ‘the: USA,” one of the great Cana- dian poet's famous poems. Here are a few lines which may explain Evan's use of that poem: “It's coming from the sorrow . of the street, the holy places: where the races meet; from the homicidal bitchin’ that goes down in every kitchen” to determine who will serve and: who will eat. From the wells of disappoint. 5 ment where the women kneel to pray For the grace of God in the desert here and the desert far USA ee tas anel “And there’ 'S the refrain: “Sail on, sail on . o mighty ship of state! To the shores of need, . past the reefs of greed, through squalls of hate, , sail on, sail on, sail on.” Sure beats opportunism. Beyer can be reached at: E - mai dl hubert@coolcom.com Tel dei Fax: (250) 381-6900 Web: * hup:/iwww.Aubertbeyer.com ; The old days are no more FIFTY YEARS ago when I asked for piano lessons, my parents’ main concern was would I stick to it? Today a parent’s main concern is can I trust the instructor alone with my child? Until my first recital after eight months of lessons, my parents hadn’t met my teacher. They knew only that.he ha successfully taught piano in our’s and surrounding towns for ten years. My piano teacher was a classical musician who farmed twenty miles north. He arrived in town every Friday morning on the cily-bound CNR pas- senger-freight train early en- ough to begin lessons at 10 a.m. The same train took him home again that evening. He quit teaching when CNR can- celled its same-day return ~ schedule. My lessons took place in Paulthus’s living room. Mr. and Mrs. Paulhus owned the Red chile AMIRISSC THROUGH BIFOCALS- CLAUDETTE SANDECKI and White store. Their home stood aloof on the west edge of town separated from their store by the town’s only lum- beryard, and opposite the rail- road, a row of elevators, and a mink farm. We kids disappeared one at at time from school to walk to our half hour lesson clear across town. After letting my- self in, I'd doff my jacket on aadyeorie rien f, CE CREAM § EREVCH FRIES «.. huh: ICE CREAN ¢ FRENCH. FRIES « heh, ICE CREAM ¢f FRENCH FRIES 1. hub! / the single bed in the spare room off the kitchen, then wail, sitting on the wood box next to the white McClary range. Always Paulhus's kitchen smelled of cooking fish, which Mrs. Paulhus would prepare for her husband and the spinster school principal who boarded with them, before leaving to work her midday shift at the store. I'd wait flinching at every wrong note struck by the hap- less student in the living room beyond. Long before my turn to clump across the polished hardwood floor to the gleaming piano bench, my fingers would be stiff and icy from apprehen- sion. ; In my memory, the teacher could have been Bill Vander Zalm’s twin for stature. He was also Dutch with an unpronoun- ceable name. He wore coarse fibred salt and pepper suits that looked as if they itched. He had run out of smiles before’ the age of three. He sat to one side behind a. card table heaped with instruc-- tion books, close enaugh : to: concentrate my attention on a minor difficulty by rapping his. 7 metal mechanical pencil on ~ the music sheet. I feared the. pounding of his pencil on the - page. But it never occurred to me to guard against him touch- ing me inappropriately while - we were alone. Now that our granddaughters are toying with the notion of lessons, my thoughts run to tra-: ditional questions: be fun to study with, or will his style lead to numb, icy fingers. Will there be a half hour space in the teachers’s timetable. and. will it coincide with our cars. and drivers. I should ask, Can the parent be present in the room ‘during’. the lesson? And has the -tea- cher passed an RCMP criminal record check? What -do. lessons cost? Will the teacher = |: or ol Hours /afer., ys | PEACE ¢ BEAUTY... huh! FeAcE ¥ BEAUTY «.. huh! PEACE ¢ BEAUTY +. huh! bah! huh! HUH!