Telling Tales Out of School

Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION

Some people are missing the point

By: Nick Martin

5/03/2009 4:24 PM | Comments: 1

A few people have been giving me grief over the story about the 17-year-old girl in Pine Falls who can’t enrol in Powerview School because her mother is legal guardian and won’t sign her registration papers.

Look, I know she’s probably not the poster child for the perfect student. She’s undoubtedly had a rough life. When you’ve been in care up until the age of 16, tried to live with mom and moved out, and at 17 are living with someone else’s parent and moving from community to community, that’s not ideal.

The point is that the case illustrates a hole in the Public Schools Act. Up to 16, you must attend school. At 18, you’re an adult, you have the right to enrol yourself and receive a public school education. But between 16 and 18, a responsible adult must enrol you, be it a parent, a legal guardian, or the state through placing you in care.

If a student is a problem in the school, then the school deals with that, whether it’s a 17-year-old from a difficult background, or a 12-year-old from an idyllic family situation.

This young woman wants to go to school, and how in the world can that not at least have the potential of helping her life?

All right, on to other topics.

I spent Wednesday afternoon as moderator of a city council byelection forum at Grant Park High School, first for students and then for the general public.

Great questions from the students, intense interest, and complete civility.

After the public session, one member of the audience went to the organizers and complained about my conduct — he said I was ‘abrupt’.

Moi?

I’ll pause while you all try to regain your composure.

I hadn’t allowed this man to yell at the candidates, wouldn’t let him shout them down, and refused to allow him to rant on and on about his own opinions for a longer time than the candidates themselves were allowed to speak.

Sigh.

Anyhow, Terry, I hear you’re in the chair for the Winnipeg School Division board byelection forum next Thursday evening at Grant Park in the junior gym at 7 p.m. Be prepared, and heads up, eh?

Seguing once more, there was a lot of interest in the story I did about St. James-Assiniboia’s proposal for trustees to lobby the Doer government to raise the legal drinking age to 19.

Yes, I know that in some parallel universe that some kid somewhere may have a beer or two in the trunk of the car in the school parking lot, or an 18-year-old may go to the vendor or liquor store to run errands for some 16-year-olds, and maybe a kid with a spare goes to a nearby house bereft of adults and may have a beer. Or a couple of kids may go in a back lane at lunch and — gasp! — share a joint.

But I hadn’t expected St. James-Assiniboia’s rationale, that the problem is 18-year-olds who legally enter a licenced establishment at lunch time and legally order alcohol, before returning to school at varying degrees of being under the influence. It had never occurred to me that that was a big problem, the cost of having such lunches not being the least of the reasons.

Other divisions say that particular scenario is not a problem for them, and that codes of conduct allow schools to deal with any kids under the influence during the school day.

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