Christian group’s bid raises concerns

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This article was published 12/05/2003 (8232 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A conservative Christian group that shuns computers and television wants to have its own exclusive Charleswood public school — potentially creating a precedent that could open the door to charter schools in Manitoba.

Charter schools have a foothold in Alberta and several U.S. states, where parents can draw up criteria for students and programs that limit who can enrol in a particular public school.

The Doer government is refusing to comment, and is in no hurry before the June 3 provincial election to decide if the Christian Brethren’s proposal is legal under the Public Schools Act.

The Christian Brethren have asked Pembina Trails School Division to establish Oakdale School in Charleswood as a public school for the exclusive use of 22 congregation children in grades 7 to 12.

Pembina Trails school trustees bounced the request straight to the province.

There is a huge financial advantage to being in the public school system. Private schools operate for their first three years without any government funding, then receive operating grants at half the rate of area public schools. The government does not provide any capital funding for private schools.

The Christian Brethren has several congregations in Manitoba, and shields its children from exposure to computers, radio and television.

The religious group based its plea to the school division on the model of Hutterite colony public schools throughout Manitoba, which are exclusively for Hutterite children.

The catch, say senior educators, is that Hutterite colonies can restrict enrolment by declaring the colony itself the school’s catchment area — a technicality that would not work in the heart of Charleswood.

The public school system cannot turn away any local resident living within the school’s catchment area, said River East Transcona superintendent John Carlyle, president of the Manitoba Association of School Superintendents. “Under the Public Schools Act, a resident pupil is entitled to attend a school.

“There are provisions for people who want to set up an exclusive school, if you want to set up a private school,” Carlyle said.

Carlyle said the Christian Brethren proposal sounds like a charter school — a category of school that the provincial government has so far rejected.

“It sounds more like a charter school than a public school,” agreed Carolyn Duhamel, executive director of the Manitoba Association of School Trustees. “I’m not aware of any way, under the Public Schools Act, they could do that.”

“(Oakdale) sounds like a private school to me,” Turtle River School Division secretary-treasurer Kevin McKnight, president of the Manitoba Association of School Business Officials, said from Killarney.

“We’re asking for a ruling from the province — we haven’t taken a position at all,” said Pembina Trails superintendent Paul Moreau.

Moreau said the Christian Brethren’s children attend Royal School for kindergarten to Grade 6. Oakdale now operates as a grades 7 to 12 satellite campus of Shaftesbury High School, though no child outside the congregation has so far tried to enrol.

Moreau said Oakdale School does not provide religious training during school hours, but it is essential to the group’s beliefs and values that the students not be exposed to technology. “That is a key need of their community, that no technology be used.”

The religious group’s spokesman for negotiations with the school board did not return calls.

However, in an interview with the Winnipeg Free Press in the early 1990s, the Christian Brethren said the faith objects to the heavy stream of violence, drugs and sex dispensed by the broadcast media.

“It’s evil and we don’t want our children exposed to it,” said congregation member Don Logan. “We don’t have TV, radio and computers in our homes and we don’t want our children exposed to these in school.”

Oakdale School now has two part-time teachers, but if it is separated from Shaftesbury, “a given would be that it would be a teaching principalship,” Moreau said.

From the outside, Oakdale School looks like a house, he said. “The administration of Shaftesbury oversees the entire operation; it just isn’t integrated into the Shaftesbury building.”

Superintendents pointed out that specialized public school programs such as Hebrew or Ukrainian bilingual are open to any student regardless of ethnocultural background. There are several non-native students attending the aboriginal-focused Children of the Earth High School.

There is an anomaly in Brandon School Division, which includes the Catholic St. Augustine School.

“We offer the first seats to Catholic students. We do have non-Catholic children at St. Augustine,” said Brandon superintendent Donna Michaels.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

— With files from Aldo Santin