With Good Reason

Imagine a school with the motto — Struggle and Emerge — and you will get an idea of what is so special about the Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, a private high school located in Wilcox, Sask.

Started in the 1930’s by Athol Murray, a priest with the personal credo — God, Canada and Hockey — it has become a story of academic excellence and personal achievement where 100% of graduates are eligible to attend university. Now that is the kind of record most parents want for the schools they choose for their children — assuming they are able to make that kind of choice.

In the case in point, it is about the right of First Nations parents and their children to attend a school like Notre Dame if they want to — with public money. Read Kevin Libin’s column today in the National Post “Are private schools the answer for Canada’s struggling native kids?” It is a very uplifting piece. 

He talks about Notre Dame and how that school has been changing the lives of Aboriginal students for decades. One current grade 11 student for example, Atshapi Andrew, is from Sheshatshiu, Labrador’s largest Innu community and the one known for substance abuse in children as young as six. He says:

“My mom knew I had to move to change schools in order to get my education….At school in Sheshatshiu, many students couldn’t understand English. My friends drank back home. And some days you wouldn’t see them there. Some days they would come smelling like booze…It was a very up and down kind of school….Some days you couldn’t even do any work.”

But at Notre Dame, as former Regional Chief of Alberta for the Assembly of First Nations, Jason Goodstriker, says: “You had to pass all the top level courses. And, the teachers would sit up and work with you until you did.”

In fact, the school has helped launch the careers of such NHL greats as Wendel Clark, Rod Brind’Amour, Curtis Joseph, Vincent Lecavalier and Brad Richards as well as produced some of Canada’s most successful Aboriginal leaders, including Shauneen Pete, a member of Saskatchewan’s Little Pine First Nation and now the vice-president of academics at the First Nations University.

Now, what is at issue here? Funding and the right for First Nations parents to choose where their children will go to school. But, like provincial government and school board monopolies, since the federal government is funding public schools on reserves, band councils are reluctant to fund the tuition costs for a private school. 

Yet, the costs are actually lower than a publicly funded school. Look at school statistics across this country — most in the $8,000 to $9000 per pupil ranges — which I imagine are similar to per-student costs on reserves. Yet, tuition for a day student at Notre Dame is actually much lower at $5670. Of course boarding fees are more: in-Sask tuition costs being $17,000 and out-of-province being $23,000.

So, clearly if the money followed the student we could afford to provide First Nations students and their parents with the option of attending Notre Dame in Wilcox, Saskatchewan or any other school for that matter. It just takes a willingness to change the status quo from funding a bureaucracy to funding students.

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Note: C/P at Jack’s Newswatch and Crux-of-the-Matter.