April 25, 2008
Parents in dark as school meeting proves elusive
“We’ll be doing it probably in the next few weeks.”
Frustrated parents in Iqaluit who wonder whether Inuksuk High School will be renovated this autumn at a cost of $20 million, and what this will mean to displaced students, will have to wait several more weeks before a public meeting on the matter, says Education Minister Ed Picco.
"We'll be doing it probably in the next few weeks," Picco said, "for sure."
Picco said his department has had trouble setting a meeting date because Lori Idlout, the chair of the district education authority, is out of town.
His assurance comes seven weeks after Kathy Okpik, Picco's deputy minister, promised parents in Iqaluit that a public meeting to discuss renovation plans for the school would be held "in a few weeks."
And plans for the meeting go back much further. The meeting was originally to be held in December.
The big question that remains to be answered is, when the old school is being torn down to its foundations, where will the students go?
The solution favoured by government is to house students in portables on the Nunavut Arctic College property, just across the road from Inuksuk High.
But Picco has said no decision will be made until parents are consulted - which, for five months now, is supposed to happen in just a few weeks.
