French school board going to court to protect education rights

The Commission scolaire francophone du Nunavut together with Iqaluit lawyer Doug Garson have launched a legal action against the Government of Nunavut to uphold their minority rights to a French education.

And it appears part of the reason they’re doing so is to unite parents, French board members and administrators at Iqaluit’s French language school, École des Trois-Soleils, who have been squabbling over resources, programs, oversight and operational management.

“The purpose behind this litigation is to protect the constitutional rights enjoyed by the Francophone rights holders under section 23 of the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms],” says a Feb. 12 news release issued by Garson and the French language school board.

“Year after year, the government persists in ignoring its constitutional and statutory obligations despite the CSFN’s ongoing demands and its numerous attempts at finding constructive solutions to secure facilities, resources and programs of equal quality to those offered to students attending schools of the linguistic majority in Iqaluit.

“The CSFN hopes that this process will ease the recent frustrations expressed by the Association des parents francophones du Nunavut, and that the parties will be able to work together to promote the vitality of the Francophone community of Nunavut through education.”

Those frustrations have lead to a very public spat between parents of French students in Iqaluit and the board that runs Nunavut’s sole French language school.

Claiming that the school board director and its elected commissioners are guilty of mismanagement and a general lack of transparency and consultation, some parents have gone so far as to start a petition to demand the resignation of the board.

Garson, whose children attended Trois-Soleils, wrote a letter to Nunatsiaq News in late January pleading for parents to set aside grievances with school administrators and board members and unite against the common problem of government underfunding.

The saga continued with a letter to the newspaper days later from John MacDonald, assistant deputy minister of Nunavut’s education department, saying there were no “cuts” to programs, specifically the all-day kindergarten.

MacDonald said school funding from the GN for Trois-Soleils had not changed and that any program changes at the school were the result of internal reallocation of funds.

Schools in Nunavut are funded for half-day kindergarten but Trois-Soleils had been running a three-year full-day kindergarten pilot project.

Recently, French school board officials told parents they could no longer provide full-day kindergarten because the GN refused a request to fund a half-time teaching position that would allow the program to continue.