Nunavut’s ed department defends cancellation of Clyde River grad trip

The Nunavut Department of Education decided not to let the planned grad trip for these Clyde River students go ahead in 2015. (FILE PHOTO)

After raising more than $24,000 in one month from 211 donors online at the GoFundMe online fundraising site, five 2015 graduates from Clyde River’s Quluaq School learned earlier this past week that they wouldn’t be heading off to Paris, Canterbury, Normandy, Saint-Malo, and London, after all.

Teacher and organizer Heather McIsaac said late May 11 that the Nunavut Department of Education’s Qikiqtani School Operations had pulled the plug on the trip — leaving her with more questions than answers about the decision.

In response to a request for more information made May 12 by Nunatsiaq News, the education department responded May 15 through an emailed statement.

“The Department of Education supports well planned trips of an educational nature that ensure that safety of students and provide meaningful learning opportunities. However, requests for approval of trips that fail to account for proper supervision of students or do not include sufficient preparation will not be authorized,” the statement said.

“In this case the employee did not provide sufficient evidence of meeting these guidelines and the trip was denied as a result. This is unfortunate. Had the application package been provided earlier, it is likely that further support could have been provided by the Department of Education.”

Trip organizer McIsaac said the two main reasons cited for the trip cancellation were that the students did not have passports and there was no male or Inuktitut-speaking chaperone.

But she said arrangements had been made to provide for a suitable chaperone and that the passports for all participants had been lined up, with the help of Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq.

McIsaac defended the efforts of her students — Nora Aipellee, Katelyn Hainnu, Leah Palituq, Tyson Palluq, and Maybelle Enuaraq — and said she will work to see the trip go ahead in 2016.

As for the money raised, $20,000 had to be turned over to EF Tours, the company through which the students and McIsaac had booked their trip, set to begin May 30. That will stay in an account for a year.

But the group lost between $2,000 to $3,000 because of cancellation fees.

“The actual cancellation fees were more than $6,000,” McIsaac later told Nunatsiaq News.

“But our tour manager worked with partners (airlines, hotels, restaurants, attractions, etc. — all were prebooked) to lower them as much as possible; she then reduced the rate of our tour for next year. The remaining amount they took as a loss themselves.”

McIsaac said she wanted to make sure that the tour company would receive no negative attention for charging cancellation, but would instead be praised for the efforts made to accommodate the group.

“They are sympathetic to our situation and are working to ensure we can travel next year with minimal financial losses,” McIsaac said.

And Aglukkaq did her best to help the group, although some have suggested that this was not the case, McIsaac said.

“Her office was quick to help and immediately began assisting me in the process of passport applications as soon as I contacted them. They will still pick up the passports as soon as they are completed and mail them back to us in Clyde River. We will have them in hand before the scheduled date of travel,” McIsaac said.

“She [Aglukkaq] helped us at every step, she had nothing to do with the decision not to approve our trip, and I appreciate her continuing support.”