Nunavut’s French-language school board to host special meeting

The CSFN will host a special public meeting at its Trois-Soleils school in Iqaluit March 25 to respond to parent concerns. (FILE PHOTO)

Parents with children who attend Iqaluit’s École des Trois-Soleils have called on Nunavut’s French-language school board to hold a special public meeting next week to respond to parent concerns.

The school board, the Commission scolaire francophone du Nunavut (CSFN), will host the meeting March 25 at Trois-Soleils school.

But the tone of the meeting already promises to be tense, while members of the Association des parents francophones du Nunavut (APFN) have drafted a list of questions for the school board’s director and its elected commissioners about decisions the association alleges the board has made without any consultation with parents.

The conflict came to a head in mid-January, when the school board sent home a French-language notice to parents on a Friday afternoon, informing them of staffing changes to the school’s kindergarten program set for the following Monday morning.

“Is the CSFN ready to take responsibility if parents and staff find that this communication is not satisfactory?” the parents association wrote to the school board Feb. 2, in a series of questions it asked to be answered at a special public meeting.

In another letter addressed to the school board March 4, the APFN noted that “Such questions remain, to this day, unanswered.”

The same letter takes a shot at the school board, highlighting the definition of the word “arrogance” in the letter’s opening lines.

Over the past several months, administrators at Iqaluit’s École des Trois-Soleils have had to contend with a number of teacher absences and personnel shortages, which have led to staff reassignments.

But a number of parents with children enrolled at Trois-Soleils school say they’re not getting enough information about those changes.

The school board, for its part, says it’s doing what it can to keep things running smoothly at the school, which serves about 90 students, despite those teacher absences and what it considers a lack of funding on the part of the territorial government.

That prompted the school board, along with Iqaluit parent and lawyer Doug Garson, to launch a lawsuit against the Government of Nunavut last month, demanding it offer French-language education and school facilities on par with Iqaluit’s other schools, where English is the dominant language.

The lawsuit calls on the GN to live up to obligations under Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees minority language educational rights to French-speaking communities outside of Quebec.

But that’s only deepened the rift between the board and parents, who’ve since launched a campaign denouncing the CSFN-led lawsuit.

The school board will host its special public meeting March 25 at École des Trois-Soleils, although it has yet to specify a time or release the meeting’s agenda.