Arviat school lures dropouts back

JOHN THOMPSON

ARVIAT — “We’re populating Nunavut,” say two teenage girls inside the new school gym, smiling as they share stories about friends who left school after they became pregnant. Some return, but many do not.

Welcome to Arviat, population roughly 2,000, and growing fast. With the highest birth rate in Nunavut — hovering around 60 babies in each of the last few years — the community has quickly outgrown its existing high school.

In mid-August, after about 14 months and $13 million, a new school was completed, a shining stack of red, orange and yellow segments and glass.

There are a few reasons for an explosion in student numbers over the last few years, from 224 in 2001 to about 400 this year, explains principal Fred Durant.

One is that many dropouts have returned in recent years. He credits extra-curricular activities for the surge in returning, older students. The new building includes a music room stocked with new electronic keyboards and a storage closet filled with guitars.

Drama is also popular, and a stage faces any visitors who pass through the main entrance of the new building.

During the official opening last Saturday, students re-enacted a history of the education system in the community, beginning when the federal day school was built in 1959, marking the beginning of a permanent settlement in Arviat, then known as Eskimo Point. That building has now disappeared, and the new health centre stands in its place.

Sports keep others busy, especially volleyball, soccer and wrestling. Last year two students from Arviat attended the Canada Summer Games for wrestling. Half the enrolled students are involved in some extra-curricular activity.

Returning students as old as 22 are accepted. Anyone older is encouraged to turn to the Arctic College.

Another reason why the student population skyrocketed is because the high school recently took over the teaching of Grade 6 from the elementary school. And of course, the school’s population has something to do with the number of babies born.

Young mothers are encouraged to bring their children to class if they have trouble with daycare or a babysitter, says Durant, and the school is considering expanding daycare into the school itself. “It’s in the infant stages, excuse the pun,” he says.

The new school contains 15 classrooms, including a computer room, a metal shop and small engine repair room, a skin room, science lab, a home economics and sewing room, and an exercise room that will be open to the community.

All classrooms are equipped with special speakers, called a Phonic Ear system, that allows teachers to broadcast their voice to all corners of the classroom, helping students with ear damage to hear more clearly.

The old building will continue to be used, with both schools sharing a single phone and PA system, although a few bugs have to be ironed out. In the meantime, teachers line up in the office of the new building, waiting to use a single line out.

And despite a year and a half of consultation, the new school still has no name — something the district of education hopes to sort out in the months to come.

Arviat’s population boom will likely continue. A few years ago a crowd of several hundred booed then-Health Minister Ed Picco off the stage when he said it was unfair that young mothers expected elders to care for their babies.

The GN has $18 million set aside for school upgrades for 2005-2006.