Suicide shooting closes Salluit school

Salluit is crying out for help following a suicide shooting last Friday afternoon, which left a female teacher gravely wounded, a teenager dead and teachers refusing to re-open classes.

“We’re trying to deal real hard at the moment with self-government, with preserving our culture, but we have to focus on our youth,” says a worried Michael Cameron, the mayor of Salluit.

The Sûreté du Québec provincial police force said Peter Keatainak, 18, shot Hassina Kerfi-Guetteb, 43, an adult education teacher with the Kativik School Board, in the neck on Feb. 25, seriously injuring her, before turning the rifle on himself.

Kerfi-Guetteb was medevaced to a Montreal hospital, where she was operated on over the weekend; Keatainak died Friday evening at Salluit’s community clinic.

SQ investigators who traveled to Salluit following the incident concluded the attempted murder-suicide was an act of desperate vengeance: Keatainak had been expelled from the adult education program earlier this year after he assaulted another student.

The school board wanted teachers to keep classes going this week, but teachers sent students home early this Monday from school. Later that day and into Tuesday, teachers met amongst themselves. On Wednesday, they went face-to-face with a team sent up from the school board’s head office in Montreal.

The message from teachers to the KSB was that they wouldn’t return to class until the community’s two schools have at least a full-time principal, centre director and other support personnel in place — “just the basic operating staff,” said one teacher.

KSB administrators meeting with teachers in Salluit declined to comment on the board’s position.

But a recent KSB symposium called “Leading the way for our children,” which was held in Kuujjuaq last month, shows the school board is also looking for assistance in dealing with the deteriorating conditions in Nunavik’s schools. The symposium endorsed a resolution saying students, local education committee members, administrators, teachers, mayors and elected representatives of regional organizations should form committees headed up by mayors to develop community action plans for dealing with social problems.

As of press-time, there was no compromise between the parties in Salluit.

If the stalemate continues, schools could remain closed until after the Easter holiday, say teachers.

“That’s the biggest fear everybody has,” admitted Cameron, who left his position as centre director when he was elected mayor. “Our concern is that our kids get an education.”

Salluit, population 1,200, has about 40 teachers, more than 350 students, two school buildings, one for elementary and one for secondary students, a class at the region’s young offenders’ rehabilitation centre, and an adult education centre.

“Teachers aren’t complaining because they need larger apartments. We’re at the end of our rope, all three sectors: Inuit, French and English. We can’t carry out our job,” said Josée Savard, a Grade 7 teacher at Ikusik School. “We want something to be done.”

Teachers say, in addition to top school administrators, they lack basic equipment in the schools, such as a functioning photocopier, staplers and notebooks.

“It’s about a lack of support in every area. Youth don’t have the structure they need to develop or help when they need it. We teachers are also experiencing such difficult conditions. We can’t shoulder the burden alone,” said Savard, who is the teachers’ union representative.

The Northern Quebec teachers’ union plans to take on the defense of the Salluit teachers.

The union, l’Association des enseignants du Nouveau-Quebec , started negotiating a new collective agreement for all its members late last year. The union’s main demand is for additional resources for students — a move that would also help teachers, says union president Patrick D’Astous.

“What we can do is put resources in place to stop this cycle, where students look at school as just one more problem,” said D’Astous. “The school board has to recognize there are serious problems outside of the school and they have to support their staff.”

This week, D’Astous told the KSB “you are going to lose your staff” if it isn’t ready to support teachers.

Many teachers from the South say they are considering permanently leaving Salluit. Five teachers working in the community abandoned ship during the 2003-04 school year.

The KSB already has ongoing problems with recruitment and retention. Attention stemming from an assault on a principal in January, which closed the school in Kangiqsujuaq for three days, and a violent incident last month in Kuujjuaraapik, in which one student died and another one was injured, are likely to make recruitment of new teachers and administrators even more difficult.

However, the KSB says concerns about bad publicity were not behind a memo sent out on Feb. 9 by the school board’s executive director, Annie Grenier, which asked KSB staff not to answer any questions from the media regarding the recent violent incident in Kuujjuaraapik.