A group of Morinville listened intently as a panel of guest speakers weighed in on the issue of secular education during a Thursday evening event.
Almost 100 people — most being parents or relatives of students — turned up at the Morinville Seniors’ Rendez-Vous Centre for the talk hosted by Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership.
The foundation brought in former education minister David King, Frank Peters of the University of Alberta and Linda McKay-Panos of the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre, and also invited locals to share their views on the issue.
In the last few months, parents have requested Greater St. Albert Schools, which has jurisdiction over the town’s education, to provide a secular education option. An initial refusal led to meetings with Education Minister Dave Hancock and school board officials, which in turn led to seeking a third party to provide such a secular option.
It is unknown at this time what the final result — expected in September — will look like.
“At every stage we have been told, emphatically, ‘no’ by our public school board — that GSACRD is Catholic board, that these are Catholic schools and they cannot be something they aren’t,” said Jennifer Love, a Morinville parent. “My children are expected to be something they are not every day.”
Absent from the public forum was members of the Catholic school board.
David Keohane, superintendent for the school division, previously said there was not a lot of point since it was felt most at the meeting would have their minds made up that the board should provide secular education.
He was not wrong after many showed strong support for secular education.
“They’re not a publicly funded Catholic board … there’s no such thing,” said King. “They should not be permeating their instruction with faith convictions of one denomination. There’s nothing in the School Act recognizing the existence of a denominational public school system … there’s nothing in the Constitution giving protection to denominational public school systems.”
Peters and McKay-Panos agreed, the situation in Morinville is unique — to Alberta at least and likely to all of Canada — and needs to be addressed and fixed. The way to accomplish it is to get Hancock to step in, they concluded.
Hancock needs to do so more than he has to date, King believes.
King said the education minister has abilities, from low-level intervention, such as “talking tough,” to high-level intervention, such as removing the school division’s board of trustees and replacing them or removing Morinville from the school division’s jurisdiction and giving it to another.
The suggestion of giving Morinville to Sturgeon School Division was also raised Thursday.
Sturgeon has its offices in Morinville, but its jurisdiction is for the surrounding area. That school division has been in talks with the Catholic division about the possibility of Sturgeon providing the secular option come September.
The Catholic board is conducting surveys to gauge interest in such a program to determine what it would need to look like in the fall.
