Split grades, staff issues force action from parents

Discontent with how Ta-Otha Community School is operating has cost the Big Horn First Nation school 20 per cent of its students.

“Enough was enough,” said Deborah Cardinal, spokesperson for the Education Stakeholders Group. The group is a cross-section of 22 parents which includes Stoney band members, Métis, and Cree and Smallboy Camp individuals. It was formed because of concerns with the school, teaching staff and the Stoney Education Authority.

At the heart of the matter, said Cardinal, is the departure of Ta-Otha’s math and science teacher Kaleena Hanoski and her husband Brian, the guidance counselor.

“It was the first time the school had anybody who took vested interest in these kids,” said Cardinal, who this September sent her children to school in Rocky Mountain House.

“We were funded for 50 (students) and are (at) approximately 80 per cent of that, about 40,” said Stoney Education Authority superintendent Dr. Gordon Breen.
In May 2009 Ta-Otha school, a state-of-the-art facility and 20-year effort, officially opened with a peak enrollment of 89 students. Before its construction, students attended school in a double-wide trailer.
But last September only 50 students from kindergarten to Grade 12 attended the school.
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“People generally don’t leave without cause,” said Kaleena Hanoski. “My main concern was always the education of the students and in my personal opinion, I think grade levels should be more broken up.”

Breen said that Ta-Otha was a small school, and like other small schools had to implement “strategies and techniques to teach and be successful.”

But combining grade levels didn’t sit well with the Education Stakeholders Group.

“That’s like 200 years ago in the pioneer days where there were one-room schools,” Cardinal said of the Grades 7-9 and 10-12 classes.

The decision by the Stoney Education Authority to not fill the positions left vacant by the Hanoskis due to budgetary restraints is also a point of contention for the parent group.

“Not replacing those who chose to leave isn’t because we don’t want to, it’s because the circumstance the small school is in,” Breen said, noting that they were double their payroll budget of $500,000. “If enrolment goes up we will have more money going into the school and we could max that with more staff and that would be wonderful.”

Breen said work needed to be done at the school for scheduling and timetabling.

He also assured parents that concerns would be looked at.

This is not good enough for Cardinal, who says a group of 10-12 students are now taking their education through distance learning.

“We just want acceptable education for our kids and in this day and age we should have that,” she said.

An educational memorandum of understanding signed recently with the province and the three Treaty areas has the objective to increase the standard of education on First Nations, said Cardinal.

“All we are concerned about is our kids’ education and future.  One of the kids even said, ‘You know, education is our buffalo,”’ she said.

Stoney Education Authority is responsible for approximately 1,100 students at the Ta-Otha Community School, the Morley Community School and the Chief Jacob Bearspaw School.