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Parents press for back-to-school plan

July 14, 2020 By Yvette d'Entremont Leave a Comment

The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free. More than 100 parents from across the province have penned an open letter to Premier Stephen McNeil highlighting what they call a “failure to put children and their right to education” at the centre of Nova Scotia’s pandemic response.  The group, Parents for a Pandemic […]

Filed Under: Education, Featured, News, Province House Tagged With: ADHD, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), coronavirus, COVID-19, Derek Simon, education, Education Minister Zach Churchill, Erica Baker, online learning, pandemic, Parents for a Pandemic Education Plan, Premier Stephen McNeil, remote learning, school reopening

Why are we still talking about Africentric schools?

Why aren't we doing something to try to change decades of data — “comparative drop-out rates, school suspension rates, graduation rates, academic averages achieved” — that show African Nova Scotian students aren't reaching their potential in our school system? Whatever the reasons, it's time to stop allowing the failures of the past to keep repeating themselves.

February 10, 2020 By Stephen Kimber

  “And all the news just repeats itself Like some forgotten dream that we’ve both seen” —John Prine It’s April 2006. The African Nova Scotian Advisory Committee has just released a new report criticizing the Halifax Regional School Board for “failing to adequately address the challenges faced by African Nova Scotian learners, citing as evidence...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Education, Featured, Subscribers only Tagged With: Africentric school, education, Racism, Wade Smith

Hard conversations: Why was “fantastic principal” Lamar Eason suspended from his job?

“People don’t like to talk about race, culture, bias,” Bayview Community School principal Lamar Eason explains, adding elliptically: “Doing your job can lead to questioning the people employing you. Understandably, people get defensive. But [race relations officers] are not there just to support schools; we’re also there to support students and their families. There can be some hard conversations.”

January 5, 2019 By Stephen Kimber 2 Comments

Just as the school day was winding down on Monday, Nov. 5, 2018, the human resources director of the South Shore Regional Centre for Education (SSRCE) showed up, unannounced, at Mahone Bay’s Bayview Community School. Brian Bonia proceeded directly to the office of the school’s principal, Lamar Eason, where he delivered a copy of an […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Education, Featured, News, Province House Tagged With: Bayview Community School, Brian Bonia, Catherine Montreuil, Common Services Bureau, education, Lamar Eason, MLA Kim Masland, Racism, Rebecca Smart, School Boards scrapped, Scott Milner, South Shore Regional Centre for Education (SSRCE), William Kowalski

Memo to Stephen McNeil: beware teachers bearing frustrations

On October 25, 2016, 96 per cent of teachers gave their union an overwhelming strike mandate. And that changed everything about everything in the McNeil government’s union-busting calculus.

February 25, 2018 By Stephen Kimber

Cast your mind back to October 25, 2016. The date will be significant. Before that day, Stephen McNeil’s Liberal government seemed to be in full control of its anti-public-sector-worker agenda. The executive of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union was preparing — reluctantly — to recommend its 7,600 members agree to a tentative...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Education, Featured, Province House, Subscribers only Tagged With: education, Liette Doucet, NSTU, Stephen McNeil, teachers

Education: the Byzantine, bizarre, and just plain nonsensical

“People talk about Ivany, about attracting young people to rural communities, about growing the economy…” Leif Helmer stops. “We have a great community, a great school. We don’t intend to lose that.”

February 27, 2017 By Stephen Kimber

If you’re looking for a flashing-neon-sign example of how Byzantine, bizarre, and just plain nonsensical our province’s education bureaucracy can be, you might begin by considering last Wednesday’s non-decision by the South Shore Regional School Board to not revisit its carefully nuanced 2013 plan to close two small rural elementary schools in Lunenburg county. First,...

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Filed Under: Education, Featured, Province House, Subscribers only Tagged With: education, Ivany Report, Karen Casey, Rural development, school closure

An Injury to All

What the teachers' strike shows us about reparations, and what the reparations movement teaches us about educational justice.

February 18, 2017 By El Jones 6 Comments

On Friday, teachers in Nova Scotia walked out in a historic strike. Locally, the teachers’ resistance is a blow against the Liberal Government’s “war on labour.” As Larry Haiven writes: Eager to balance the provincial budget by the end of its first term, the Liberal government has declared war on labour. It introduced a spate of […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Dr. Afua Cooper, education, educational justice, fight for reparations, neoliberalism, Robin D.G. Kelley, Robin Kelley, Stephanie Dean-Moore, Sylvia Hamilton, Ta-Nehisi Coates, teachers strike

Get back to work: Examineradio, episode #100

February 17, 2017 By Russell Gragg 2 Comments

Snow and teachers. Teachers and snow. Did anything else happen since I left Halifax? This week we speak to former NDP Finance Minister and current CBC pundit Graham Steele about the Liberal government’s strategy to impose a contract on Nova Scotia’s teachers. Will it succeed? Will any Liberal MLAs cross the floor? What effect will […]

Filed Under: Featured, Province House Tagged With: Bill 75, education, Examineradio, Karen Casey, NSTU, podcast, snow, Stephen McNeil, teachers

How the government chose to build two new schools in the “right” place in the right pre-election time

Perhaps they wrote the names of the two schools on sheets of paper and put them in a hat, picking them out one by one. “Oh, look, Karen, you won,” says the premier. “My turn! My turn!”

December 5, 2016 By Stephen Kimber

The very suggestion the Nova Scotia government would cherry-pick new school building projects from the bottom of the priority pile simply because said schools would be built in constituencies held by Education Minister Karen Casey and Premier Stephen McNeil, is — cue the harrumphs — “a ridiculous comment to make.” So says the minister herself....

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Filed Under: Commentary, Education, Featured, Province House, Subscribers only Tagged With: Auditor General, education, Karen Casey, P3, Stephen McNeil, teachers strike

They get cut, we bleed: Examineradio, episode #90

December 2, 2016 By Russell Gragg 15 Comments

This week’s episode revolves almost exclusively around the labour dispute between the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union and the provincial government. It seems as though the McNeil administration expected the teachers to roll over and take the first offer (and then the second), but the teachers have made it clear that imposed working conditions have put […]

Filed Under: Featured, Province House Tagged With: education, Examineradio, labour, podcast

Mushroom File, Thursday, September 1, 2016

City protects plants; province neglects plants; scientists peer at plants. We are literally watching grass grow today, but stay with me -- it matters.

September 1, 2016 By Katie Toth 10 Comments

Today’s Morning File is written by Katie Toth. I’m a reporter and writer who’s hopped up on cold brew coffee and cranky letters, so let’s do this. News Views Noticed Government On campus In the harbour Footnotes News 1. ‘FRO’ to Blue Mountain developers, City staff says From CBC: HRM staff recommended council avoid developing the Blue […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Anthem of the Seas, Blue Mountain Birch Cove Lake Wilderness, child support, Dartmouth, Dinkin Mine, education, energy, environment, Lisa Roberts, NDP, shooting, sponges, Tourism

The Tideline, with Tara Thorne

Mo Kenney. Photo: Matt Williams

Episode #18 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne is published.

Mo Kenney’s new record Covers is a perfect winter companion — songs from across the rock spectrum that she’s pared down to piano or guitar and turned them into sad ballads. She joins Tara to talk about choosing and arranging them, and opens up for a frank discussion of the alcohol dependency it took a pandemic for her to confront. Plus: Movies are back (again).

This episode is available today only for premium subscribers; to become a premium subscriber, click here, and join the select group of arts and entertainment supporters for just $5/month. Everyone else will have to wait until tomorrow to listen to it.

Please subscribe to The Tideline.

Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

About the Halifax Examiner

Examiner folk The Halifax Examiner was founded by investigative reporter Tim Bousquet, and now includes a growing collection of writers, contributors, and staff. Left to right: Joan Baxter, Stephen Kimber, Linda Pannozzo, Erica Butler, Jennifer Henderson, Iris the Amazing, Tim Bousquet, Evelyn C. White, El Jones, Philip Moscovitch More about the Examiner.

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