“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...
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.”
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 […]
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.
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...
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.”
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,...
An Injury to All
What the teachers' strike shows us about reparations, and what the reparations movement teaches us about educational justice.
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 […]
Get back to work: Examineradio, episode #100
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 […]
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!”
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....
They get cut, we bleed: Examineradio, episode #90
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 […]
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.
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 […]