Attawapiskat First Nation students get their new school after 5 year struggle
School finally coming
Tayo Adesanya - Local News - Monday, November 14, 2005 @ 07:00
After a five-year struggle, students in Attawapiskat will finally get a new elementary school, that will be up to the same standard as the rest of the province.
MP Charlie Angus (NDP — Timmins-James Bay) and MPP Gilles Bisson (NDP — Timmins-James Bay) announced Friday a new elementary school will be built in Attawapiskat.
Bisson said Indian and Northern Affairs Canada has given the Attawapiskat education authority and band council the go-ahead to begin construction.
“You should have heard the kids,” said Chief Mike Carpenter. “I went to the school, I told the students by announcing it on the radio. They were all yelling.
“One of the teachers told me one of the kids had remarked, ‘Gee, now I’ll be able to graduate with a new school.’”
The fight for a new school began five years ago when the old school was closed after thousands gallons of diesel fuel spilled due to errors in construction of a fuel oil pipeline .
Since 2000, the students have been studying in up to 19 portables, said education consultant and former director of the Timmins Board of Education Bill Blake.
“It’s not a good situation at all,” he said.
“I don’t think there was any dispute over the need for the school. The students in Attawapiskat needed a school built to provincial standards, and it looks as if they’ll get that now.”
Bisson and Angus said the federal government had previously promised a new building, but those plans never came to fruition.
“This has been a five-year fight … five years since the families pulled their kids out of the condemned school,” Angus said.