Omicron (less than) one month later

In the month since the Omicron variant was confirmed in Nova Scotia, we’ve gone from 20 cases in a day to over 1,000. Time to take a moment to think about those trying to make sense of it all and make the best decisions for all of us. On Wednesday, November 24, 2021 — just […]

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 […]

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 […]

Memo to Stephen McNeil: beware teachers bearing frustration

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner February 26, 2018. 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 — […]

Wade Smith’s unfinished legacy: ‘It’s up to us…’

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner, June 12, 2017. “Maybe we need to look at an all-black school or other alternatives.” It was April 2006 and Wade Smith, then the vice principal of St. Patrick’s High School in Halifax, was musing to former-student-become-CBC-journalist Maggie Rahr about a recently released report on the province’s progress — […]

Education: the Byzantine, bizarre and just plain nonsensical

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner February 27, 2017.) 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 not to revisit its carefully nuanced 2013 plan to […]

Teachers: light at the end of the tunnel? What tunnel?

It’s been a full week since the Liberal caucus revolt Stephen McNeil insists never happened; since Education Minister Karen Casey’s 180-degree, we-must-close-all-the-schools-right-now-to-protect-student-safety/no-we-will-reopen-all-the-schools-tomorrow-to-protect-our-government’s future; since the government called its special session of the House of Assembly to pass legislation to impose a rejected contract on the province’s 9,300 teachers, then sent the MLAs home with nothing […]

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

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 […]

Government’s ‘we know best’ approach to race relations… again, still

It’s difficult to see Education Minister Karen Casey’s decision to cut off funding for the Council on African Canadian Education (CACE) as anything but vindictive. Let’s examine the history. In 1996, after high school race riots and a critical government advisory report recommended establishing an Africentric Learning Institute to improve black students’ education, the province […]

Students speak, government isn’t listening

Last week’s student march on Province House has become an annual rite of the winter season, not unlike its usual accompanying, storm-tossed February headline salad: Monday’s “Traffic Gridlock Hits Halifax,” Tuesday’s “Halifax Digging out from Biggest Snowfall” to Friday’s cheerless end-of-first-week-of-the-month news “Snowfall Amounts for February in Halifax Almost Equal to January Total.” Predictable. Depressing. […]