Students at risk begin returning to classrooms

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The Saskatoon Board of Education has renewed its commitment to a unique program aimed at getting more Native kids off city streets and back into the classroom.

School trustees have agreed to expand the board's involvement in the First Nations Children at Risk: Education and Healing Empowerment Program, which is run in conjunction with the Saskatoon Tribal Council and the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations.

Established in January at the Estey School in Saskatoon, the program is aimed at reintroducing Aboriginal children, who may be at risk of leading dangerous life styles, into the public school system.

Earlier this year, the school board provided a single classroom at the Estey School and covered the cost of a small teaching staff, limited secretarial support and school supplies.

A total of 12 students took part in the program with attendance rates averaging 70 per cent between February and April, 1998.

The names of 60 more children have been added to a waiting list since the program was launched just seven months ago. Some children involved have "limited parental supervision and home lives that are wrought by poverty, violence, alcoholism and instability," according to program organizers.

"What we are talking about here is students who have not been in school, have not experienced success (as a student) and have lived very difficult lives," said Cole Kirby, principal at Estey School.

"This is the safest most comfortable place that they've probably known for some time. We're taking these kids who have lived in that uncertainty and we're trying to make them feel comfortable and eventually (introduce them to) another school."

Kirby, along with Saskatoon Tribal Council representative Rebecca Elder, acknowledged that the transition from Estey School to other public schools in Saskatoon can be a challenge, but both endorsed the program as an effective early intervention program that has huge potential for at risk students.

Expanding the program to two classrooms at Estey will allow enrollment in the program and simultaneously expanding the board's financial commitment would reduce the per pupil cost by about 21 per cent.

The school board's cost per student will be about $3,600 in the 1999 calendar year, about the same amount spent on mainstream students in the public system.

"I think the success of this program was summed up by one child, who I think was eight or nine, who had ridden his bike all the way (across the city) in order to come to school," said school trustee Caroline Cottrell.

"For a child who has been completely out of the system to put in that kind of effort to go to school, that says a great deal to me," she said.

Prospective students for the program are nominated by school social workers, social workers from the Department of Social Services, school principals, parents, the Saskatoon Tribal Council Family Centre and other child intervention agencies in the city.