A Thompson family is unhappy with the School District of Mystery Lake after being told that their home-schooled son will not be allowed to enrol on a part-time basis to participate in the Grade 6 band program next school year.
Caroline Winship, who home schools her son Colin and three younger children, asked for permission to enrol Colin in the band program in May and was told that the school district no longer allows partial enrolment of home-schooled students.
"I first spoke with the superintendent Lorie Henderson on May 15," says Winship. She just basically informed me over the phone that the School District of Mystery Lake does not permit home-schooled students in any public school programs due to space and funding. She then told me I needed to make a written request to the school board, which I did."
Winship and her husband then attended a May 27 meeting of the board to make their request and were informed by a letter on May 30 that since Colin was home-schooled he wouldn't be permitted in the band but that they were welcome to register him full-time if they wanted him to join the band program.
Winship says that partial enrolment of home-schooled children was allowed in the past.
"Colin himself was permitted into music and phys ed classes at Riverside School back in 2009 and there wasn't' any problem," she said.
Henderson told the Thompson Citizen that the decision to not allow home-schooled students to partially enrol was not an easy one to make but that the policy* was enacted to make things black and white, because saying yes to one such request would make it necessary to say yes to them all.
"Parents have the right to homeschool their children according to the rights and responsibilities of as laid out in The Public Schools Act," said a written statement from the school district. "When they choose to homeschool they have made the decision not to be part of the school system, which is their right.
"However, the priorities for the School District of Mystery Lake are to those students who are registered students in our district. Our funding dollars for programming is based on the number of students registered and attending our district every Sept. 30. These dollars, along with many grants are what we use to support programming and numerous challenges faced by public education today.
"We receive individual requests by students not registered in our district to access our programs. We have to ensure that our funding is used wisely for students registered in our District and therefore the Board unanimously supports the Administration's decision not to allow students who are not registered in our District, including homeschooled students, to access our programming. Our practice is consistent with that of other school divisions who also do not allow homeschooled children to participate in programs such as band. In addition our decision is consistent with the Department of Education's guidelines which clearly gives the district the right to make the decision they made."
Following their initial request being denied, Winship said she and her husband asked for more time on a future school board meeting agenda to discuss the matter and were told that since the district's decision had not changed they were not willing to provide more time for the Winships to speak about it.
Not having the opportunity to enrol in the band program was upsetting for her son, said Winship.
"He initially was quite upset understandably because he's literally been counting down as long as I can remember until when he would be old enough to join the band because he wanted to be a second-generation band student," said Winship, who was in band when she was a student in Thompson. "It's very much a big part of his life so he was devastated to find that he couldn't be a part of the band program here in town and trying to explain to him that it was simply because he was home-schooled, he himself used the word discrimination and I didn't have any other explanation for him. Their reasons for not admitting him don't make much sense considering that there is funding available and there is space available. But Colin has been taking it in stride over last week or so basically because of the overwhelming support that we've been getting from the community through the Facebook group and different venues that have been able to write him letters and phone calls and e-mails and signing that petition. We had 324 signatures to hand in and that showed him that there's hope. It can be a very emotionally taxing situation for our whole family but he has hope that there will be a change."
Winship said she spoke to superintendents at 38 other school districts and that only one had a policy against allowing home-schooled students to partially enrol and that was because that district didn't even have enough room for all of its own students in its programs.
"I had no idea that there was a so-called policy preventing home-schooled children," she said. "None of the home school families were notified. The home school liaison for the province of Manitoba did not know that and so because I knew that my own child had been involved in the past without incident I had no idea that their way of doing things had changed. I don't even want to call it a policy because there is no policy. I read through their whole policy manual for the School District of Mystery Lake and there is no policy."
Winship says there are eight families who home school their children in Thompson and that some of those children had taken part in school district programs in the past, though none have for the past two years. And while she's hopeful that the School District of Mystery Lake will reverse its decision, she has taken her case directly to Minister of Education James Allum.
"To me that would be the right thing to do and it's obvious from the general public that there's confusion over why they're preventing this," said Winship. "I really hope that they will change their mind. But that being said I've now gone above them and appealed to the minister of education so it may be out of their hands at a certain point."
She points out that her family pays the same taxes to support education as anyone else.
"We don't get a discount on anything regarding our education, we don't get any reimbursement for our taxes," says Winship. "We contribute to the school taxes just as everybody else does."
Seeing the support her son has received is heartening but Winship would prefer if it wasn't necessary at all.
"It can be invigorating at times when I see the support that we have behind us and we have overwhelming support from the citizens of Thompson but also Manitoba and abroad," Winship said. "The support behind us makes it easier but it is emotionally draining to have to fight for something so basic as education for my child. It's taking energy that I could be putting elsewhere, absolutely."
The decision the school district made is at odds with the sentiments of its mission statement, Winship says.
"It's hard because we're in a remote region, we have limited opportunities to provide experimental learning and enrichment," she says. "So this School District of Mystery Lake is our only option and for them to be turning a blind eye to our family is disappointing. Election time is coming up and I think people need to be aware of what's going on."
*School District of Mystery Lake superintendent of educational services and programs Lorie Henderson contacted Thompson Citizen June 25 to clarify that this is a matter of practice and not a written policy.
