Selkirk's Happy Thought School

Yesterday, in East Selkirk, I had a chance to visit the Happy Thought School. It is a school where the staff and students work well together, but the plain fact is that it has 700 children and a new school is now badly needed. The new school, a middle years school (grades 5-9) has been planned, but there is a problem - the NDP government.

The first request from the school board to the government was in 1997. In the years since, three education ministers, Drew Caldwell, Ron Lemieux and Peter Bjornson have each come to the school, and with much fanfare and TV coverage announced that they were going to build the new school. But there is a problem, the NDP government has not yet approved the funding for the new school.

It was quickly apparent, when I visited the school, some of the reasons a new school is needed. They are so crowded that they have put a small classroom in a corner underneath a stairwell, behind piles of buckets (top two photos). There is only one boys washroom and one girls washroom on the first floor in spite of the fact that this floor has had eight portable classrooms added on and has many more students than it was originally intended to have.

In spite of all the problems, students are doing the best to keep their school attractive with lots of art on the walls (bottom photo).