Morinville Public Elementary School had its first day of classes in their new modular classrooms Monday, January 23. The modulars are located adjacent to an existing Elementary School, Georges P. Vanier. The two modular classrooms were expected for the beginning of the 2011-12 school year but were delayed for months. Students were first taught in the Morinville Community Cultural Centre, but increased enrollment required larger space and the students were moved to conference rooms in the Sturgeon School Division Office. Schooling in the modular classrooms will begin a shared space arrangement between Greater St. Albert Catholic Regional Division – the public school division for Morinville – and the Sturgeon School Division – the guest provider.
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The Sturgeon Heights school prayer issue is still ongoing, and the board seems to be trying to draw it out long enough that the parents will get tired and wander away.
In some rather wonderful timing, the SEA will be holding a joint secular and skeptical holiday party with the Greater Edmonton Skeptics Society, CFI Edmonton, and the University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics. This will replace the pub night that was planned for November 25, and as a result, please come to Accent Lounge after 8pm that evening instead!
Accent Lounge will have food, wine and draft beer specials for the evening, and while there is no door charge to get into the event, we do encourage all attendees to bring Edmonton Food Bank items. We’ll also have a photo booth, and a trivia contest, with the winner deciding the charity receiving the money raised.
Please see further details and RSVP at the link below, so that we know how many people to plan for!
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1962914129/
Hope to see you there!
The Facebook group has been actively discussing a lot of things in the news over the past few weeks. Donna Hunter has assembled the links for those of us who can’t follow along.
This week in the news
Luke Fevin was in the news again this week discussing the Sturgeon Heights prayer issue, and standing up for his right to a secular education for his children. In case you missed the original announcement, there is a petition to stop publicly funding separate schools in Alberta, set up by Dave King (former education minister).
http://www.separateschooleducation.ca/petition.php
CTV news clip before the meeting – October 12, 2011
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150328263757683
CBC summary of the school board meeting – October 13, 2011
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2011/10/13/edmonton-sturgeon-morinville-lords-prayer.html
Should the Lord’s prayer be heard in public school? – October 14, 2011
http://life.nationalpost.com/2011/10/14/school-on-the-edge-of-edmonton-in-row-over-morning-prayers/
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Donna Hunter has been following the news reports and letters about prayer at Sturgeon Heights School since Luke Fevin went on 630 CHED. She’s kindly put together a list of articles for us. So, if you’re interested in how the public discussion has been playing out, read on!
Luke was back on the radio again today, this time with alberta@noon on CBC. The principal of Sturgeon Heights School, Garnet Goertzen, was also part of the interview.
Audio can be found here:
http://www.cbc.ca/albertaatnoon/episode/2011/10/06/thursday-october-06-2011/
To hear Luke Fevin and afterwards, Paula Simons, discuss the prayer issue at Sturgeon Heights School, you can visit the 630 CHED audio vault. Use September 26, 2011 at 9:00PM, the interview starts after the news/ads.
St. Albert:
Luke Fevin is trying to ensure that his children have a secular education. So, when he learned that Sturgeon Heights school, the public, secular school that his children are attending, has the Lord’s Prayer over the intercom every morning, he decided to speak out.
If you live in St. Albert and would like to help Luke with this issue, you can get in touch with him through the Society of Edmonton Atheists Facebook group.
Morinville:
This month marks the first secular classes in Morinville. Right now they’re in temporary spaces, but the fact that the classes exist at all is a demonstration of how a little organization, on the part of interested parents, has made a big change. Right now the school has 66 students – not bad for a small town where the school board said that there wasn’t enough interest.
Eight of the SEA take a break from picking up litter to pose with our sign!
Today, the SEA held its third annual highway cleanup, as part of the “Caring for Alberta’s Highways (Adopt-A-Highwa
y) Program”. Our stretch of Highway is East of the Queen Elizabeth 2, north of the 525 turnoff, which is one road north of the Airport Road.
From 11:00 am to 3:30 pm eight brave and dedicated SEA members picked up Tim Horton’s coffee cups, gloves, socks, carpet, ribbons, cans, cigarette wrappers and various and sundry other treasures. Fortunately the weather was fairly well suited to the job, not too hot (although the clouds did move to expose some of us to bursts of heat) and not too windy.
The 3 kilometre stretch seemed much longer when you are stopping every couple of steps to bend over (ooh my back), but the company and the good cause made it worthwhile.
Small confession: we spent a little time early on wondering why there was so little trash,until we realized we were on the wrong tract (Halliburton’s adopted piece of earth, not ours!).
A big thanks to our volunteers!
More photos of our escapades can be found here.
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