The final days of spring and the first days of summer in Squamish is usually the time when elementary school students can look forward to the Pedal to the Metal race series, end-of-the-year field trips, graduation ceremonies, Sports Day and long goodbyes.
All that is off kilter this year. There wasn’t really an opportunity for long goodbyes after teachers took a study day on Monday, June 16, followed by the start of full strike action the next day.
Nobody knew on Friday, June 13, that when the bell rang at the end of that day it would be the last time students and teachers would be together for the 2013-’14 school year.
It is fitting that the last day of school was Friday the 13th.
Most schools were able to squeeze in at least an abbreviated Sports Day before full strike action started.
Some field trips happened, some didn’t, while parents rescued other trips. A group of parents at Garibaldi Highlands Elementary School came together to revive a cancelled trip to Camp Homewood on Quadra Island for its senior students.
Parents at Squamish Elementary School (SES) have organized a graduation event for its Grade 6 and 7 students, who will be off to Don Ross Secondary in September. Assuming all went well, the SES should have happened in between the writing of this column and the publication of the newspaper.
Thankfully, the graduation ceremony for Grade 12 students happened, but there was a distinct lack of teachers at the event.
Two Pedal to the Metal mountain bike races were cancelled, largely due to the labour dispute. This is the race series that produced the likes of Rhys Verner, 17, who placed 10th overall in the 2014 Test of Metal.
Verner is just one of the young stars who got a taste of mountain bike racing through the elementary races.
This is the point where I’m expected to point a finger and take a side in the labour dispute.
I’ll pass on that because the union leadership and our provincial politicians have both done things to get us where we are today. The courts have chastised the politicians for playing unfairly not just once, but twice. Some of the things the union leadership has asked for in the next contract leave me shaking my head, wondering what planet the union leaders were on when they put the demands together.
Both sides need to truly focus on the best interest of students and start acting like adults instead of like Grade 1 kids scrapping over whose turn it is on the swing.
How about this idea? They get out of the Vancouver meeting rooms they have been using and hike the Summit Trail together to the Sea to Sky Gondola upper station early tomorrow morning. Once they get up there, they all gather on the deck overlooking Howe Sound and hammer out a deal so the next Rhys Verner gets to compete in all three Pedal to the Medal races next spring.
