Protestant schools to close
MONTREAL, PQ—Students and parents in Quebec are hoping a decision that forced several Protestant-based schools to close their doors last year will be overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada.
For almost 150 years, Quebec evangelicals have benefited from provisions in provincial law to run Christian schools. There were 11 such schools—elementary and secondary—functioning in 2000-2001, completely funded by the government and recognized as public institutions.
But because of a Quebec Superior Court ruling last May the return to school this September will be very different for most of the 2,000 students who attended these schools.
Eight are closing completely and the remaining three will lose their religious status.
Many teachers and students are still holding on to the hope that an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada will give them back their schools for one more year.
Meanwhile, families who thought their educational choices were already made are now in a quandary. Some have registered their children in regular public schools; some are choosing private education; some are regrouping to examine alternatives, and several are opting for home schooling.
Teacher's reassigned
Most of the principals and teachers were reassigned to other positions with their school boards. Some, however, including certain high school teachers with up to 25 years of experience, lost job security and were put back onto the list of supply teachers.
The move to close the schools will have far-reaching effects on society as a whole, says Marc Fournier, principal of Ecole Renaissance in Quebec City.
"This is an attempt to erase from the collective consciousness the role that Franco-Protestants and their schools have played in the history of Quebec."
In the past, the parent-staff governing committee of a school could choose a mission statement or "educational project" that would give a school a particular identity. Some schools chose to follow a combined sports and academic program, for example. Others developed a distinctly musical emphasis.
The Christian community took advantage of this system to create schools with a Protestant religious base. On several occasions requests to set up these schools were denied by the local school boards, but in centres such as Quebec City, Sherbrooke and South Shore Montreal, the request was granted.
Each school had a unique mission statement, describing the values and beliefs it would uphold. An evangelical worldview in the "educational project" was expressed through library material, educational activities and the teaching on such subjects as evolution and family and moral issues.
Teachers in these schools had to be willing to uphold and support such stands. In most cases, that requirement eliminated candidates who were not professing Christians, without being considered discriminatory. In the same way, most parents who sent their children to these schools did so because they too were active Christians.
Three years ago, in a move to eliminate religious parameters in the educational system, the National Assembly in Quebec voted to abolish denominational or confessional school boards. Although school boards would be defined along linguistic rather than confessional lines, individual schools could retain a religious identity.
Then in June 2000, a law was adopted that ruled out the possibility of religious status. A one-year reprieve was granted, but the May decision confirmed the closure of these services.
The three schools that remain open must abandon their particular Franco-Protestant identity and blend with the mainstream.
Fournier calls the event a human tragedy. When the news of the decision first came in May, children and parents were crying in the halls of his school, which had been in operation for 22 years and attended by some of the parents themselves.
"The satisfaction level of students, parents and teachers was very high," he says. "Terminating a school that was functioning so well seems senseless."
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