Wildfire-affected schools exempt from Grade 12 exams: Manitoba

Grade 12 provincial tests and other end-of-year exams hang in the balance as displaced teachers and teenagers wait out wildfire threats in northern Manitoba.

But smoky skies and school closures did not deter dozens of students from showing up to finish their first round of high-stakes tests in Norway House Cree Nation.

Classes at the only high school in Norway House have been cancelled since Wednesday to accommodate an influx of evacuees from Pimicikamak Cree Nation and urge students to stay inside due to poor air quality.

The disruptions at Helen Betty Osborne Ininiw Education Resource Centre — a makeshift emergency shelter, between Wednesday and Saturday — were announced part-way through a multi-day 40S English Language Arts exam.

Principal Curtis Tootoosis said he was impressed that, despite all the chaos, more than 40 students showed up to complete the exam at improvised classrooms set up off campus Friday.

The size of the class of 2025 is anticipated to be in the mid- to high-40s.

“I feel very proud and very proud of the staff — they stepped up and we got compliments from our guests, we’ll call them, about the service and that,” the principal of the nursery-to-Grade 12 school said.

Teachers worked overtime to put out gym mats, cots and donated mattresses for visitors from Pimicikamak (Cross Lake). The temporary visitors left over the weekend to find more permanent accommodation in Winnipeg and elsewhere.

More than 2,000 hot meals — prepared by students in the culinary arts program and staff members — were served to evacuees during their stay.

“The hope is that the kids are back in classes as soon as possible. Everyone wants to provide consistent scheduling,” said Natalie Majcher, president of the Frontier Teachers’ Association, a local of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society that represents educators in Norway House, Pimicikamak and surrounding communities.

The Frontier School Division spans the largest geographic area in Manitoba. Roughly 675 students and 115 school employees were affected by wildfires burning within its borders as of Monday afternoon.

Lynn Lake and Cranberry Portage were among a handful of communities under mandatory evacuation orders as of Monday afternoon. Others continued to closely monitor air quality from wildfire-impacted areas.

Manitoba Education has informed school divisions that students from communities affected by wildfires are exempt from Grade 12 exams.

A spokesperson for the department said any decision to have students rewrite exams will be left to the discretion of their division.

“This is a very fluid situation that is wrought with emotion,” said superintendent Tammy Ballantyne, who oversees the education of nearly 900 students in Flin Flon School Division.

While Frontier is assessing exams on a case-by-case basis, Flin Flon has a universal exemption “at this point,” Ballantyne said.

“We continue to be optimistic that we will be able to return home and finish out the school year.”

All four area schools have been shuttered until at least June 9; Ballantyne plans to re-evaluate the situation later this week.

Grade 1 teacher Christine Williams and her family arrived at a friend’s farm in Portage la Prairie at 4 a.m. on Thursday.

“I’m thinking about report cards and I need to write them and my head is in no space to be thinking about writing report cards and all those kinds of things,” she said.

Williams and her colleagues at an elementary school in Flin Flon have revived the group chat they started during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She said there are many parallels to the class cancellations in 2020 but at least then they were all in the same time zone, in the comfort of their own homes and had access to teaching materials.

The teachers are currently seeking refuge across four provinces (Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario).

In addition to feeling anxious about the future of her hometown, the teacher said she’s worried about the students she hasn’t been able to connect with online. She does not know where all of them landed.

The ones who have been in touch and have loved ones who are firefighters back in Flin Flon are grappling with “big anxieties,” Williams said.

“My heart goes out to them (the paid and volunteer emergency responders). I really hope we get home and can celebrate together as community.”

Winnipeg school operations were also affected by the wildfires on Monday, albeit by a far lesser extent. Teachers across the city moved recess indoors and cancelled outdoor extracurriculars due to smoky conditions.

This story was originally published in The Free Press. It is republished under a Creative Commons license as part of the Local Journalism Initiative.