A local vice-principal spent a chilly night on his school’s roof thanks to his students’ fundraising efforts.
Steve Langer, vice-principal of Sturgeon Heights School, voluntarily spent Tuesday night sleeping on top of the school building, greeting parents and students as they wandered by below.
The school holds an annual fundraiser selling magazines and Langer had promised the students that he’d sleep on the school’s roof if they raised $30,000. (A similar promise last year led to him getting pelted with wet sponges.)
The students raised about $35,000, so Langer went up on the school roof at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Temperatures dipped as low as minus 14 C in St. Albert that evening – minus 20 with wind chill, according to data from Environment Canada’s St. Albert research station (located three kilometres north of the city).
“It was a great night to do it,” Langer said. It was the night of the school’s Halloween carnival, so he had plenty of visitors.
It did get pretty chilly with the wind, he said, but he had a sleeping bag to keep warm.
“It was nice to enjoy looking at the full moon,” he said.
And he was pretty cold and tired the next morning.
“That first cup of coffee never felt so good!”
He came back down at about 7 a.m. Wednesday.
This event was all about showing students the importance of working with their community, Langer said.
“When we do, we get to enjoy good experiences together,” he said.
So how is he going to top this stunt next year?
“That’s a good question!” he said, with a laugh.
Money from the fundraiser will go towards school field trips and other events, Langer said.
A new tweak to the Education Act should help schools better deal with bullies, drugs and weapons, said the head of Alberta’s school boards.
MLAs held a long debate on Bill 3 Tuesday night. The bill, known as the Education Act, is meant to govern the operation of Alberta’s schools.
While MLAs considered many amendments to the bill, just two actually passed. The first was one put forward by Education Minister Jeff Johnson that allows the government to regulate private schools and determine who is eligible to run one.
The second, put forward by Wildrose MLA Heather Forsyth, forbids any person from conducting themselves in a matter “detrimental to the safe operations of a school.”
This amendment echoes a private member’s bill she had previously tabled in 2009 and 2010 to address bullying, drugs, and weapons in schools, Forsyth said, and covers gaps in existing legislation.
Weapons are a growing problem in Alberta schools, she said, citing statistics from school resource officers, and neither the School Act nor the Criminal Code completely cover them.
“This bill gives (schools) the authority to say, ‘you know, you really shouldn’t be carrying a billy club or you really shouldn’t have had drugs,’ ” she said.
This change was a welcome addition to the act, said Jacquie Hansen, president of the Alberta School Boards Association and trustee with the St. Albert Catholic board, one that should strengthen the bonds between schools and the police and keep students safe. “It means we can get off the school grounds and deal with the bullies that come into the school.”
Most schools already have policies to deal with drugs, Hansen said, and she hadn’t heard about many weapons complaints since the 1999 school shooting in Taber. Still, the Education Act will be around for a long time, and weapons could become a bigger problem in the future.
“It’s good foresight for things to come,” she said.
Most of the issues raised by Forsyth seem to be covered elsewhere in the Education Act, said Joan Trettler, chair of the St. Albert Public board. The act requires all students to be positive, contributing members of their school, for example, and “to me, doing things like bringing weapons and doing drugs and so on would be contrary to that.”
Still, she said this amendment could help keep non-student troublemakers off school grounds.
The bill now proceeds to third reading.
