The Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division is preparing for the upcoming legislative change that will make the use of marijuana legal for adults in Canada.
At this point, the school division is approaching this issue in a similar way as the use of alcohol, said Gwen Keith, education director, with the exception of the use of cannabis for medical need.
“This is a process. We’re waiting for leadership in dealing with adults who use cannabis,” she said, noting the provincial government hasn’t even set the adult age for legal use yet. The province was suggesting 19 years might be the threshold, while the Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA) is suggesting 22.
“That’s their position. This is one of the key priorities they have.”
Board chair Bruno Tuchscherer asked if Holy Family will have involvement with the Weyburn Police Service, or if all direction is coming from the government.
Keith noted she was having a discussion with Weyburn police chief Marlo Pritchard about how the police is approaching the issue, and meantime the school board is waiting for the government to come up with the regulations around cannabis use.
“If there’s consequences around staff treatment, we need to have that clearly spelled out. We’re like every other school division in the province. July 1st is coming fast,” said Keith.
• In other board business, the trustees had a brief discussion about how plans are proceeding at the Ministry of Education, which is revamping how education is organized and run in the province. One of the areas of concern they have is whether the ministry will dictate levels of staffing.
“This is scary for very school division, maybe more for us because of our size. Our staff is doing numerous different jobs. The fear is they’re going to come in and say you can only have so many administrators or office staff. If they dictate numbers this could also cripple us,” said board chair Bruno Tuchscherer.
“They asked for our information on staff levels, but they never really talked to people about how many jobs they’re doing or what their workload is,” he added, with the fear of some boards that they may also dictate how many trustees should be on a board based on the number of students.
Keith noted that regardless of what the Ministry is doing on this issue, the school division still has to move forward with setting a budget for next year.
