Eastern Passage students film documentary on need for new high school

Students and parents in Eastern Passage are creating a documentary to tell the Halifax Regional School Board why they need their own high school.

Joyce Treen is one of the adults behind the five-minute film. Her 10-year-old son will be in high school soon enough and she wants him schooled close to home.

She said the idea was born when students and parents asked the school board for a deferral on the decision about the school.

"They said their main thing was, 'Okay, we'll give you time, but we haven't heard from any of the kids,'" she said. "Okay, you want to hear from the kids? We'll do a documentary and then you can hear from the kids."

The short movie will interview kids who bus to Cole Harbour high school now and those who will do so in the near future. Treen says the 45-minute ride means catching the bus at 7 a.m. and the sparse service at the end of the day creates problems for kids who want to take part in extracurricular activities such as sports of drama club.

"There's only one or two late buses a week and unless your activity is taking part on those days, then you can't take part," Treen says. "It's a working-class community and there are a lot of one-car families."

Students could walk to a community school, she says, adding to their ability to participate and boosting health. The movie will also discuss what they want in a proposed 9-to-12 school. Treen suggests it could be a "School of Excellence" focused on environmental studies.

The documentary will be shot on June 12 and 13 and the group plans to then show it to the school board.

Local businesses, including developers, real-estate agents and builders, have thrown money in the hat to raise the $4,000 production costs. Curve Productions have agreed to do the labour for free. Halifax-based Curve does one pro bono work a year, including Dave Carroll's United Breaks Guitars a couple of years ago.

Jenna Usifer is one of the students involved in the movie. She's in Grade 8 now and goes to the Eastern Passage Education Centre. If nothing changes, she'll be taking the long bus ride to Cole Harbour High in a few years. "It's pretty far," she says.

"People such as myself and my family, we've moved here to the passage in hopes that we could go to school within our own community," she says. "It'd be a lot easier to just wake up and go to your own little community school than have to get up super early, get on a bus and go out to Cole Harbour."

Usifer is going to be interviewed for the movie. "I hope it shows people that we really care about this. For the last 14 years we've been trying to get a hold of the right people, trying to persuade them to get a high school down here for us," she says.

That effort has gone on for all of her life. Even if she doesn't get it, she's working for the future. Her sister, Emma, is in Grade 3.

jon@jontattrie.ca