Winnipeg Free Press

I won’t be blogging again until I return from vacation on Aug. 12, but when I get back, I’ll be telling myself constantly that I’ve become the 60-year-old Swede.

Those of us of a certain vintage remember the Participaction ads in which we were taunted that the average 60-year-old Swede was in better condition than the average 30-year-old Canadian.

 It was true, too.

Those ads really rankled me back in the day. I wasn’t 30 then, I was in high school, but I’d been cut from every team for which I’d ever had to try out, house leagues were pretty much done, and the philosophy being widely practiced by my high school phys ed teacher was that our role as non-athletic bookworms was to watch and worship the varsity teams, not to find other ways besides team sports of being active.

Anyway, I’m not bitter….no, not really………

A lot has changed about phys ed since the early 1960s. The whole idea behind adding mandatory grades 11 and 12 phys ed credits this fall, and to begin conducting much of the senior grades phys ed activities outside of school, is to introduce students to a wide variety of activities they can pursue throughout their lives, and to encourage them to find physical activities that they enjoy.

I had to do all that myself in my 30s, without the active encouragement of the public education system that kids in high school will receive. Of course, today’s physical education teachers are actually educators, not just varsity coaches with a teacher’s certificate like my….sorry…..no, I’m not bitter, not at all.

By the time I was 30 myself, I was sedentary and quite overweight.

But as I turn 60, I’ve just run a half marathon, my 31st event of 21 to 42 km. I’ll spend two or three hours a day kayaking over my holidays, the weather willing. I’ve had 46 kids’ and adult soccer matches I’ve officiated so far since the start of May, a lot of running. Until soccer started, I was doing at least three workouts a week all fall and winter at Reh-Fit, treadmill, bike, weights, wind sprints. I joined a weekly volleyball league. I run outdoors, and we’ll be doing as much hiking as we can over the next few weeks.

Point I’m trying to make, especially to high school students, is that I’ll still never make a competitive team, I’m still completely non-athletic, but I’m healthy, and I absolutely love the forms of exercise I’ve chosen. Maybe you’re one of the 15-and-16-year-old soccer players who was huffing and puffing late in the match, trying to keep up with the play, and wondering how the old guy with the whistle could run with the players and not be out of breath.

I’m going to be 60 when next I bore you again.

I enjoy being fit and I enjoy being healthy, and I enjoy not worrying about whether my heart will stop any time I’m active.

It’s a great feeling to have at 60 — work with your phys ed teachers now, and chances are you’ll some day know the feeling too.

I received a bizarre e-mail after my recent piece on new U of M president David Barnard, demanding to know why I have not revealed that Barnard is a multi-millionaire through massive sales of his biblical novel With Skilful Hand: The Story of King David.

I really hate it when I miss something that big.

I e-mailed back to my correspondent, and asked the source of such astounding information.

Back came links to Amazon.com, showing the novel’s data on Amazon’s websites for several large countries.

Alas, my informant had confused the rankings of the book ’s sales, compared to other volumes available through Amazon, with actual copies sold. He had added up the rankings, and concluded they were book sales.

Moving right along, I occasionally get a pitch for a story on someone who’s hired a p.r. firm, who expects that if they blitz me with e-mails and phone calls, I’ll stop being parochial and knock local coverage off the front pages to tout what their client who lives in another province is doing in another province.

This time, the publicists wanted me to interview Gerard Kennedy about his plea to teachers to join the Liberal party’s Green Shift and make climate change and poverty a priority in their classrooms teaching.

Kennedy is the former Ontario education minister who made an unsuccessful run for the federal Liberal leadership, is now a federal candidate in Toronto, and just received an award from the Canadian Teachers federation.

So teachers, if you want to ditch the curriculum, and get your classroom with the Grits’ program, let me know, and I’ll set up the interview.

Seguing again, a propos of absolutely nothing, but I drove past College Jeanne-Sauve on the way to an assignment nearby on Dakota, and saw the school’s message board wishing me a happy and restful summer.

Thanks, I appreciate it………but I’m wondering, why would CJS not display its summer greeting in French?

And another flawless segue, like trying to find the seams in the exterior hull of Klaatu’s ride……

Some of us were talking the other day about new principals around Winnipeg School Division, and it struck me that I never have these conversations with the parents I know in Pembina Trails. Lots of them from soccer and volleyball, who know what I do for a living, but we never talk about who’s going where, and which principal is replacing whom.

Are we that much more political in WSD, or do we just like to gossip incessantly?

I received a pitch for a back-to-school story from a company in the Toronto area which makes security systems.

The company tells me that “code red lockdowns” were unimaginable a generation ago.

A generation? I got out of high school in 1966 — OK, let’s not even go there. Point is, I have a kid going into Grade 12, so I read on.

“Lockdown is a term that older generations associated mainly with prisons. This doesn’t mean, however, that schools need to look or feel like prisons. If handled correctly, security can blend in with the background, leaving students, teachers and parents comfortable, not fearful, with their surroundings,” said the company.

“The “Code-Red” lockdown is a procedure that warns of a possible danger—an armed student, perhaps—and instructs teachers to secure the classroom doors from threats that may loom in the school hallway. In practice classrooms are locked from the inside until the all clear signal is given.
 
“Now that the “Code-Red” lockdown drill is standard practice, school administrators, teachers and parents must be aware of new technologies that offer greater protection.”

New techologies? Could it be that this company is selling those new technologies?

Gosh, what are the chances?
 
“New security innovations have been developed to help accommodate lockdowns and keep students safe inside the classroom. Locks are now available that allow teachers to secure the door from inside the classroom, thus avoiding the need to insert a key in the outside cylinder and expose students to danger (still standard practice),” says my correspondent.

Keith Thomas, the risk manager at the Manitoba Association of School Trustees, has urged for years that schools not turn into fortresses with metal detectors and security guards, though many schools have cameras, lock their doors from the outside, and leave open only the front door, which is ideally in full view of the office staff.

Classroom doors lock from the outside, because schools don’t want kids able to lock them for inappropriate reasons. Only the teacher has a key, but that means exposing herself to potential harm by having to go into the hallway to lock the door, then pull it shut behind her.

But what if she didn’t have to do that?

This company has yet another option: “Better still are networked electromechanical locks that can be secured instantly from a central location.”

Remember that reference awhile back to prisons?

OK, moving along……

I’ve e-mailed the company, wondering if anyone in Manitoba has bought this technology. I asked specifically how someone at security central in the office would know that all students and staff were out of the hallway and hunkered down in a classroom, and that all doorways were clear, and all doors closed from the inside, before locking them down with one push of a button. I’m awaiting a response.
 

There’s quite the turf and territory struggle shaping up at Winnipeg School Division over the next gym to be built at an older school.

As we told you a few dozen blogs back, amazingly, WSD is the only division which currently has a list of gym projects before the provincial public schools finance board (PSFB) in its five-year capital forecast. The PSFB just approved a new gym for George V School, which means kids going into Grade 2, or more likely Grade 1, have a decent shot at enjoying the new gym in Grade 6.

That left Kelvin High School next on the list, followed by Queenston School.

Kelvin is Manitoba’s second-largest school, but has only one gym. Other large high schools have two gyms, and do I have to point out for the umpteenth time that grades 11 and 12 gym credits become compulsory in about seven weeks?

Queenston is nursery to Grade 6, less than one-seventh of Kelvin’s enrolment, but kids have been making do since 1931 with a multi-purpose room which is way too small to accommodate the gym activities that most of our kids take for granted.

Yes, 1931.

The Queenston community has been lobbying big-time for a new gym for a few years now, putting the heat on the division and the province. People such as provincial Tory leader Hugh McFadyen and federal Tory candidate Trevor Kennerd have been spotted among the delegations to the WSD school board.

Trustee Jackie Sneesby, whose ward includes both Kelvin and Queenston, has just put forward a motion calling on the board to bump Queenston ahead of Kelvin on the priority wish list.

Is it a huge surprise that trustees tabled the motion, to study in committee and discuss later?

Look, every kid deserves a decent gym, and a school the size of Kelvin needs a second gym. It’s appalling that Queenston does not have a gym, 77 years after it opened.

I haven’t been in every school lower down on WSD’s list, but my daughter’s indoor soccer team used to practice at La Verendrye, and I don’t know how children are supposed to carry out the physical education curriculum in a space that tiny. Elmwood High could use a higher ceiling in its gym. I could go on, but I digress too much.

Peter, Kerri, you’re making some good moves with the healthy children initiatives, now get the finance minister to put some bucks into it and get some gyms built.

Look at page 42 of FRAME (Financial reporting and Accounting in Mnaitoba Education), and you’ll find $142.3 million in education property tax credits. That’s the money that comes directly off the bottom of your peoperty tax bill, to encourage you to feel grateful to the Doer government, but not a penny of it actually goes into education, operating or capital.

Greg, how about directing some of that cash directly into education and into helping kids — don’t forget community access weekends and evenings — and ensuring that every school has adequate gym space. And no, don’t wait until the week before Gary calls the next election.

Amazing news from Winnipeg School Division — privacy legislation be darned, the division has confirmed that the late U.S. Senator Samuel I. Hayakawa did ineed attend St. John’s High School, and graduated in 1923.

Officials say that under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, that they are allowed to confirm school enrolment of a deceased person, given how long ago that he was in division schools. They’re still checking out which elementary school Hayakawa attended, though it’s looking as though it may have been a downtown school that disappeared long ago.

Alas, such liberties under FIPPA do not extend to releasing Marshall McLuhan’s report card from Earl Grey School, which principal Gail Singer found in a dustry basement filing cabinet after learning that McLuhan had been a student there.

It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if schools had some way of holding up grads as role models to their students, especially schools in areas where kids face significant challenges.

Hey, wait a minute — how about if you know of someone who attended a school in the city, letting me know? I’ll be glad to pass it on.

I’ve been hearing quite regularly recently from Joseph Rougeau, a retired U.S. Air Force officer in Florida. He’s not too happy about the lack of recognition received from the University of Manitoba by the late S.I. Hayakawa, a man whom Rougeau met and greatly admired.

I certainly stand to be corrected on this, but Hayakawa may well be the only United States senator to graduate from the University of Manitoba. Rougeau can’t understand why U of M doesn’t list him as a distinguished alumnus.

Hayakawa was born in Vancouver in 1906, but moved to Winnipeg as a young boy, and graduated from U of M in 1927. Rougeau thinks he might have been the school’s first grad of Japanese heritage, but there’s no confirmation on that so far. Hayakawa went on to become a university professor in The States, writing linguistics textbooks which — various websites say — are still considered classics.

I first heard of Hayakawa when he was president of San Francisco State University, at a time when students across North American campuses were striking and occupying university libraries, often to protest for civil rights or against the war in Vietnam. Hayakawa broke the strike at his university, which in some quarters was considered a good thing. Certainly, it was a key factor in Hayakawa’s becoming a Republican senator from California in 1976.

U of M says that so far, the designation of Distinguished Alumnus or Alumna is limited to recipients of the Order of Manitoba or Order of Canada. U of M says that it may add members of royal societies or other celebrated grads, but right now, being a politician in Canada or elsewhere isn’t enough to make the cut.

I found one article in which Hayakawa talked about having attended St. John’s High School, in which he also mentioned that a younger brother went to Isaac Newton.

Winnipeg School Division, one might think, might like to tell students at St. John’s about someone who grew up in the north end as a visible minority, and made it big. One might think.

Shaftesbury High School has its Alumni Wall of Fame, touting grads who’ve achieved great things while facing somewhat less challenging life circumstances than kids in the north end. Shaftesbury knows how to present role models to its students.

But citing FIPPA, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, WSD will not even confirm that Hayakawa ever went to school in the division. WSD cannot under FIPPA divulge personal information unless a grad, or a grad’s descendants, authorize release of the information.

I recall how Marshall McLuhan’s 60ish children were at U of M a few years ago, attending the dedication of a reception hall in their father’s memory. They told me that McLuhan as a young lad had gone to Gladstone School, Earl Grey School, and Kelvin High School in Winnipeg.

Alas, WSD has done nothing with that information.

That was a busy spring, 41 assignments to referee kids’ soccer games in May and June, the majority 14-to-16-year-olds.

The playoffs start in early September, but I may not be back. I’d like to be, but investigations are under way, and I could be booted out of minor soccer by then.

Yes, I’ll find some way to tie this into education, pointing out something about kids being active, or that the events I describe herein would generally involve teenaged students getting involved in the community by acting as referees, rather than adult refs like me.

I noted in a previous blog that an 11-year-old developmental girls’ team was filing a complaint about me back at the end of May. I acnowledged failing to notice that the visiting team — which won 5-0, though that’s not relevant — had an unauthorized adult at the bench. I completely failed to notice that the bench mom’s husband came over to keep her company during some portion of the match.

The coach of the home team did in fact file a complaint, and he’s pursuing it doggedly, with both Winnipeg Youth Soccer Association and Winnipeg South End United. No word yet about taking it to the Manitoba Soccer Association, or to FIFA. But I’m getting snippy again.

The coach has demanded as a preliminary step that I never again be assigned to referee his games.

I followed quite closely the recent coverage of indoor minor lacrosse’s short ban on spectators from its games, because of referee abuse by parents. And I’ve followed intensely the coverage of WYSA’s disciplining of teams and coaches. I wasn’t involved in any of those incidents, though I have refereed matches this spring of two of the teams prominent in dispatches.

Of the matches I did in the past two months, I probably dealt with about 50 to 55 coaching staffs. The vast majority are pretty nice to their kids, and with me they’re collegial, cordial, and sometimes even cheerful. I had problems with coaches maybe half a dozen times. Same with parents, I had problems with them yelling at me or at players maybe half a dozen times. My major complaint about parents is how few of them come out, once the kids turn 14, and their reluctance to take on the job of handling the sideline flag duty.

Last week I had a coach bellowing at me late in the match, quite enraged. It was a pretty rare occurrence. The opponent pretty much had the match in the bag at that point, but his players were on the attack, and he was hugely upset that I had failed to call a defender for allegedly deliberately handling the ball inside the box, which would have given his team a penalty kick. While I was on top of the play, nevertheless, with this being recreational soccer, there were half a dozen kids clustered closely and wailing away at the ball, and all I saw were three kids’ backs between me and a ball bouncing around somewhere in the pack of a dozen flailing feet.

Maybe the coach saw what I didn’t, but he was enraged and wouldn’t stop until I’d twice spoken to him firmly. As I walked to my car afterward, he was doing a rant with his players about my incompetence.

When I told my supervisor about the incident, he immediately recognized the coach as someone who’d hollered at him during another match.

Around all the coverage of the lacrosse and minor soccer incidents this spring, people talked about how it’s a tiny minority of coaches and parents that causes all the problems.

That’s quite true.

Every time my game reports cite a problem, it’s almost invariably someone or some team that the vast WSEU officiating bureaucracy has heard about from other referees.

I coached soccer for 10 years, and back in high school and university, baseball for four years, and the abuse I’ve taken as a soccer referee does not even register on the scale of the abuse I took as a coach. As a referee, so far at least, I have never considered myself physically threatened. I’ve been able to walk directly to my vehicle after each match, no one has come to my house, I haven’t been served with legal action, and no one has harassed me at work.

But, still…….

The coaches and parents who cause all the problems, as few in number as they are, do not accept that there are rules by which they have to conduct themselves, nor do they accept that the rest of us act under a certain standard of civilized behaviour to which they should also be subject.

Less than 90 games into being a referee, I call games tightly, though not punitively. Some coaches have told me that I call a lot of fouls that others don’t. But just as in all those years of coaching, when I never kicked a kid off a team or asked for the club to impose a no-contact order against a parent, I have not kicked a coach or parent out of the park. I’ve imposed one red card and maybe 20 yellow cards.

But back to the complaint lodged against me. Does it come as any surprise that other referees have reported problems with this team?

I had no problems with the kids that night back in May. There were a few fouls to call, from clumsiness rather than malice, and a few offside calls. The parents were the worst I’ve encountered in two seasons.

I spoke sharply to the coach a couple of times after he did hissy fits, jumping up and down, spinning around, yelling at me, after a couple of routine calls. After the match, he confronted me on the field and demanded that I verify that all adults at the opponent’s bench had certified coaches’ cards. When I subsequently told him I’d missed the bench mom’s hubby, he demanded that I tell him the process for filing a complaint against me.

After that, as I was doing my post-game paperwork, over came the assistant coach. She told me with all the sarcasm and contempt she could muster, that I’d done a great job.

 The coach’s version is that I was ‘aggressive’ in giving his players pre-game instructions, and had terrified them. I speak differently to 11-year-olds than I do to 16-or-18-year-olds, but the gist is the same. I tell them I want a clean match, that when I call fouls or offsides, that I don’t want anyone to argue with me, that I expect them to be civil to me, civil to the opponent, and civil to each other, that I want everyone to behave and have a good time and leave the pitch healthy. Players on developmental teams have already been tiered, and will as teens form the premier and regional competitive teams, not to mention the provincial teams. If being told not to commit fouls, and to behave nicely, terrifies them, I shudder how they’ll adjust to premier soccer.

The coach also says in his complaint against me that he came up to me at halftime and asked politely and reasonably that I allow him to examine the coaching cards of the opposing team, but that I refused, quite forcefully and rudely.

On this may hinge whether I am allowed to return to refereeing in the fall. I always put in my game reports if a coach has approached me during or after a match, and what the tone and attitude were. I didn’t report any half-time contact that night. It’s his word against mine.

What I remember about half-time that night — skip this paragraph, if you’re at all sensitive about bathroom stuff — is that I availed myself of the porta-potties at Grant Park, and that their condition was way beyond disgusting. That is in my game report.

When your kid signs up to be a community referee, he or she has to be at least two years older than the players. The coach who’s pursuing the complaint against me, most of his team’s games will be handled by 13-and-14-year-olds. It will be a kid entering Grade 9 or 10 in the fall who will have to deal with those coaches and those parents, and it will be your kid who’s the one who could be facing discipline, not the obstreperous coaches or parents.

Have a nice summer.

Censured Winnipeg School Division trustee Mike Babinsky isn’t the only insider leaking the secret details of the search for a new chief superintendent.

Unless the woman who called me was doing a huge con job, making it appear Babinsky wasn’t her source, by disparaging Babinsky in terms that I won’t print here.

The woman wouldn’t give me her name, and asked me if I had call display. Given what she thinks of my coverage of the issue, I’m wondering why she so easily accepted my saying that I don’t have call display.

However, back to the point.

She had the short list of candidates, the four people whose names Babinsky recently gave me, that led to the WSD school board’s censuring him and removing him from the search process to replace retiring chief superintendent Jan Schubert.

My caller had phoned to trash the internal candidate on the short list, and to praise the candidate from elsewhere in Manitoba who’s seen by some as the front-runner. She also had some unkind things to say about the merits of a third candidate, currently working within the Manitoba education system. Like me, she seemed to know virtually nothing about the candidate from outside the province.

The woman told me that a majority of trustees is leaning towards the internal candidate, and could vote at the next scheduled meeting on July 7.

 She asked me what I thought about the candidates, and I was circumspect, having no idea who she was, though a suspicion started to form at the back of my mind. My caller did tell me that the candidates are not quite so personable and friendly as they seem at public meetings and events, when dealing with staff behind closed doors . Gosh, I’ve never known a manager who was less jolly when dealing with minions and lowly proletarian drones out of the view of outside parties.

But I digress.

My caller wanted to tell me who had not sought whom as a reference, and who would not have provided a reference for whom, if asked. I don’t like my chances of having that confirmed by the parties she named.

She also told me that while Babinsky behaves and speaks publicly in ways she doesn’t approve of — I’m using euphemisms here — that other trustees also become different people behind closed doors.

Gosh, who would have thought.

The point is, eight trustees freaked out when Babinsky decided to go public with his concerns about the search process. They censured him, froze him out of the search, dropped hints of possible legal action.

But chances are pretty good that Babinsky isn’t the only leak.

It’s pretty hard to argue with Education Minister Peter Bjornson that the first priority is to ensure that more than 110 kids from Dakota Tipi and Roseau River first nations are in school in Dominion City and Portage la Prairie come September.

Let the adults figure out the money problems, Bjornson said Thursday, but get those kids in a classroom.

Tough to argue with that.

But as for having the adults handle the money problems, well, that’s not Bjornson’s responsibility.

When First Nations children attend a nearby public school instead of a school on the reserve, then Ottawa’s education funding goes through the band and on to the school division to cover the child’s tuition.

Dakota Tipi is withholding $233,000 it owes, until Portage la Prairie School Division provides aboriginal staff and programs the band has requested.

Meanwhile, Roseau River owes $322,000 from this current school year’s tuition to Border Land.

Both divisions have reluctantly told the bands that they will not accept kids in September unless the bills from this year have been paid.

The school divisions believe that turning away the kids until their tuition is paid is a matter of their local autonomy.

Bjornson wants them to take the kids and figure out the money later, and says he has the authority to order the two divisions to do so.

OK, fair enough.

But there are costs to taking kids from First Nations — it’s not found money.

Last summer, Roseau River paid its overdue bills at the last possible moment, and Border Land says it had to scramble to hire additional teachers, change timetables, and juggle classroom space.

This year, Border Land has hired teachers for September already, gambling that the band will pay the bills and the kids will come.

The $322,000 owed from this current school year is the same as a 3.5 per cent increase in education property taxes.

You’ll recall that as Bjornson chipped away at school board autonomy again this winter, he leaned heavily on trustees to freeze taxes and cap spending.

Border Land ratepayers are on the hook for 3.5 per cent of their education property taxes, to achieve an outcome which everyone supports, getting the kids in a classroom.

So, would Bjornson cover the money until everything gets hashed out?

Well, no, that would be interfering with local autonomy.

“These are jurisdictional issues between the school divisions and the first nations,” said Bjornson.

Once again, as we saw recently with the ban on closing small schools, and the introduction of grades 11 and 12 compulsory phys ed, and as we see every year with special needs programs and staff, and smaller class sizes, Bjornson tells school divisions to do more, yet do it without adequate provincial funding, and to do it without increasing their local school taxes.

I’m afraid I only minored in political science, so I’m kind of out of my element here, but I’m thinking that maybe this is a systemic education funding issue to be resolved among the province and Ottawa and the Assembly of First Nations, instead of dumping the problem on a band council or a school board in tiny communities. I’m thinking that maybe Gary Doer has more clout with Ottawa than, say, a school trustee from Dominion City or Vita, or a band councillor in Roseau River, hardworking and capable though they may be.

I was reading colleague Larry Kusch’s story today about what a hot job market it is for students.

Jobs are going begging because there just aren’t enough students to fill them, Larry wrote.

For those of us whose kids have gone away to university, and for those in government and business who keep decrying the loss of our brightest young people, and keep coming up with Spirited Energy campaigns and tuition tax rebates to try to lure them back, a suggestion.

Students who leave Manitoba to study tend to ease the financial crunch with scholarships, which implies they’re somewhat bright. And they can qualify for jobs that reflect their areas of study and burgeoning expertise.

Maybe if you didn’t require a personal interview in February or March, when university students have neither the time to miss classes nor the money to fly home, you might find that some of our brighter high school grads would love to work for you.