COLUMN: World championships should be an exception to the rule

Every once in a while a discussion that seems to be reaching a straightforward conclusion takes what I consider to be an unexpected turn.

Such was the case at the school board meeting I attended on March 4.

The board was asked to approve an out-of-province student trip request by Drumlin Heights Consolidated School, where a group of students and their teacher have earned the right to represent this province at a world Lego robotics competition in Atlanta, Georgia.

The team of six students in Grades 7 and 8 will be on the world stage with students from around 30 countries. The competition focuses on teamwork, science and problem solving – all things that can be applied to the curriculum.

The Drumlin team earned a berth to the worlds after winning at a LEGO League International event at Acadia University in the fall. It marked the second consecutive year the school has won at the provincial level, which is impressive considering it’s only the second year the robotics program has been in place at the school. At a past meeting the board had already voiced its praise for the team’s achievement.

So at the board meeting there was a motion on the floor to approve the trip request, and it seemed things were heading towards the ayes when one board member pointed out the school was requesting that the board pay for the substitute teacher that would be required at the school.

Under board policy, covering the cost of the substitute for a school trip is the responsibility of the school. You can understand why, I suppose, since schools take many trips. Which is why, I also suppose, it was only a matter of time before the familiar mantra came up during the discussion: “If you do it for one school, you’ll have to do it for all schools.”

Oh give me a break, I wanted to scream out.

These kids have already had to raise money to cover the $14,600 cost of the trip (airfare, hotel, travel, meals, registration and incidentals) and now you’re going to make them cough up more money to cover a substitute?

Sure, it’s only a few hundred dollars.

But still, it’s a few hundred dollars.

The school board has already given the team $1,000 towards the trip. As I recall at the time, that motion was debated because of the concern by some board members that the board doesn’t normally give out such a large sum to one school. If you do it for one school, you’ll have to do it for all of them.

Sound familiar?

So at the March 4 meeting it was suggested that part of the $1,000 that the board had already given the robotics team could be used to cover the cost of a substitute teacher.

Someone whispered in my ear, “There’s your headline, school board claws back money from students.”

The fact is, there’s another familiar saying: there are exceptions to every rule. Shouldn’t the exception here be the fact that it’s a world championship?

That was the precisely the point raised by vice-chair Ron Hines who said he didn’t want to make an exception, except that this was an exceptional circumstance. And in a school board budget of roughly $60 million, he noted, surely the board shouldn’t have to quibble over a few hundred dollars for a substitute.

After all, he said, this is a world championship. It’s not like the board is getting requests like this at every turn.

In the end, a motion that would have required the school to pay for the substitute didn’t pass. Only two people voted for it.

The motion to approve the trip request, substitute and all, easily passed.

After the meeting a board member came up to me and said they were just following board policy, they weren’t trying to be mean.

I knew that.

It just seemed mean.