A straightforward announcement…or not

Finally, an announcement.

A real one this time.

Not like a year ago when the buzz around the education minister’s visit to the Yarmouth high school was would she or wouldn’t she?

Specifically, would she announce a new high school was on the way or not? Don’t miss it, some told me. Don’t bother, others said.

By the end of her visit to the podium last May specifics were hard to come by – even though it had been a year since the school board had submitted a proposal for school construction and renovations.

Instead, from the podium there was a recommendation, or as the minister called it when I asked her about the A-word afterwards, an “expression of interest.” She would recommend to cabinet that a new high school for Yarmouth be looked at. In other words, she was willing to approve a new high school, but not in a position to announce one.

She and I reminisced about that announcement, recommendation, expression of interest, whatever you want to call it, last week when we spoke at the high school. Specifically when we spoke following Karen Casey’s announcement that a new $24.9-million high school is on the way. Following the design and site selection work, construction is slated to begin in 2009 with a projected opening date of September 2011.

Yes, definitely an announcement.

No question, no confusion. Pretty straightforward.

Except that in this business it seems that things are never that simple.

I get back to the office, I’ve posted my story on our web and I’m fixing up the version for the newspaper when I listen to a report on the radio which made reference to the fact the new high school will house 900 students in Grades 9 to 12.

Huh?

I’ve sat through many school board meetings, I’ve sat through a non-announcement and now a real announcement and I had never heard that Grade 9s were going to be part of a new high school. Have they mentioned this to the folks at Maple Grove of Yarmouth Junior High, I wondered?

Okay, when did I miss that announcement?

So I call the school board to see if Grade 9s are going to be housed in the new high school. The board’s communications officer told me they had seen that in the education department’s news release but it was news to them. Still, he’d check with the superintendent.

Then I called our MLA to ask him about the information in the release. Is this right? His first response was that it must have been included in the release because it must have been something the school board had decided on, but really he wasn’t positive. He asked the education minister who was with him when I placed the call. Her suggestion was that the inclusion of Grade 9 is something that will be discussed during the consultation period to see if a Grade 9 should be included in the new school.

“We definitely don’t want to do anything that would have a negative implication on the other schools,” he was quick to add.

Then I heard back the school board. After having double-checked with the superintendent I was told, “There’s been no discussion at our end of a grade configuration at the new school.”

So I emailed the communications guy at the education department whose name appeared at the bottom of the release. His answer was that the grade configuration of the school is a school board decision.

But…

“I may have got it mixed up,” he said. “Go with what the board says.”

At least I know there is a school being built.

There is, isn’t there?