"Children Keep Up With School Work As Boycott Continues"

OHSWEKEN - School's out. But education continues on Six Nations and New Credit reserves.

As the school boycott ends a second week, many of the reserves' 1,200 elementary school pupils are studying at home.

Twelve native schools will likely stay shut until the end of October. Some are being repaired while others will be replaced with portable classrooms.

Parents have vowed to keep their children out until schools meet health and safety standards.

But children can still continue to learn.

This week teachers began handing out assignments - long term ones that can be done at home.

Response has been good, says Dave Anderson, vice-principal at Jamieson School in Ohsweken.

Parents have stopped by Jamieson to pick up work for one-third of the school's 225 pupils in Kindergarten to Grade 6.

Teachers are at their desks in one of the school's portable classrooms from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Bev King came by with her seven-year-old son, Jared, to get work from teacher Peggy Sanderson.

Jared and his brother, Brandon, didn't do much of anything, "just puttered about the house," during the boycott's first week, Mrs. King said.

"Now I've got some school work for them, they can sit down each day and do it and I will come back and get some more next week."

Mrs. King supports the boycott which began Sept. 6.

It's the only way to get something done about the schools.

At Jamieson School, one of the more modern schools, workmen repaired wiring this week and removed asbestos around heating pipes.

Altogether Indian Affairs will spend more than $400,000 on repairs and new portables.

A 10-member committee of parents and educators is monitoring the work and will report at a public meeting next Thursday at 7 p.m. in the gym at J.C. Hill School.

Children might go back to school as early as Sept. 25. But some repairs won't be done and new portables in place for four to six weeks.

And the main question has not been settled: when will Indian Affairs deliver on its promise to build three new central schools?

Over at Two Turtles Studio in Ohsweken's shopping centre, Sarah Jacobs, 7, was passing time trying out the studio's typewriter.

Sarah should be in Grade 2 in the Cayuga language immersion class at School No. 11.

Her school, like the others, isn't open. The new building is being repaired. Its old building, where Sarah's class would have been, is marked for demolition and will be replaced by a portable classroom.

Sarah's father, Arnold Jacobs an artist and owner of Two Turtles Studio, doesn't like his daughter missing school.

But he says the boycott was needed to get action on the schools.

"It achieved something because it got Indian Affairs officials to go around and look at those buildings and see first hand what poor conditions those buildings were in.

"I'm sure they wouldn't send they're children to schools like that."

Mr. Jacobs remembers School No. 11 was in bad shape when he was growing up in the 1950s.

He says: "We've got to take a stand to say to the government that children shouldn't be going to schools in that condition."