Mahone Bay Old School_A Life and Times_Bob Sayer

Chapter Nine:
The Elementary-Junior High Decades
Board meeting. At the July meeting the board made funds available for three
paid supervisors to assist three paid teachers at noon hour. By September,
Principal O’Connor was able to report four hired supervisors [Mrs. Marilyn
Saunders, Mrs. P. Carver, Mrs. Monica Meisner, and Mrs. Elizabeth Paradis]
to assist the teachers, who were volunteers. The paid noon hour supervisor
became a way of life, and still is.
Ruth Herridge is the hardy supervisor on the far right. She’s been there since
1981, But not standing in the same place
Political Change Noon Hour Supervisors Elected Board Members
School Board Amalgamation
Political change came fast in the early 1980s. The Nova Scotia Teachers
Union, now a powerful provincial force, succeeded in getting noon hour supervision
written out of the list of teachers’ duties. School boards had to go
to the community for paid staff to do this work. The Provincial Government
decided to go with partially elected school boards, and after a number of
commissions and studies, rationalized the bewildering, over-lapping, intersecting,
jurisdictions of local school boards.
Noon Hour Supervisors: Home and School Asserts Itself Again
In late 1977, the new NSTU/Department of Education agreement led to legislation
that read as follows: Teachers shall not be required to carry out supervision
of students during the total period of time that students are on lunch and
noon hour break. Boards were given time to prepare. The Mahone Bay Board
had to provide extra supervision for the additional number of bus students,
particularly at the elementary levels, that followed the exodus of older students
to Parkview. The 1978 petition of out-of-town parents rightly pointed
out that there were not adequate numbers of supervisors.
The problem was complicated by some 40 Town parents regularly sending
their children to school for the lunch period. In May 1979, principal
O’Connor invited all parents to a special meeting to discuss ‘lunch hour
regulations’ at the school. A Home and School Association presentation,
signed by parents and the whole teaching staff, was then made at the June
Elected Board Members Bill 85
Bill 85: An Act To Consolidate and Amend The Law Respecting The Membership
of School Boards passed in 1978 and set up elections for September
1979. The act, left municipal units to continue to appoint a majority of
members and allowed one third to be elected.
So 1980 ended the first year for the Town’s first elected board members since
the pre 1919 board of trustees.
They were Virginia Uhlman and David Wright. Virginia had taught at the
school in 1963-64 when her husband Charles was supervising principal. She
went on to become chair of the board before amalgamation.
David Wright was a teacher-guidance counsellor at Centre School.
Charles Uhlman, one time Mahone Bay principal, long time town resident and
Lion activist, had been chief administrator of the Chester Municipal School
System and was appointed assistant superintendent of the new Lunenburg
County School District.
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