By Kellah Lavoie

School division adapts to smoking law

Oct 24, 2010 | 4:00 PM

Local students have been told to butt out this school year.
While they may not be smoking on school property Bill Cooke, Saskatchewan Rivers School Division director of education, said it’s not stopping them from smoking nearby.
However, he said the complaints they were getting early in the school year seemed to have stopped.
“We’ve said all along call us if you have an issue or a question or a concern and I have not had one call,” Cooke said.
“Carlton has had some issues, kids wander off the property onto the mall or whatever, but I am not hearing that anymore.”
He said in past years they had special areas on school property students were allowed to smoke on. Now he is trying to get them to Art Hauser Centre.
“We can clean it up and keep them in an area and we are meeting all the rules. That is working slowly, but I don’t think we are there yet,” Cooke said, adding he believes students are still heading to the strip mall to smoke.
He said it would probably take the whole school year before things are completely worked out.
Cook, who is also the chairman of the Provincial Directors of Education, said other cities are seeing the same thing as schools in Prince Albert.
“When we meet, we raise this issue — ‘how is it going in your school division?’ For most of them they don’t say much at all, but I know for us and the bigger cities it’s an issue,” he said.
“If you are in a rural town where you can go into the field next door nobody cares, but when you are stepping onto somebody’s property they do care.”
klavoie@rawlco.com