Students at Bethlehem Catholic High School will be back in class Wednesday for the first time since a fire last month — and the school day has been cut by half for most.
Twenty-six portable classrooms were destroyed in the blaze at the Saskatoon school on Aug. 7. The fire has displaced nearly 800 students, including Kyson Kenny, who is entering Grade 11.
“It was crazy. I was up north and I was on my phone, and I kept looking at a bunch of videos my friend sent me — flames, giant flames everywhere. It was insane. Personally, I couldn’t even believe it, actually,” he said in an interview with CBC News.
Kenny said he visited the school last week to look at the football field, and it was covered in ashes.
“Bewildering,” he said. “You usually see it in, like, media or TV shows, movies, but you never expected it to actually happen to you.”
Police have said the origin of the fire is considered suspicious and an arson investigation is underway. No charges have been laid as of Tuesday afternoon.
Grades 9 and 10 have periods of instruction in the morning, and grades 11 and 12 take over the classrooms in the afternoon.
The other half of each student’s day is set aside for tutorials, which are not mandatory for all students. The division is using some areas in the Shaw Centre next door, including a small gym, a multi-purpose room and meeting spaces.
Some students said the shortened classes will push youths away and result in more school work being done at home.
“There’s probably going to be more homework for the first semester and stuff. And I don’t know, it kind of sucks,” said Cole Wagner, 16, a Grade 11 student on the football team.
Kenny said he likes the shorter days but is worried about some of his classmates.
“There’s a lot of people that like to skip classes, go out to malls,” he said.
“Since it’s not mandatory, I think it might not be the best for the students,” he said of the tutorials.
Students head back to a Saskatoon school missing 26 classrooms
Tom Hickey, the superintendent of Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools, said the situation has been hard for both students and teachers. Some staff were escorted by firefighters to collect their belongings after the blaze.
“That, for sure, was an emotional experience for some of our staff,” he said. “You don’t think about those things until a situation like this.”
The school does not yet know when the classrooms will be replaced. Hickey said those decisions involve structural engineers, insurers and the school division, and he expects more clarity within a couple of weeks.
He also said the decision to expand a school with portables rather than a permanent build rests with Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Education, which maintains a priority list for major construction projects.
Students will return to class at Saskatoon school damaged by fire, school board says
Saskatoon high school fire considered ‘suspicious,’ police say
Until more space opens up, the split days will continue — potentially for the full semester.
“We’ve got to be prepared for anything,” Hickey said. “If we have enough classrooms become available to us, really at any time in the year, we have the capability of switching back to a regular schedule.”
