Funding cut to school targeted for troubled youth

The axe is falling at a Saskatoon school that helps troubled youth graduate.

Community Learner's High School’s provincial funding is being cut. It runs a unique program that teaches students life skills while fulfilling the provincial curriculum.

The province says the school's funding was based on a proposal that it would serve high school aged students, but that adult learners now take up the majority of the program.

The province also claims no students have ever graduated from the school with a grade 12 diploma. But, the school's principal, Keith Jorgenson, says seven people have graduated since last June.

“The Wall government finds this group of individuals or demographic to not be a worthy group,” Jorgenson says. “Young, aboriginal, with criminal justice involvement, and it, I think, makes them kind of an easy target to be cut.”

He says teachers are now considering whether the school will have to close due to the cut.