'Chaotic' scene at N.B. high school as parents take kids home due to safety concerns
CBC
Parents of Oromocto High School students say it was a "chaotic" scene at the school as families streamed in to pull their kids out of school on Thursday.
They say nerves are on edge following a vicious brawl Tuesday that saw one teen arrested, followed by a warning of a "potential for violence" at Fredericton High School that saw police officers patrolling the hallways throughout the day Thursday.
Many parents in Oromocto said they kept their kids home from school Thursday, while others showed up mid-morning to take them home after hearing of the situation in nearby Fredericton and fearing a similar situation could be brewing at the Oromocto school.
Later in the day, parents were informed that in fact Oromocto had received the same warning of potential violence.
Oromocto parent Tarra Patriquin said she arrived to pick up her two daughters and found a "chaotic" scene at the school.
"When we arrived, there were parents everywhere," she said. "By the time we left the school, the parking lot had filled up and parents were scrambling to get their kids."
Patriquin said she'd had misgivings about sending her kids to school at all Thursday after the violent fight at the school earlier this week.
But after hearing news of the police patrols at Fredericton High School, she said she decided to "err on the side of caution" and bring her daughters home for the day.
Samantha Gardner, who has two daughters at Oromocto High School, said she pulled both girls out of the school Thursday after hearing about what was happening in Fredericton – and doesn't plan to send them back at all.
Gardner said she's fed up with the recurring fights and violence among the school's students, and that she doesn't think the school or the district is doing enough to curb it.
They "don't seem to care about our kids," Gardner said. "I'm taking my kids out of this school ... and looking into online schooling."
Anglophone West School District communications director Jennifer Read said she did not have the student absence count for Oromocto High School.
"However, we do know that many students signed out of school today," she said in an email.
Later Thursday afternoon, Oromocto High School principal Kevin Inch confirmed in an email to parents that the school had also received a warning of "potential" violence at the school.
Windsor-Essex, Chatham-Kent and Sarnia can all expect between 20 and 40 millimetres of rainfall this weekend.
More Alberta seniors are now eligible for a provincially funded RSV vaccine.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.