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Winnipeg Free Press
24-06-2025
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
Mennonite high school in Gretna won't offer classes in fall, future uncertain
Mennonite Collegiate Institute, a Grade 9-12 high school in Gretna, has announced it is pausing operations. The provincially accredited and supported school, which was established in 1889, will not offer classes in September. Twenty-three teachers and staff will lose their jobs. The length of the pause will be determined by delegates from the school's 11 supporting churches, who will meet July 7 to decide whether to close the school permanently or seek other options for the future. A main reason for shutting down operations for the upcoming school year was cited as lower than hoped-for enrolment that led to financial challenges, said MCI CEO Chris Harms. The school had just 45 students this year, down from 54 in 2023-2024. 'It's been a year-by-year continued slow slide,' he said. Harms also cited a breakdown in relations and loss of support from some rural Mennonite churches over issues such as LGBTTQ+ inclusion. MCI had maintained an open and welcoming stance to all students, but 'there is polarization in the community over this,' he said. The school is also facing challenges raising donations to supplement tuition fees. 'We have counted on some big donors over the years, but donor fatigue is setting in,' Harms said, noting the school could not continue to rely on them to sustain the school's operations. Harms said the goal for the school is to end well, including ensuring teachers and support staff are fully paid for their work. MCI is appealing to its donors to help it raise enough funds to do that. Even before the decision to close, the school was getting by 'month-to-month' on payroll, he said, noting teachers had agreed to reduced salaries and extra work this year to help the school survive. Harms acknowledged the timing of the announcement is unfortunate since it will make it difficult for teachers and other staff to find new positions in other schools. 'Those roles have mostly been filled by now,' he said. The school also has $1.7 million in debt for a mortgage and a line of credit. The decision not to operate next year was not made lightly by the school's board, Harms said, noting that MCI had spent months trying to build the necessary steps to keep it open. But the enrolment issue made the decision impossible to avoid, he said, noting the supporting churches mostly have aging congregations and not many children or youth. He expressed regret about the impact the school's closure will have on students, particularly those in Grade 11 who hoped to graduate from MCI next year. 'That was the hardest group of students to walk through this,' he said. Former MCI board member Karla Klassen Fehr said the news is difficult to hear. 'I see the main issue as enrolment,' said Klassen Fehr, whose husband and two daughters graduated from MCI. 'Without students, donor support can't maintain a school.' She said the school's rural location means there are a limited number of day students who can attend, and parents who live further away are less willing to send their children away for boarding school. 'Sensitive issues' over LGBTTQ+ and theology have strained relations with some local Mennonite churches, she said. 'I'm very sad to see this happen,' Klassen Fehr said. 'MCI has played a huge role in our community, giving students an opportunity for faith-based education that I highly value.' Wil Epp is also a former board member whose three children graduate from MCI. His congregation, Emmanuel Mennonite in Winkler, voted last month to stop supporting the school. The church has few children or youth and is dealing with its own financial issues, Epp said. 'Like many other churches, our church struggles with its budget,' he said, noting supporting MCI had ceased to be a priority for the congregation. Michael Pahl, executive minister of Mennonite Church Manitoba, said the closing of the school is disappointing. Together with Westgate Mennonite Collegiate in Winnipeg, MCI was a 'significant pipeline' for lay leadership and clergy in the denomination, Pahl said, adding the school played a key role in forming faith for many young people over the years. In addition to shrinking and aging rural Mennonite congregations, there is also growing competition from other Christian schools in rural Manitoba, he said. Cost for tuition at MCI was $6,700 a year this year, while students living in dorm were charged $12,500 a year. Out-of-province students paid $19,000 a year for tuition, room and board. That amount included a $6,500 out-of-province fee, as these students were not covered by Manitoba's education grant. MCI is a member of Manitoba Federation of Independent Schools and the Canadian Association of Mennonite Schools. faith@ The Free Press is committed to covering faith in Manitoba. If you appreciate that coverage, help us do more! Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow us to deepen our reporting about faith in the province. Thanks! BECOME A FAITH JOURNALISM SUPPORTER John LonghurstFaith reporter John Longhurst has been writing for Winnipeg's faith pages since 2003. He also writes for Religion News Service in the U.S., and blogs about the media, marketing and communications at Making the News. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
New European
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New European
Caught in a Eurovision controversy
Eurovison's slogan is United By Music. Given that an estimated 163 million people watched the 2024 broadcast, it seems fair enough. This year's contest, in Basel in mid-May, will mark 70 years since the European Broadcasting Union set up the committee that devised the song contest, intending it to promote cultural understanding and peaceful cooperation in a continent still recovering from the destruction and animosities of WWII. Yet among the harmony, there can be discord. Just ask Chris Harms. Harms, singer with Hamburg goth/metal rockers Lord of the Lost, knows what it is like to be caught up in a Eurovision controversy. While overtly political songs or nationalistic statements have been banned from the start, rows have still managed to erupt over Israel (which joined the EBU in 1973), over the Balkan conflict, over a border dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan and more recently over Ukraine and Russia. The Lost of Germany reacts during the voting following performances of the final of the Eurovision Song contest 2023. Photo: OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images Harms's band, who will tour the UK later in the year, were the German entry in 2023. That was the year Liverpool played host on behalf of Ukraine, who had won the previous year but were unable to stage it at home in the wake of the invasion, for which Russia was banned. Even for a seasoned musician who says he had 'played 1,000 shows before that already, been on tours in more than 40 countries' the experience was a blur. 'I still feel like I haven't really processed all of it,' he tells me, 'because it was one of the most intense times in our career.' Harms, who recently released a surprisingly different solo album, 1980, talks about the numbers – hundreds of interviews over two weeks on Merseyside, 55 seconds for the changeover between acts, 100 people rushing on and off stage at a time and 20 cameras recording it all. But what he can't avoid is what happened to Lord of the Lost and their song, Blood & Glitter. It all started, he says, with the Grand Final Flag Parade, first introduced in 2013, in which the competitors walk out on stage one after the other, holding their national colours. At the 2023 contest, waving flags was never likely to be a completely neutral gesture, and the fervently anti-nationalist Lord of the Lost's solution was not to carry one at all. Harms says, 'We said in many interviews over the years, 'you will never see us going somewhere waving our national flag'. We thought that running around with this sheet would just look stupid. I totally despise nationalism in general. Germany Entry Lord of the Lost performs on stage during The Eurovision Song Contest 2023 Grand Final. Photo:'I myself am very happy that I was born here, I feel very privileged, but I cannot be proud at being German. There are so many people waving the flag for the wrong reasons. The people you usually see on the street waving the flag are the people you don't wanna see wave any flag. 'Then for the [official Eurovision] TikTok reel where everybody was waving their flag, we said, 'We can wave the St Pauli flag from our football team, because it's the skull and bones, it looks beautiful, we can wave the white flag for peace, you know, or a pride flag'. They said 'Yeah, we have a pride flag', so we did that.'' Lord of the Lost had enjoyed a good fortnight in Liverpool – visiting a local school to play music with pupils and answer questions, and doing an acoustic show at the Cavern Club – but this was the start of a bad night. When the final votes were counted, Sweden's Loreen was top with 583 points. Germany were some way behind, with 18. They finished rock bottom, even beaten by the UK. What was to follow was even worse. While the band were accustomed to playing 50,000-seat stadiums supporting Iron Maiden, exposure to a live television audience of 167 million was in another category completely, gaining them a significant number of new fans worldwide, yet simultaneously exposing them to a whole new level of scrutiny and abuse, including death threats. 'After Eurovision,' says Chris, 'the amount of hate comments from German right wing people about the flag and stuff, it was so intense, we had to block them all, and I needed to clear my mind about that. It took me a while to understand that when someone writes something about you in a hate comment, it doesn't say anything about you but it says everything about these people.' Once the fury had died down, Lord of the Lost decided that there had been so many good things about their Eurovision week that they decided to travel to 2024 host city Malmö and perform a show of their own the night before the Grand Final. Echoing the belief of the competition's founders that music can be a unifying force, Chris states that the band would happily do it all over again. 'If you just go there because of the contest and you lose the sense of musicality and the art and the togetherness, it doesn't mean a thing,' he says. 'We would still enjoy it even if we'd go last again.' Chris Harms' solo album, 1980, is out now, and Lord of the Lost will tour the UK in October and November
