TRUSTEES SPEAK AS ONE ON PATTULLO
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NEW WEST’S CLASH OF OLD AND NEW
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OLD-TIME SOCCER ATpage QUEEN’S PARK
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FRIDAY
MAY 25 2012
www.newwestnewsleader.com
They had a blast at Queen’s Park on Monday, as the Anvil Battery did what it does best. See Page A20
District rebuts parents’ math claims Grant Granger ggranger@newwestnewsleader.com
GRANT GRANGER/NEWSLEADER
Janice Laurence has made a pledge to herself to visit 50 countries by the time she turns 50.
A world journey beyond the pain New Westminster woman makes travel dreams come true despite degenerative disease Grant Granger ggranger@newwestnewsleader.com
Janice Laurence loved teaching, but four years ago she had to agree with her principal it was time to call it a career even though she was in her forties. Since Laurence was a child the soon-to-be ex-New Westminster resident, world traveller and expert couch surfer has suffered from a
painful, degenerative, hereditary disease called Charcot Marie Tooth (CMT) which wreaks havoc on a person’s neurological system. The pain caused her to gradually reduce her hours at Maywood community school in Burnaby over a few years. Finally principal Sue Montebello could see CMT was taking too much of a toll on Laurence and said to her, “Janice, I think it’s time to stop.” Laurence, reluctantly, agreed. “It was a relief because you don’t want to have to make the decision yourself,” she says.
“It’s good to have someone to say you tried really hard and you need to do something else.” Something else, however, didn’t mean sitting around all day. Although at times she was discouraged, struggling to walk wasn’t an excuse not to get out of the house. “It’s one of the driving forces that makes me exercise every day.” Laurence loves to do more than just get out of the house. She has always had a passion for travel. Her parents took her on an ocean liner to New Zealand when she was six months old
so globetrotting is in her DNA and she wasn’t about to let CMT stop her. A few years ago Laurence, now 47, ¿lled out a country counter on an airline website and realized she’d been to 42 of them, and an idea for a sort of bucket list popped in her head. She’d shoot for 50 by the time she turns 50. “I realized I was starting a new chapter for myself,” says Laurence. The last eight countries, however, will come at a pace her body and her bank account will allow. Please see DISEASE, A9
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New Westminster school district superintendent John Woudzia has taken exception to a perception that problems in individual classrooms are ignored. “That’s not accurate. There’s a great deal of activity that does take place,” said Woudzia on Wednesday in a meeting with media to discuss math marks over the last several years in the district. Parent Lisa Chao led a group of parents that submitted freedom of information (FOI) requests asking for math marks over the last ¿ve years at New Westminster secondary (NWSS). Chao called some of the results “appalling” because there were classes with 30 to 40 per cent failure rates. Woudzia pointed out the average score for all of NWSS’s 1,008 math classes containing nearly 17,000 students over the last eight years was 69.2 per cent, which Woudzia said is in an acceptable range. He also noted the stats showed 91 per cent of the students passed, with 60 per cent of them receiving a C+ or better. see IT’S NEVER, A11