Budget impasse at Waterloo school board. (News in Brief).

Kitchener -- Four trustees of the Waterloo Catholic District School Board have refused to approve the budget for the current year because it did not include the cost of a Catholic health nurse. The four are opposed to continuing with the services of public health nurses, even though the service is free and the nurses have agreed not to discuss abortion and contraception with the students they see, or to dispense birth control devices. After last year's budget was delayed over the same issue, Bishop Anthony Tonnos of Hamilton wrote a pastoral letter saying that there was no suggestion that the public health nurses had failed to keep their agreement. In fact they have produced a brochure on chastity and abstinence in collaboration with the students.

The four dissenters, however, believe that only a Catholic nurse can communicate Catholic values. Their spokesman, lawyer Steven Woodsworth, asked in a letter to the Kitchen-Waterloo Record, "How can anyone argue that when Catholic schools counsel students about sexual decision-making, it should not involve communicating religious values?"

Before the budget meeting, the board was presented with a petition signed by over two thousand Catholic taxpayers asking for an end to the arrangement with public health nurses (Cath. Reg., July 28/02).