The school on Waterhen Lake First Nation in northern Saskatchewan is a budding success story. Standardized test scores are climbing, attendance rates are improving, and six teenagers are set to graduate this spring.

But now that progress is threatened.

Waterhen Lake School can’t afford to pay its teachers. A new contract was signed recently in Saskatchewan, and the federal funding the school received for salaries this winter isn’t enough to match the union pay grid.

The school’s principal, John Walter, says he has to choose between firing some staff or asking them all to take a pay cut.

Neither option is acceptable to Mr. Walter, who believes his school’s success has everything to do with his staff. They have more experience, and are therefore more expensive, than staff on other reserves where turnover rates are high and new graduates run the classrooms.