Dear Editor:
North Vancouver school district wants to cut costs. Is anyone going to talk about who picks up the bill?
The district is again beginning a school year forced to scrounge for creative solutions to address chronic underfunding. Parent advisory councils are looking for new fundraising activities to make up for the shortfall since provincial funding to PACs just evaporated.
The proposed solution, to continue to staple a few minutes onto each educational day to cut costs associated with staffing schools for entire days strikes me as the ultimate irony. I have yet to speak to a working parent without a stay-at-home parental unit or extended family support who doesn't throw their hands up in frustration. Day camps are expensive, and many don't operate at hours that fit with the schedules of most working families. The costs that the school district is struggling to cover are being passed along to families, in the same way that cutting funding to PACs simply passes the fundraising burden onto those same families. Before I - and all my working friends - complete another school district survey and ask for support from the community to take care of our kids during these extra long weekends and extended holidays, can we not undertake some demographic analysis of our community? Are we really a community that has so many support systems in place that the majority of us are well served by this change?
Before the school district fixes one problem, let's make sure we look at how all our systems work together to support our families. If you're going to give me 10 days - or more - that I'm going to have to pay for childcare for two kids and find a suitable activity to break up a day home alone for my 13 year old, make sure we have programs in place that we can afford - and plenty of them - and make sure they meet the needs of your average working family. Camps that start at 10 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. simply don't cut it. Our family, for one, isn't jumping for joy that we can spend two extra weeks in a tropical location at spring break. We'll be trying to figure out who's going to take time off work in March to stay home and look after the kids.
Alexandra Best, North Vancouver
