The ThunderBlogs

The Vancouver School Board will close schools for 10 additional days next year in order to partially offset a $17M budget deficit. Longer holidays will hurt vulnerable families and further stretch community resources.

Around 50 community members met Thursday to discuss education cuts at a town hall meeting hosted by Jenny Kwan, MLA Vancouver Mt. Pleasant, at the Strathcona Community Centre.

Some parents came with young children. Kwan announced in English and Chinese that translation could be made available those preferring to listen in Mandarin or Cantonese. A small group gathered in the back corner of the room for a whispered translation session.

Tom Barker of the Strathcona Parental Advisory Council said that the Strathcona Community Centre currently runs a Holiday Safe Space program over Christmas Holidays and March Break. The program serves 120 kids who are identified by their schools as “at risk,” and offers them structured activities while schools are closed.

One study found that while children from higher income families increase their learning over extended school breaks, the learning levels of children from low income families actually decrease, Barker said. Children from all income groups showed similar rates of increase in learning while school was in session.

“Inner city children are most vulnerable during extended school breaks,” Ron Suzuki from the Strathcona Community Centre said. “The saddest times of the year are Christmas and Spring Break.”

Suzuki said that the community centre will have to fundraise an extra $26,000 to cover the cost of additional programing during school closures. This funding could otherwise have gone towards needed renovations to the childcare centre or towards offsetting the Food Security Program budget deficit, Suzuki said.

The 10 additional school closure days were proposed as a one-time measure that will save the school board $1M. However, Patricia Badir of the Strathcona Community Centre worries that closures will continue indefinitely.

The Strathcona Community Centre has an amazing volunteer board of directors and an amazing staff that will find a way to put on great programming for the 10 extra school closure days, Badir said. “We solve these problems. We see a leak, we patch it up. We jump into the crisis and we solve it. But that just means that things will look okay to the school board. There will have been no disaster in Strathcona, and I’m worried about what that will mean for the next year.”