To the editor:
Re: "COPE calls for breakfasts, "Nov. 21.
Where does the purpose of schools end? Regular newspaper readers are aware that the media and many public figures - while condemning teachers for their poor performance - designate schools and teachers responsible for educating children about every ill plaguing our society: bullying, Internet abuse, gay-bashing, pollution, drug/alcohol abuse, sexual abuse, mindfulness, empathy and mental health, anti-racism, conflict resolution and child abuse. Now COPE asserts that a "mandate" of public schools is to provide breakfasts to students.
COPE wants the VSB to "lobby the Province for breakfast programs." Keep in mind the requests last year by one school for funds to feed children who arrive too late for the free breakfasts, and the principal who talked of a need to buy a washing machine and dryer for a mother to launder clothes and another who buys mattresses for families of students. What are the responsibilities of public educators?
Will there ever be sufficient funds?
After all the publicity about the number of needy children attending one East Side school, it was inundated with 'ad hoc donations' of goods and cash. Can it and other schools receiving donations demonstrate that the infusion of private funds and innumerable government grants have resulted in improved attendance and academic performance? Are the children read to at home, helped with school assignments, put to bed at reasonable hours, arriving at school in time for free breakfasts?
These things are beyond any board of education's "mandate," as is the feeding of families, laundering their clothing and providing them with beds. At a time when academic standards have decreased as evidenced by text books and curricula, and families are fleeing public schools for independent schools, now is not the time to take on added responsibilities that more naturally fall within the mandate of a ministry of family welfare and municipal community centres.
COPE would do more for Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»children by directing its lobbying toward these branches of government and mounting an inquiry into where, on what, and how the millions of dollars in education funding have been spent. They are certainly not being spent on direct student services.
Linda Chan, Vancouver
