To the editor:
RE: "Don't make schools solve all societal ills ," letter Nov. 30.
Letter writer Linda Chan's condescending and ill-informed missive, using the cover of rightly condemning the reliance on schools to solve all societal problems while at the same time slamming the proposal by the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE ) to provide much-needed breakfasts in Vancouver's 14 inner city elementary schools, demands a response.
COPE's proposal is not for all mainstream elementary schools as she implies, rather, it's directed at high-needs inner city elementary schools with serious food security problems.
Ms. Chan would do well to acquaint herself with the shocking and distressing background to this request.
This province has led the rest of the country in child poverty for over seven years. The recently released annual poverty report by First Call, a province-wide advocacy coalition, noted that, using Statistics Canada data, there were a stunning 119,000 children living in poverty in B.C., two-thirds of them in Greater Vancouver.
Currently, the two national, non-profit breakfast organizations, namely, the Quebec-based Breakfast Club of Canada and the Ontario-based Breakfast for Learning, are literally overwhelmed by urgent requests for assistance from B.C. elementary schools. And according to a new report, the use of food banks in B.C. is now increasing twice as fast as the national average. Food Banks Canada reports that it feeds 900,000 clients of whom one-third are children. Incidentally, Canada is the sole G8 country not having a national school meals program.
Poverty is a huge, indeed intractable impediment to learning in our schools and, bluntly stated: hungry kids don't learn. It may surprise Ms. Chan that it was recently reported that we have kids arriving daily in Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»schools whose last meal was the previous day's noon-hour lunch. The last thing these kids and parents need is a lecture about bedtime storytelling and best parental practices!
Rather than relying on the outstanding, but nevertheless uncertain and, at times, random, generosity of local organizations, business groups, individuals and churches, thereby leaving schools and community centres scrambling to run continuous programs throughout the year, there is an urgent need for stable, board-supported breakfast programs in our high-needs inner city schools. Hence COPE's request.
Shame on us as a province for ignoring and neglecting to produce, as six other provinces have done, a meaningful and effective child poverty plan with clear goals and deadlines to meet the needs of our most vulnerable children.
Noel Herron, former inner city principal and VSB school trustee
