Cope
“Parents so desperately want to find before and after school care,” says Suzie Mah, one of the two COPE Vancouver candidates running for school board in this fall’s civic elections. “I’ve had so many conversations with parents while campaigning and I have heard how stressful it is to find out that their child’s school either has no childcare program or it’s full.”
“Compounding the problem of lack of programs and no space, is the issue of affordability”, says Rocco Trigueros, COPE’s other school board candidate. “Many parents may end up having to work part-time instead of full-time depending on whether they can find before and after school care for their child."
In March of 2012, the school district published “Vancouver School Board Sectoral Review - Our Schools, Our Programs, Our Future.” The purpose of the review was to elucidate current trends and pressures in the district and to suggest directions for the future. On page 9, the district reported 77 before and after school programs with 2855 spaces.
“If you go to the VSB’s website, you cannot find a list of before or after school programs at all. There’s a page listing different organizations that offer these programs, but how are parents to find out if there are spaces at nearby schools if their child’s school doesn’t have a program or is full?”, says Mah. “What’s interesting about the report is that, unlike the other recommendations that flowed out of the report, the issue of before and after school programs had no recommendations for future action.”
“If we’re elected, Suzie Mah and I will commit to a review of the current before and after school programs and we will accelerate, not only the number of spaces available, but the expansion of program locations in the district,” says Trigueros.
“We talk about making B.C. affordable for families. In a January Op-ed piece in the Vancouver Sun, Karen Rallanetta talks about how our provincial government is committed to universal, affordable, childcare but there’s no plan for before and after school care for children aged 5 to 12.”, says Mah. “I think we need to explore using underutilized spaces in schools to create more programs and spaces. Elected trustees need to demand from the provincial government to support this endeavor.”
Contacts
COPE: [email protected]
Suzie Mah: [email protected]
Background Information
For more information about the VSB Sectoral Review:
https://www.placespeak.com/uploads/assets/sectoral-review-mar30.pdf
For Karen Rallanetta’s opinion piece:
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