Unequal education with fundraising

June 6, 2012

Parents, students and school staff pulling together to fundraise for school items and activities is an everyday part of the education system.
The millions of dollars raised annually at area and provincial elementary schools goes towards everything from special guests, trips, and musical instruments to lunch programs and outdoor equipment.
Some schools collect more through fundraising than others. Take Humphrey school, where its annual MayFest, which has been running for over a decade, brought in $10,000 in 2011 compared to William Beatty, which started a Halloween Haunt two years ago and raised about $4,000 in 2011.
That’s a huge difference. One has to wonder what the kids of William Beatty are missing out on with the gap, given that there’s more than 400 students at William Beatty and just over 200 students at Humphrey.
Gone are the days when kids could show up to school and be provided with what they need to learn. Kids now provide notebooks, pens, pencils, two-pair of shoes, along with milk and hotdog money.
The provincial budget is getting tighter. School funding, partially tied to student enrollment, is going down.
There’s no question that a dollar has to stretch as far as it can.
But having a child’s public school experience, to some extent, controlled by how much money the community can fundraise doesn’t seem appropriate.
We praise the parents and communities that work so hard to provide for their students and allow every kid to have experiences that wouldn’t otherwise be possible on the provincial dime.
It would be better, though, if every publicly-funded school had the money to give students a well-rounded education.
A parent shouldn’t have to consider moving to another area to give their child the education they deserve.
The province needs to look at what it funds at schools. Learning to play an instrument or going on a school-approved class trip shouldn’t rely on how much a community can donate over and above what is contributed through property taxes.
That’s not a system that treats every youth fairly.