Schools aren’t just about teaching anymore
Burnaby NewsLeader
By Brian Joe
November 25, 2009

… There has been the obvious finger pointing at the province for lack of funding or the school boards for fiscal mismanagement. But what is responsible for this continuous erosion of services and programs for students?

The answer, I believe, rests in this fundamental question: What is, and what should be the role of public education in society?…

If you have had opportunity to be involved in any of the public schools in Burnaby you might have noticed how much the demographics have changed. Along with this have come changes to programs and services that schools now provide.

Our schools are unique, complex and diverse communities that require many supports and services that were never thought about 20 years ago.

Burnaby, long a destination for immigrants coming to the Lower Mainland, has schools that strive to be inclusive. But this does not come without challenges—language of course being a major barrier to these children’s success in our schools. In Burnaby there are at least 70 different languages spoken by our students. As schools attempt to communicate with these families, often the school becomes a support centre for these families helping them settle into their new country.

Many new immigrants have no or little working knowledge of English and when their children enter our schools there is a need to support these children. Schools are now seen as “frontline settlement service centres” for not only immigrant families, but refugee families. Our schools are not only providing English-as-a-second-language training and support, but some also provide basic needs such as food, clothing and in many cases, translation services. In other cases, school staff is confronted with the enormous and additional task of helping connect these new families with service agencies in the community to help with their settlement.

Our schools have also become hubs or community-based centres for before- and after-school programs. Some schools in Burnaby provide both a breakfast and lunch program to feed their students. Other schools provide younger children with the opportunity to attend Early Literacy programs. Our community schools remain open not only to students but the community at large where programs and services are being offered long after the normal school day. Add to all this the recent announcement by the provincial government of all-day kindergarten, to start next year, and it’s easy to see how stretched scarce resources are becoming.

All these programs are excellent to give our students a leg up on their learning, however is the infrastructure in place to properly support these initiatives? ….

The concept of education as one-size-fits-all is no longer viable or realistic. There appears to be overlapping issues at our schools such as education, special needs, immigration, refugees, and settlement.

If we want our schools to keep providing opportunities for our students, we need to change how we fund and administer schools. ….