If it's something that everyone has, I can certainly see that point, but when it comes to lunch supervision, I have more trouble with it.
Before the era of teacher-supervised lunch at school, kids went home for lunch. All of them. If they couldn't go home for lunch, their parents made arrangements for them to be babysat at someone else's house for lunch. Either way, teachers weren't providing that supervision because, not to put too fine a point on it, teachers' time is more valuable than that. The fee that is being charged in Calgary is $240, and it's only applicable to students who live close enough to walk but choose to stay at school for lunch, probably because their parents work. That means that those students aren't paying a bus fee. There are 198 school days in Ontario. A fee of $240 for the year is about $1.25 a day for an hour of babysitting. That's a pretty good rate.
Lunch supervision is not a part of education. It's a part of childcare, an element that falls outside of what is defined as "instructional time." While I can certainly see the argument that, if it falls within instructional time, it should be publicly provided, I find it harder to justify items that fall outside instructional time. Transportation is something you pay for when you live a distance from your job; I know several families who have very carefully managed their living arrangements in order to minimize that cost. But transportation for their children should be provided free? In the rest of their lives, they're going to have to find ways to get to and from where they need to be, on their own dime. I think the only reason we see it differently in Ontario is that we've been used to having it for free.
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Date: 2007-06-17 12:57 pm (UTC)Before the era of teacher-supervised lunch at school, kids went home for lunch. All of them. If they couldn't go home for lunch, their parents made arrangements for them to be babysat at someone else's house for lunch. Either way, teachers weren't providing that supervision because, not to put too fine a point on it, teachers' time is more valuable than that. The fee that is being charged in Calgary is $240, and it's only applicable to students who live close enough to walk but choose to stay at school for lunch, probably because their parents work. That means that those students aren't paying a bus fee. There are 198 school days in Ontario. A fee of $240 for the year is about $1.25 a day for an hour of babysitting. That's a pretty good rate.
Lunch supervision is not a part of education. It's a part of childcare, an element that falls outside of what is defined as "instructional time." While I can certainly see the argument that, if it falls within instructional time, it should be publicly provided, I find it harder to justify items that fall outside instructional time. Transportation is something you pay for when you live a distance from your job; I know several families who have very carefully managed their living arrangements in order to minimize that cost. But transportation for their children should be provided free? In the rest of their lives, they're going to have to find ways to get to and from where they need to be, on their own dime. I think the only reason we see it differently in Ontario is that we've been used to having it for free.