School fees

[velvetpage]

I just read a website for the Calgary Board of Education. I skipped over most of the academic stuff, because it's actually very similar to what's on my board's website in relation to standardized testing, but I was intrigued by the page about school fees: Parents may find that there are about five hundred dollars' worth of school fees if they have two kids in high school.

Now, from my perspective, I think this is a good idea. I think it's crazy that the Ontario government provides every single pencil for its kids, for example. Careful shopping and sticking to a short list would make it possible for most kids to get all their basic supplies for $30-$40. This way, teachers can order exactly what they want their classes to have, everyone pays the same amount, and there is a waiver for parents who can't afford it.

I absolutely love the idea of a lunch supervision fee. One of the reasons our boards are crunched for cash and putting caps on supervision time is the changes to lunch supervision since the Harris government. Back in the late eighties, many Ontario boards hired supervisors to watch kids eat, so that teachers would have that time free. The decision at the time was that, if they were paying the supervisors anyway, it was okay to let kids stay for lunch even if their parents were home. Then Harris came, and with him came the financial crunch, and suddenly the lunch supervisors were gone. But a whole generation of kids had grown up expected lunch supervision for their children, free of charge, and someone had to provide it. So it fell back in teachers' laps.

What do you think? Is there a place for school fees, with a family cap on them and a waiver system in place, in Ontario?

Comments

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

School supplies? Parents buy. Lunch supervision? Pay for that? That is part of running a school. It's like saying you should pay fees for the secretary, the nurse, and the janitor. You need them in school all day, they need to eat, they need the supervision. It should be considered part of running the school.

We buy our own supplies here, even including things like paper towels, soap, tissues, and quite a bit of art stuff and the like, and fees aren't too high. The only extra fees my middle school kid had was a $4 fee for the one term they had skating, and for her gym uniform.

Someone on my flist has a great PTA that buys supplies en masse and makes up packages, and you pay to get one fully stocked package of school supplies. Here we also have a church that solicits funds from local businesses and buys cheap backpacks and fills them with the basics. Pretty cool. Kids eligible for free lunch are usually eligible to get those, and free shoes from payless. We are really good to those in need round here.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

We haven't had school nurses in every school in Ontario for at least a decade, and I think it's been closer to two.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Wow even in NYC we had school nurses.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Our secretaries and a few teachers are trained in First Aid, and that's about it.