Notes from a concerned parent, teacher, and taxpayer.
I guess we won’t be going back to class on Tuesday. Thought there might be a chance over the weekend.
The latest pundits seem to think that this could go on for at least a couple of weeks or more. I don’t know.
However, I look at this $40 a day credit to parents who will need some kind of child care in the interim with much interest. Parents are between a rock and a hard place, so is public education.
For example, 30 students in my Grade 7 class times $40 a day equals $1,200 a day available to parents. Now, project that over a two week period (10 days) equals $12,000.
There are 10 Grade 6 - 7 classes in our school equals $120,000, just for our middle school.
Now, if you project that through the public school students that are 12 yrs. and under, approx. 250,000 students (conservative estimate), that works out to about $100,000,000 for two weeks child care.
Since the government is willing to put those kinds of funds into something other than the public school system, I would suggest that our government of the day has trouble with math, allocation of public funds, or just plain has an ethical problem funding public schools.
If the government of the day can earmark that kind of money to keep students out of school, then why can’t they earmark that kind of money to help settle this mess?
I wouldn’t mind being funded to operate my classroom on a $40 per day per diem for 30 students. I have had classes of 34 with no EA’s or specialized help. So, go figure.
Richard Hopkins, teacher
Shirley