A petition calling on the New Westminster School District to beef up staffing levels of child and youth care workers is making the rounds.
Nearly 160 signatures have been collected through Natalie Lawy’s – chair of the Parents Advisory Council at Lord Kelvin Elementary – Change.org petition, which asks the school board to use part of the almost $300,000 in administrative savings the province returned last month and “find a better solution.”
Right now, the district has four child and youth care workers who support at-risk children and their families. Elementary schools Richard McBride, Lord Tweedsmuir, Lord Kelvin and Qayqayt each had a child and youth care worker for the 2015/16 school year. Some of the workers, along with the grades 6 and 7 students from those schools, will be moving to the newly built Fraser River Middle School this fall.
“What we’re doing is having the child and youth care workers follow the children,” superintendent Pat Duncan told the Record. “If you take students away from a school, and in significant numbers, we’re just making sure those Grade 6s and 7s, when they go to Fraser River will have services.
“We find the greatest needs are usually in the grades 6s and 7s, and that comes directly from the child and youth care workers themselves. They tell us that.”
This “realignment” means the district will be stretching the services of the child and youth care workers to where none existed before, with staff splitting their time among more than one school.
“What we’re trying to do is make sure all of our students have access,” Duncan said.
But Lawy is worried that if hours aren’t increased and staff will have to extend themselves, some kids won’t get the support they need.
“Our child and youth care workers are a critical resource. They help students who are hungry, who cope with disorders like anxiety, who witness or experience abuse at home, who might fall through the cracks,” Lawy wrote on the petition page. “These students deserve all the support we can give them. Taking away from one vulnerable population to provide for another is not the answer.”
The school board will be discussing what it plans to do with the administrative savings at a committee meeting on Tuesday, June 21.
