Syrian Refugees on School District’s ‘Radar’
Prince George, B.C. – The federal government’s plan to process 25,000 Syrian refugees hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Prince George School Board.
Board chair Tony Cable said the issue is very much on the board’s “radar” at last night’s monthly meeting.
“We are anticipating some will be settled in Prince George and I know a number of church groups are looking at sponsoring them,” he said. “We want to make sure we’ll be out front on this and are definitely working with other organizations on it.”
He didn’t indicate who those organizations were other than to say “stay tuned.” Trustee Brenda Hooker said the issue is also very much on the radar of the provincial government.
“Particularly because they will be high need students that won’t come with funding since their arrival missed the 1701 count,” she said, noting that means students not counted by the end of September won’t come with per student funding.
She says that will come with challenges. “The refugees will need lots of English language support which won’t be funded.”
All of this as the federal government announced plans Tuesday to settle 10,000 refugees by the end of this year and a further 15,000 by the end of February.
Comments
But don’t bother with the mess in your own backyard.
Health Minister Jane Philpott expects the refugees that arrive will thrive in Canada. Complete families, women at risk, members of sexual minorities and LGBT single men are among those who will be given priority.
The program cost is estimated at $678-million over six years, but doesn’t account for additional funding possibly needed for provinces and territories. Good luck! That’s $4500 per year for 25000 people..
It will be more like $678-million per year for many years.
SD 57 will just have to bill the feds for expenses covered by their mandate only, like English as a new First language for school age children.
reminds me of the late 70’s when we took in 60,000 refugees from Vietnam.. it seemed to work out.
I don’t mind families showing up to start a new life for their children. I welcome them, but if your single, shouldn’t you be fighting in your on homeland to make it better.
I remember a lot of non-English students arriving in our school during the 50’s and they did not have English as a second language courses. They lived in our community and they learnt English playing with the rest of us kids. We as students also helped them in the classrooms. Lots of advantages from that system: we became friends, we picked up some of their language, we all learnt more in school helping others, our new to-be-Canadians intergrated into the community and we all learnt that helping others was a good thing to do. Oh, forgot the bad part – they would get the strap for speaking not speaking English on the school grounds.
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