VANCOUVER

Board hit for inaction
on hungry schoolchild ren

There are an estimated 20,000 children
living in poverty in Vancouver alone —
with at least 10,000 on welfare — and thou-
sands of them are school children.

That estimate, based on reports from Sta-
tistics Canada and the provincial Ministry
of Social Services and Housing, has parents
calling on the Vancouver school board to
act now to alleviate child hunger in the
schools.

Child hunger surfaced as an issue in the
city some years back, but received full atten-
tion after the Child Poverty Forum held in
Vancouver last April. Speakers at the forum
warned that inadequate nutrition not only
endangered the health of children but was
also responsible for poor scholastic perfor-
mance, leading to further complications
and greater social service expenditures in

the future.

But while the school board voted Mon-
day to press the federal and provincial
governments for funding, parent and com-
munity groups charge that the trustees are
in fact doing little to ensure an end to a
problem which is assuming alarming pro-
portions.

Jean Swanson of End Legislated Poverty
told the trustees Monday night that despite
seven months of lobbying by concerned
citizens, “virtually nothing has changed.”

And Patricia Chauncey of the Child Pov-
erty Action Committee charged that the
recommendations adopted mean the school
board “has essentially done nothing about
the problem.”

Trustee Phil Rankin of the Committee of
Progressive Electors refused to vote for
most of the recommendations from a spe-
cial committee of the nine-member board,

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eight of whom are members of the right-
wing Non-Partisan Association.

Rankin said he was abstaining on most
votes because he didn’t want to support
inadequate measures while not wanting to
oppose any plan to aid hungry school child-
ren.

“We’ve really gone nowhere ... these
plans are an insult to the issue. We should
be able to implement immediately a plan
based on Montreal or Toronto,” he said.

The board adopted, with some minor
amendments, five recommendations from
its education and student services commit-
tee, chaired by trustee Marina Navin.

These included:

@ Joining efforts with the mayor’s task
force on child care to examine funding of
“school-based organized food programs.”

@ Meeting with provincial and civic
governments to “discuss issues and solu-
tions affecting child care in the city of Van-
couver.”

© “Sponsor school-based nutrition pro-
grams that contain a daily snack/lunch
component.”

© Continue funding current food sup-
plement programs in the schools. These
include charitable measures such as an
“exchange table” where students leave por-
tions.of their lunch for others.

© Address further such concerns through
the board’s school health program commit-
tee.

The first recommendation means the
board will approach, through the mayor’s
task force, the Canada Assistance Program
or the federal department of Health and
Welfare for funds. The recommendation
was one of several contained in a brief the

Child Poverty Action Committee presented -

to the board in September.

But the committee, along with the Social
Planning and Research Council (SPARC)
of B.C., the B.C. Nurses Union and several
other organizations, has urged the board to
take a stand and press the province to raise
welfare rates and the minimum wage.

And the committee called for a planned
food program aimed at target areas of Van-
couver, where unemployment is the highest.

Instead, Chauncey charged, the board
engaged a “subjective and poorly designed”
survey to identify needy children in Van-
couver’s schools. The survey said 674 ele-
mentary school children admitted they
attended school without having breakfast
while an additional 240 said they did not
have lunch.

Chauncey said, however, that at least
20,000 children in Vancouver, according to
Statistics Canada surveys of the city’s

PHIL RANKIN...
inadequate.

board’s measures are

JEAN SWANSON
been done.”

“nothing has

unemployed, are underfed. There are some
27,000 elementary students in Vancouver.
“The board got its figures by asking

children to hold up their hands in class. We _

know from talking to adolescents that there
is no way many kids would ever publicly
admit to not being properly fed,”” Chauncey
said.

The mayor’s task force is so vague in its
mandate as yet that the board’s decision to
contribute to it is virtually meaningless,
Chauncey charged.

She noted incongruities such as the board
finding no hungry children in schools in her
area in southeast Vancouver, which the
Canadian Labour Congress reports has a 30
per cent unemployment rate among its
population.

“We don’t need a survey. We need to
decide on priority neighbourhoods and
immediately set up full food programs in
their schools,” Chauncey asserted.

The Child Poverty Action Committee,
formed last spring following a conference
on child poverty, has called for such an
approach while stressing that funds not be
taken out of existing budgets for staff or
essential programs. And it has called on the
Vancouver trustees to be advocates for
higher minimum wage and welfare rates.

A SPARC report released last March
found welfare payments fell as much as 59
per cent below what is needed to adequately
feed, clothe and shelter oneself in 1987.

Chauncey said the committee will con-
tinue pressing the board to adopt a full-scale
program along the lines of food plans in the
school systems of Toronto, Winnipeg and
Montreal.

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