{"id":2420,"date":"2012-05-10T01:30:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-10T01:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rf.podcastfixit.com\/index.php\/2012\/05\/10\/family-ministry-investigating-greendale\/"},"modified":"2015-06-01T19:42:05","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T19:42:05","slug":"family-ministry-investigating-greendale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newscoverage.org\/index.php\/2012\/05\/10\/family-ministry-investigating-greendale\/","title":{"rendered":"Family ministry investigating Greendale pre-kindergarten problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n

LBPSB accused of misusing school taxes<\/i><\/h3>\n

\n
\n<\/i><\/div>\n
\n
\nBy Robert Frank
\nwww.thesuburban.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\nLast week\u2019s debacle at Greendale School in Pierrefonds has left more than just distraught parents trying to figure out what happened. Now the Quebec government is looking into what went wrong.<\/div>\n

\n

The Lester B. Pearson School Board (LBPSB) had been charging parents $100 per month\u2014which amounts to less than $5 per day\u2014for a pre-kindergarten service at Greendale, which Quebec Ministry of the Family (MFA) inspectors precipitously shut down, April 30.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\nMothers interviewed by The Suburban<\/i> did not understand the three-way squabble between two different Quebec government departments and LBPSB. They were under the false impression that Greendale school\u2019s pre-kindergarten program for four-year-olds had been authorized and subsidized by the Quebec Ministry of Education.<\/div>\n
\n\n<\/div>\n
\nRetired West Island teacher Chris Eustace, who has followed LBPSB policies closely for the past 12 years, said that the subsidy money instead came from misused local school taxes. He believes that LBPSB officials misled parents. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cI feel very sad for these young parents who were led to believe this,\u201d sympathized Eustace. \u201cHowever, it is good that the government is putting its foot down.\u201d <\/p>\n

\nThe losers are the four-year-olds, their parents and private day care clients, Eustace explained. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cLBPSB didn\u2019t receive any extra money from Quebec City to create new pre-kindergarten programs for four-year-olds\u2014so it subsidized them out of the school board\u2019s existing operating budget, taking money intended for students aged 5-17.\u201d <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

<\/h4>\n

\n

Parents, four-year olds caught in bureaucratic crossfire<\/h4>\n

Parents couldn\u2019t fathom why the two Quebec government departments conveyed completely opposite messages. <\/p>\n

\nGreendale parent Laura Bodnick acknowledged that MFA sent her a letter March 22, telling her that the school\u2019s daycare service was illegal. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt said that they might close the facility as of April 23, but school board officials told us not to worry,\u201d she said \u201cThey assured us that nothing would happen before the end of the current school year.\u201d <\/p>\n

\nFamily minister Yolande James\u2019 office has asked her department to find out what happened and whether MFA regulations need to be harmonized with Ministry of Education regulations. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\u201cThe ministry will be taking a closer look at the situation,\u201d James\u2019 press secretary Olivier Duchesneau told The Suburban in an interview. \u201cThe MFA\u2019s regulations are aimed at daycares, whilst Ministry of Education regulations are aimed at academic education.\u201d<\/div>\n
\n\n<\/div>\n
\n
\nDuring a news conference last week, LBPSB director general Robert Mills told journalists that one Quebec law governs daycare for four-year-olds in schools while a different law specifies standards for five-year-olds. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cAt this stage it\u2019s too soon to say whether this is a problem of harmonization, so we\u2019re looking at the situation,\u201d responded Duchesneau. \u201cWhen a problem like that arises, we carefully take stock of the entire situation. Is the Greendale problem generalized or is it one of only a handful of problems?\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe Quebec daycare network is young and still developing,\u201d continued Duchesneau. \u201cAs we speak, there are more than 207,000 seven-dollar-a-day daycare places in Quebec, out of a total of 245,000 places, including unsubsidized facilities, which are regulated by the laws of the Quebec Ministry of the Family.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\u201cSo we\u2019re looking at the situation in order to determine to what extent overlapping jurisdictions might have become a problem as the daycare network has evolved during the past 15 years or so.\u201d <\/p>\n

\nThose figures don\u2019t include daycare places in Quebec schools, for children aged five or more, which are governed by the Education Act.<\/div>\n

\n

\n

<\/h4>\n

\n

Middle-class subsidies
\n<\/h4>\n

Quebec does subsidize pre-kindergarten for underprivileged children, Mr. Mills said. However, he cited a 2006 Quebec English School Board Association report that suggested that pre-kindergarten might benefit four-year-olds from advantaged families, as well.<\/p>\n

\nHowever, he did not offer why LBPSB opted to use school taxes to subsidize middle-class parents when it created the program at Greendale. <\/p>\n

\nQuebec\u2019s English school boards have been plagued by falling enrolment for decades, since restrictive language laws and a subsequent exodus from the province cut its English-speaking population by half and restricted entry to English schools. <\/p>\n

\nGreendale four-year olds now face a slow, 5.3 km LBPSB-subsidized bus ride during rush hour every school day to get from Pierrefonds to their new school premises in Pointe Claire. Parents are required to pick their children up there at the end of each school day. <\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\n<\/div>\n
\n\u201cThey knew about the problems from the outset,\u201d Mr. Eustace concluded, \u201cbut LBPSB administrators told parents \u2018Don\u2019t worry about it. We\u2019ll manage it.\u2019\u2014and in the end, it completely collapsed, as we witnessed a few days ago.\u201d    <\/i><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LBPSB accused of misusing school taxes By Robert Frank www.thesuburban.com Last week\u2019s debacle at Greendale School in Pierrefonds has left more than just distraught parents trying to figure out what happened. Now the Quebec government is looking into what went wrong. The Lester B. Pearson School Board (LBPSB) had been charging parents $100 per month\u2014which amounts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nFamily ministry investigating Greendale pre-kindergarten problem - Newscoverage<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/newscoverage.org\/index.php\/2012\/05\/10\/family-ministry-investigating-greendale\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Family ministry investigating Greendale pre-kindergarten problem - Newscoverage\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"LBPSB accused of misusing school taxes By Robert Frank www.thesuburban.com Last week\u2019s debacle at Greendale School in Pierrefonds has left more than just distraught parents trying to figure out what happened. 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