School Inclusion Program

Our Vision

The Vision of Renfrew County Child Poverty Action Network (CPAN) is that every child in Renfrew County be confident in their sense of belonging at school. This would include all children having everything they need to participate fully in the education system, which would allow every child, regardless of socioeconomic background, to be included and be ready to learn.

The Reality

Unfortunately, many children who live in lower income families risk being excluded from many school activities because of lack of money. Financial challenges faced by school boards mean that parents are now asked to pay for agendas, school supplies, extra shoes, gym clothes, learning materials, field trips and extra-curricular activities. We do know that various schools have developed a variety of approaches to help students and families, however, there are many gaps and there is no universal approach to ensuring there is full social inclusion in every school.

During a series of discussions with low income parents across Renfrew County, they shared their hope that school can be one place where their children are on an equal footing with other children. However, parents and their children often feel excluded. Some of the comments that we heard were:

"I don't think they should be doing pizza days and fundraisers in the school. It’s not fair. All the parents get the sheet home. Then you are either going to have to pay it and do without, or swallow your pride and ask for help., or tell the kids you can't afford it and leave them out. It forces us to live beyond our means so we don’t have for things that are essential. Things like pizza – leave that for the parents for something special once in a while."

"Every time I turn around the school is asking for money. If you don’t have it where are you going to get it from – a tree?"

It’s embarrassing to go to the principal. I wouldn’t have the guts to tell him I couldn’t afford the fees."

For the past four years CPAN has been helping children through our Backpack Plus program, providing back to school supplies, backpacks, and shoes. During the 2006/07 school year we assisted over 1,000 children, and last year this figure rose to over 1500 children, the need continues to grow.

What we are doing about it

The School Inclusion Fund is designed to remove financial barriers to full school participation by providing a fund that can be accessed through an anonymous, simple and respectful process. School principals will access the fund, which will be managed for CPAN by the Phoenix Centre for Children and Families. The Fund is guided by the values of caring, cooperation, trust, equity, fairness, and respect.

The School Inclusion program is currently being run in four Renfrew County elementary schools; St. Mary’s Catholic School (Deep River), St. Casimir’s Catholic School (Round Lake), Holy Name Catholic School and Central Public School (Renfrew), there will be at least two additional schools added this year, St. John Bosco Catholic School (Barry’s Bay) and St. Mary’s Catholic School (Wilno). The original schools were picked by their respective school boards, additional ones have requested to be in the program. Communication efforts for our school inclusion program will focus on ensuring that everyone within the school community understands the reasoning for the program, the funding, and how it all works.

Based on ongoing evaluations and of our experiences for each school year-on- year, we will adjust the program funding amount per school and hope to expand to more schools in the future.

The need for funding

CPAN has conservatively estimated that extra costs of attending school are as follows;

• Elementary school $215 per student per school year
• High School $290 per student per school year

Our goal is to build on the program year by year, and to include high schools.

We have found that the program is running very well with many parents that have helping those families who have not. Our hope is that all schools will find sustainability in the long term, up until then we will endeavor to make up the funding shortfall using our School Inclusion Funds.

For more information about this project please contact: