There’s no need to rehash why the last sixteen months have sucked. And there’s definitely no need to summarize why it’s been hard on both school kids and they’re parents. But we can’t ignore the fact that things are probably going to get worse for our public schools and the families that rely on them
We aren’t talking about more lockdowns or quarantines. We aren’t even talking about the Coronavirus itself, or the COVID-19 disease it causes. We are talking about the Pandemic’s economic fallout and how its consequences are going to cripple public schools and the children in them.
Cutting funding for public education was an Olympic sport long before most had ever heard the words “Coronavirus” and “COVID.” And school libraries usually bore the brunt of those cuts before anything else.
But COVID has made things much worse. Politicians across the board are tightening fiscal belts and public education will be among the first casualties. Ontario is already planning to cut well over a billion dollars to its public schools, even while parents are looking for ways to help their kids make up all the time they’ve lost over the last year.
The pandemic revealed a lot of ugly things about ourselves and our society. If there was any doubt before, there is no question now that the majority of elected officials only care about schools and the kids in them when it’s politically convenient. And judging by social media, there are a lot of taxpayers (even many who have kids or grandkids of their own) who feel the exact same way.
Short story long, a lot of public school libraries are going to suffer sizeable cutbacks next year as a result of the Pandemic. If you need a stronger grasp on the situation, imagine the following: plenty of public school libraries across Canada had shelves filled with tattered and ancient books during the best of economic times. It wasn’t uncommon to see books published when Justin Trudeau’s father was Prime Minister. Or that looked like they had gone through the business end of a lawnmower.
Now imagine what those shelves will look like once politicians take a machete to public education funding.
And while schools can fundraise on their own, there’s only so much parents can do. The sad reality is the schools that need help the most don’t have parents who can fill the economic void. The idea that schools in affluent neighbourhoods get more funding than those who aren’t isn’t a myth; it’s a fact.
So what can schools do?
Indigo Books and Music, Canada’s largest book and cultural department store, has been lending a helping hand since 2004 with it’s Love of Reading Foundation. And while it had to cancel it’s popular Adopt-A-School Program last year, it’s stepping back up this year and will be supporting public school libraries across the country again this fall.
Indigo collects donations through it’s stores (Indigo, Chapters, Coles and IndigoSpirit) as well as its website all year round. The Love of Reading Fund distributes those donations to high need schools across the country through over a hundred grants every year. It’s estimated the Fund has donated over 30 million dollars in the last seventeen years, bringing new books to over a million students who didn’t have them before.
But for a few weeks every year, individual stores adopt a local public school in need and every cent they raise goes to that school’s library. The Pandemic threw an obvious monkey wrench into Indigo’s annual plans (forcing the cancelation of last years Adopt-A-School program), so it was forced to adapt. Take last year’s Buy A Book, Change A Life program for instance. Indigo made a donation to its Love of Reading Fund for every young reader’s book it sold between March of 2020 and last April. Before you try the math, remember a lot of parents had a lot of kids that needed a lot of entertaining during those twelve particular months. Books were the chief time occupier of choice (especially with most school and public libraries shuttered).
That’s a lot of donations.
But Indigo’s Adopt-A-School program is back and schools still have a few days to apply. High need schools that meet the criteria can apply until May 23rd. Indigo will evaluate applicants over the summer and partner them with stores in their community. This gives individual stores the entire summer to plan and organize fundraisers to maximize the money they raise for their adopted schools. The program usually runs for four weeks starting in late September.
It’s an imperfect solution for an imperfect world. In an ideal world, schools wouldn’t need to rely on fundraisers to provide something as basic as books for their students to read (and yes, kids do indeed read, so park the “kids don’t read anymore” stupidity. It was old when your grandparents said it). In an ideal world politicians wouldn’t become more popular for slashing money to public education and pandemics would only exist in the pages of history textbooks.
But the world isn’t ideal and never will be. The harsh reality is we have to help each other as much as we can whenever we can. We should never hesitate to offer a helping hand. And we should never hesitate to take one when in need.
Especially if helps nurture the imaginations and knowledge of children who will one day lead (and perhaps save) the world.
Interested schools can apply to Indigo’s Adopt-A-School Program here until May 23rd. Additional details on Indigo’s Love of Reading Fund can be found here.
Image via www.indigo.ca
