The latest Community Link report from School District 43 shows a community in transition, with struggling families facing numerous challenges.
The report comes as the district fills four youth worker positions that were cut last year to balance the budget.
Presented at last week's board of education meeting, the Community Link report showed that cuts to youth worker jobs at elementary and middle schools resulted in 22% fewer students served — 2,874 in 2014 compared to 3,709 in 2013 — and higher case loads.
The figures substantiate claims made by youth workers who presented passionate pleas at budget talks in April for more staff to handle growing and more complex case loads and a recent McCreary Adolescent Health Survey that showed increasing numbers of students, especially girls, considering suicide.
SD43 assistant superintendent Julie Pearce said the district was in a position this spring to hire back the four youth worker positions and has installed them at elementary and middle schools who needed them. Now, 10 elementary schools have half-time youth workers, Pearce said, while all middle and secondary schools have full-time youth workers, except for Como Lake middle, which has a part-time staffer.
But the Community Link report, written to show how $1.4 million in funding targeted to vulnerable students is spent, shows much work needs to be done to support students.
Using social service statistics and other data, the report suggests vulnerable students could make up as much as 25% of the student population, and even homeless youth have been identified as going to school in the district — 31 in 2014, compared to 21 in 2013.
Pearce said it's not a surprise that some families are struggling and it's not always poverty that is the issue.
"I have often spoken about the 'working poor' — that is, families struggling from paycheque to paycheque, making choices around food and after-school programs or just paying the utility bill."
Among the issues local families face, Pearce said, are food insecurity, lack of adequate housing, health, mental illness and addiction.
