Classrooms for parents, kids at risk

Program needs more students, tots, funding

A one-of-a-kind program that allows young parents to bring their babies to class is at risk of shutting down due to funding cutbacks and low enrolment.

The Young and Expectant Parent program at Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School accommodates young parents and their babies in one classroom. Staffed by a high school teacher and an early childhood educator, the program allows students to work toward their diploma at their own pace — as well as participate in parenting, cooking and budgeting lessons — while caring for their children.

While other schools offer daycare or other supports for young parents, this is the only program in Ontario that allows moms and dads to share the same space as their babies.

However, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board says it’s struggling to attract young parents to the program. Currently, there are only nine students enrolled.

Combined with funding cuts from the Ministry of Education, the program is at risk of being permanently scrapped.

After first deciding to shut the program down this fall, the school board opted last week to continue the program for one more semester.

“There is commitment to funding the program for next semester, but it will be hard to sustain if there aren’t enough students to move forward in September,” said school board spokesperson Jackie Penman. “The issue is that most of our young parenting programs are undersubscribed.”

That “despite there being around 240 young parents in the community who aren’t in school,” Penman said.

The Ministry of Education, which had provided some funding since the program’s inception in February 2015, didn’t directly address why it had cut funding to this program. Spokesperson Heather Irwin said the school board receives $17 million through a program called the Learning Opportunities Grant, which supports students who are at a greater risk of poor academic achievement.

“While the ministry is responsible for funding policy that directs the allocation of funds, school boards are responsible to allocate resources for each school or program according to local needs,” she wrote in an email.

Meredyth Keating, the teacher at the Young and Expectant Parent program, isn’t sure why it’s been so difficult to attract students.

“For some reason, we didn’t get the referrals. We didn’t get kids walking in saying ‘Yes, we’re here.’ We just couldn’t figure it out,” she said. “We kept hearing from everyone ‘This is a great program.’ We were thinking ‘What is the problem? If this is so fantastic, where are they?’”

Keating says they’ve been working tirelessly to help promote the program through word of mouth and agencies that support young parents. The program’s early childhood educator, Cassandra Dockery, walked the streets of Hamilton handing out flyers about the program.

The school is also holding an open house on Dec. 13 in the hopes of attracting more students.

Keating says the program has so much to offer young parents, especially those who may have dropped out of school to care for their babies. The students are a tightly knit, motivated group, she said.

“Every day, we see exactly how strong these students are. They get up, after being up all night with a teething or a sick baby, and they come to school,” she said. “One girl comes an hour and a half on the bus from the Stoney Creek Mountain. It’s a challenge, but it’s not impossible.”

Eighteen-year-old Pah Wah Sher, a student in the program and a Karen refugee from Burma, has a 19month-old-son and a five-monthold daughter. She joined the program after feeling uncomfortable with the idea of leaving her infant at a day care. Sher also points out that if she wasn’t able to bring her baby to class, she wouldn’t be able to breastfeed.

“That’s really important to me,” she said.

If the program didn’t exist, Sher says there’s no way she’d be able to attend school. She plans to finish her high school diploma and a pursue social work degree.

“It gives me peace, knowing that I can go to school and bring my kid,” she said. “Knowing that she’s OK is the best part.”