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View our Independent & Assisted Living Calendar, Health Services Calendar or Memory Care Calendar. If you want to subscribe to this calendar or to add it to your smart phone, please click on the correct icon below (e.g., iPhone, Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.).Join Our Email List Western Canada’s largest furniture rental company specializing in lounge and banquet rental furniture for special events, film, trade shows & hospitality.For Syrian refugee Mohammed Younis, the day the yellow bus pulled up in front of his family’s rented split-level to take his kids to school was the day he felt they had arrived. “I forgot those five years of struggle and pain,” Mr. Younis, 40, says of the moment he watched his children board the bus. The last five years have been about survival, not about school. In 2011, Mr. Younis says, he, his wife, Layla, 31, and their children were forced to flee due to fighting from their home in Deir al-Zour, in eastern Syria. Speaking through an Arabic interpreter at his northwest Calgary home, he says they lived in Raqqa until that city was besieged.
They moved again within Syria, and then crossed the border to Turkey. It was there that the Red Cross approached the family and asked if they wanted to go to Canada. The Younis family arrived in Calgary in February as part of the wave of 25,000 refugees taken in to Canada in late 2015 and early 2016. Now, four of five of the Younis children are in school. (Sultana, 2, is still too young.) They have joined more than 1,000 Syrian students who have entered Alberta’s school system, most in Edmonton and Calgary, since the beginning of the year – the province’s largest influx of refugee students in recent memory. Most of the new Syrian students do not speak English, and school boards across the province have welcomed the students with an intense focus on English classes, along with Arabic-speaking teachers, classroom assistants and mental-health supports. In some cases, students have access to art-therapy classes, or bean-bag chairs in the corner of a classroom, when they need a few moments to relax.
At the same time, boards are struggling to accommodate the midyear influx of students. Alberta school boards do not receive provincial per-pupil money from the province for the Syrian students because they entered the system past the funding cutoff date, and the boards argue they are not being funded for the services they provide. The province’s two largest public boards – Edmonton and Calgary – say that since Ottawa made the decision to bring in thousands of Syrian refugees over a matter of months, the federal government should provide additional funding for the new students. “Our board is very supportive of the decision to take these families and these kids,” says Michael Janz, board chairman at Edmonton Public Schools. “That being said, we cannot let the federal government off the hook.” Funding has become an issue in some other Canadian cities, as well. In Halifax, teachers’ unions and boards have asked for more money to help with the arrival of Syrian students.
In Regina, the public-school teachers’ association has complained that almost 200 new Syrian student are straining teacher and language resources. However, the Toronto District School Board says the province has provided funding to meet the needs of 500 students there. Our board is very supportive of the decision to take these families and these kids. That being said, we cannot let the federal government off the hook. While the push to welcome and integrate students to Canada’s education system might be country-wide, each board’s funding circumstance, and approach, is different. In Alberta, dozens of Syrian children are now going to school in smaller cities such as Red Deer, but the large majority of Syrian refugee children are attending school in Edmonton and Calgary’s public-school systems. The Calgary Board of Education’s admissions and assessment office at the downtown Kingsland Centre has been bustling for most of this year, says Christine Oliver, in charge of the facility that processes non-Canadian students.
Large families with five to seven kids are not uncommon. Through a family appointment, children are tested to determine how well they can speak, read, write and understand English, says Ms. Oliver, who is also supervisor of English-language learning for the board. Both parents and kids meet with specially trained teachers to get an idea of what the family has experienced in recent years, and build a profile of the child. Even once the children enter the Calgary Board of Education’s system, they do not go straight into a regular classroom. The Calgary Board of Education has a special program that puts all refugee students in smaller, 15-pupil classes with an intensive focus on English-language skills. Teachers are also on the lookout for signs of trauma – something as ordinary as school bells could bring back a bad memory – so support can be given before children transition into regular classrooms. Children and families also learn that the school system might work differently than in Syria, she says.
Expectations about discipline might be different, she notes – for instance, teachers in Canada don’t spank – and girls and boys are equal, and in the same classrooms. “It’s a huge learning curve for them,” Ms. Oliver says. There are questions such as, “Why is that girl at the front of the line? The boy should be at the front of the line.” Jeff McIntosh/For The Globe and Mail At Edmonton Public Schools, the board has increased its Arabic-speaking “intercultural consultants,” who provide a cultural-bridging service to students. They work on mobile teams, paired up with an ESL consultant, a mental-health therapist and a social worker, said Marlene Hanson, supervisor of diversity education. Four mobile teams will be up and running by the end of June. It’s helpful, Ms. Hanson says, because if the families don’t have access to transportation, “it allows us to go to them.” In Calgary, at the Younis household, Mr. Younis says his children are grateful to be in classes, and are adapting well.
After a family discussion on life in war-torn Syria, the children read donated books and munch on potato chips as they talk about their first days of school. Ismail, 15, is in junior high and says he wants to some day study to be a petroleum engineer. Rim, 12 – who asks everyone how to spell their names and other intriguing English words – says she wants to be a doctor. “Here they have the opportunity to do something with their life,” Mr. Younis says. Alberta’s two largest public-school boards say they are welcoming Syrian children, and when it comes to funding, education costs are the responsibility of the provinces. But they also argue the influx of new students has created a set of exceptional circumstances, and it was the federal Liberal government’s commitment to bring in a large number of refugees in a short time span that has caused uncertainty around their finances and staff resources. Calgary Board of Education chairwoman Joy Bowen-Eyre said the more than 425 new Syrian students who entered the public-school system in the province’s largest city this year is the equivalent of adding an elementary school of children, most of who need special services.
“It has put a significant strain on our school system.” However, it doesn’t appear any direct funding is imminent. In e-mails to The Globe, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada referenced the previous announcement that $335-million would be made available over four years for resettlement and settlement services for Syrian refugees, and noted education is a provincial responsibility. More money from the province doesn’t appear to be forthcoming this year, either. Alberta Education Minister David Eggen says Alberta school boards will receive funding for enrolment growth for the school year beginning in the fall, but there will be no major additional infusion of funds for Syrian refugees from his government during this school year. “Certainly, we are, during this difficult financial circumstance, still committed to funding for enrolment, here in the province of Alberta – which is no small thing, quite frankly, considering the budget,” Mr. Eggen says, adding that some English language grant money will be available to help the refugees this year.