weekend edition FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2010 Vol. 101 No. 91 • Established 1908 • East
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Us we can
Boing for joy
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Vancouver school district libraries ‘cut to the bone’ Demand for services increasing Naoibh O’Connor Staff writer
Teacher-librarian Jo-Anne Roberts says further cuts to libraries will have a devastating impact on students.
photo Dan Toulgoet
Further cuts to school libraries in Vancouver could have a devastating effect on the education of students, according to Jo-Anne Roberts. Roberts works at Van Tech secondary and has been a teacher-librarian for close to 20 years. She said 10 full-time equivalent teacher-librarian positions in the Vancouver school district have been eliminated in the past four years, leaving it with 80 positions. Library hours at some schools have been slashed and the ability of librarians to do their jobs is being eroded. “The most difficult thing to understand at this point is why, given the huge need for students to be taught
how to survive in the digital age, the plethora of sources of information that are available, and the increased demand for our services, that we’re receiving cuts in staffing and budgets,” she said Tuesday, a day before an annual report on the state of school libraries was delivered to the VSB’s education and student services committee. Roberts is concerned reductions to teacher-librarians are disproportionate and other areas haven’t been cut as deeply. She said access to libraries is also unequal across the district because staffing decisions for non-enrolling positions are made at individual schools by administrators facing impossible choices. See RATIO on page 4
Grant keeps storage facility for homeless open About 280 people store belongings at First United Church in Downtown Eastside Cheryl Rossi Staff writer
Homeless people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside will continue to have a secure place to store their belongings while they sleep, shower, work and eat. First United Church’s storage facility was the first place finalist last
month for a $25,000 grant offered by the online Pepsi Refresh Project. That means 280 people a day will still be able to store their possessions in the bowels of the building at the corner of East Hastings and Gore. Don Evans, the church’s director of finance and fund development, is pleased First United can alleviate the burden of homeless people having to
cart their possessions with them everywhere they go. “It is a lot of work and obviously it was worth it for us, and the awareness that we received on the work we’re doing in the community was an added benefit.” Documentary filmmaker Billy Wong created a video about the facility for the online competition. Volunteers helped the homeless at
First United sign up for email accounts and set up computers so they could vote for the facility. With money received from the province for B.C.’s 150th anniversary, the city funded the construction and operation of the storage facility last year. First United constructed space for 155 numbered rubber bins, shopping carts and
rolling suitcases. But it was onetime money that ran out Oct. 20. With the $25,000 won online, $35,000 from the Hieros, Schein and Face the World foundations and another $20,000 that’s come from individual donors, First United is now only $18,000 shy of meeting its yearly operating budget of $98,000. See CHURCH on page 4
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