CSDM stretches to teach asylum seekers

After a piece on how asylum seekers may strain resources meant for the homeless here, now Radio-Canada has a piece on the CSDM worrying about serving an additional population of kids. Catherine Harel-Bourdon says that last year the school population grew by the equivalent of five new grade schools and that another 250 students – yet another new school – have shown up so far this year. And most of these kids don’t speak French.

Maybe it’s that after last year’s idealism our society is coming to grips with the implications of a constant stream of newcomers arriving in this way, but we need to be careful this tone doesn’t tip over into meanness. Harel-Bourdon’s big idea mentioned here is to send families to towns outside Montreal, which might solve her school commission’s problem in the short term, but simply moves the problems to other locales less prepared to cope.