This letter is in regards to the letter in the Sept. 14 edition of the Mission City Record titled Walk your kids to school.
I was reading the paper one morning after having just returned home from driving my kids to school when I came across the letter telling us to walk our kids to school.
I for one fully agree with everything that was written in that letter, I would love to walk my children to school. The problem with that is Mission’s decision to place 2 “choice” schools in the middle of a very populated area of town and within a few blocks from each other.
For anyone that may not be aware of what a choice school is, it is a public school that teaches all the same curriculum as any other public school but also focuses on things such as fine arts etc.
So because these are schools of choice that means anyone can choose to send their children there regardless of catchment, meaning kids as far as Abbotsford and Maple Ridge may attend.
The two schools I am referring to are Hillside Traditional and Edwin S Richards Elementary, and these schools seem to be two of the more popular schools in Mission.
So with registration being so high for these schools you must place your child on the wait list, and it’s first come first served basically, no matter how close or far you live.
On top of having a very lengthy wait list they also have the policy of grand fathering in siblings, which could mean very few children from the wait list get to actually attend that school.
Many families I know (mine included) live close to one or both of these schools, and by close I mean a five minute walk or less, but we cannot send our children to these schools because we were too far down the wait list.
So my child who just started kindergarten this fall and has been on the wait list for a couple years, is now attending a school I have to drive to because it would be a 30-40 minute walk to and from school. Even though Hillside Traditional is a five minute walk and Edwin S Richards Elementary is a 15-20 minute walk away.
So as much as I, like many other families I have spoke to, would love to walk their children to the school that is in their neighborhood, it just can’t happen because there is no catchment for those schools, and kids from across town or out of town are attending them and being driven to school.
I guess what I am trying to get to is we shouldn’t be blaming the parents for not walking our children to school when many would like to, but instead take a look at the School District and the City of Mission and question them on why they don’t care about childhood obesity, traffic and the unnecessary driving.
Jen Egborg
Mission