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This school year the Strait Regional Centre for Education (SRCE) will be providing free school supplies for all its students, including virtually everything they need.
It was made possible thanks to grants and donations received by the SRCE, who in years prior have provided some free school supplies but not everything required for the school year.
Effective September 2024, the school supply initiative has been expanded and will now include all schools in the SRCE offering school supplies to all students. Students are only required to bring their own backpack, lunch box, headphones/earbuds, indoor sneakers for Physical Education class and water bottle.
-Paul Landry SRCE Executive Director
The initiative is being welcomed by parents and teachers alike who will have less to worry about as students return to classes, and in the case of teachers, it will save many of them money.
Parents with children in the SRCE were sent a notice over the summer that school supplies will be provided for free for the 2024/25 school year. Photo: SRCE.
“Teachers aren’t just spending money on communal things like posters,” said Nova Scotia Teachers Union (NSTU) President Peter Day. “I know with certainty that many buy everyday things like pencils, notebooks and other things to ensure that their students have what they need to learn,”
Day who spent most of his teaching career with the SRCE says it will be particularly helpful in that region where poverty impacts many young students.
“When I read up on the program It was obvious a tonne of work went into from the SRCE so I commend them for taking these steps to provide a better learning environment for their students,” said Day.
Although the SRCE program was made possible due to grants and donations made exclusively to them, Day feels if one of the smallest economic regions in the province were able to pull it off other regional centres for education should also be able to do so.
