The Burnaby school district could get up to $125,000 in education extras from a Chevron fundraising program rejected by the Vancouver school district this spring.
The American multinational energy company expanded its Fuel Your School fundraiser – launched in the US in 2010 – into Canada last year, partnering with the Surrey school district and bringing in more than $200,000 worth of equipment and supplies for schools there.
The Burnaby school board voted to join the program this year, along with Coquitlam, West Vancouver and North Vancouver.
During the month of November, Chevron will donate $1 to an educational charity called My Class Needs every time Burnaby drivers fill up with 30 litres of fuel or more at participating Chevron stations.
My Class Needs will then use the money – up to a total of $125,000 for Burnaby – to fund online classroom project requests from local teachers for things like iPads and rocketry kits.
The Vancouver school board rejected the corporate funding this spring, saying the company was offering the money “with strings attached” since the Fuel Your School logo would appear at local gas stations.
Burnaby school board chair Baljinder Narang, however, said Chevron assured the local board there would be “no advertising and no advocacy within the schools by children, for children or parents or anyone.”
“Chevron assures us that all they will do is put a sign up around their stations…,” Narang said.
She said accepting corporate funding isn’t ideal, but the money will provide innovative teaching resources the district wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.
“We end up asking if it’s reasonable to deny these children this opportunity,” Narang said. “We adults can have our philosophical perspectives, but end of the day, we would be looking out for an opportunity for them to experience some innovative learning within a classroom.”
Local parent Peter Cech, who once called Chevron’s North Burnaby operations a “cancerous tumour” that should be shut down if it couldn’t contain its smelly emissions and leaks into the Burrard Inlet, agreed that accepting the corporate help was not ideal but blamed provincial funding.
“I don’t envy them having to make that decision,” he told the NOW. “Obviously they’ll have to give it a lot of thought, because what kind of a message does it send? Then again, I think it’s tragic that we’re having to even have this discussion, that the school district even has to think about these things because of the lack of funding from the province.”
