CALGARY’S CATHOLIC SCHOOLS CUTTING GAMBLING FUNDRAISING - Posted by KatA 

The Calgary Catholic School District is preparing for an upcoming ban on gambling-related fundraising. As of March 2010, the CCSD will implement a ban on all school fundraising at casinos and bingo halls. This type of fundraising provides $2 million a year for the school district, and many fear it won’t easily be replaced. The CCSD is launching the Catholic Education Foundation of Calgary to try to replace some of the funding. But regardless, people are worried about the ban’s affect on school programs. Kevin Leitch, president of a Calgary high school marching band program, worries about the ban’s effect on the kids. He fears that the roughly $60,000 the group earned from volunteering at bingo halls each year will be hard to replace. Leitch contends that while the group has “60 fundraising ideas”, it will take more than ideas to replace that money. He worries that “The one thing it is going to take to make these ideas work, and the one thing we don’t have, is an awful lot of volunteer time to be put into an unknown outcome.” The ban was approved after Bishop Fred Henry and the Catholic school board trustees became engaged in a public feud over the issue. The Bishop felt that using gambling funding was “morally problematic” and urged the board to ban it. He said he found it “unacceptable” that a school district with a $348 million annual budget would rely on $2 million from gambling revenues. When the board wouldn’t support the ban, the bishop threatened to blacklist schools that continued to use gambling as a fundraising source. After further negotiations, the board decided to approve the ban. Board chair Cathie Williams says that they were able to reach a compromise for the benefit of the district: "It doesn't serve any purpose to be at odds with our bishop. We need to have our parish priests at the schools; we need to work in cooperation with the bishop and he was just adamant that he was not going to change his stance. We didn't want to see any of our schools in a position where they would be blacklisted. It's not fair to the students and it's not fair to the parent community." As gambling revenue in Alberta is expected to be higher than even oilsands revenues this year, there’s a lot of money on the line with this decision. It will be interesting to see how the community deals with the transition in March.