Archbishop Smith Asks Schools to Stop Accepting Blackjack Cash
Over the next year and a half through a series of 83 casino fundraisers, the Edmonton Catholic School District, in the Canadian province of Alberta expects to raise some $6 million. The schools are able to generate a significant amount of money to put towards education, by teaming up with local casinos to provide things like bingo and blackjack card games.
This money is flagged for projects that Alberta Learning will not fund, such field trips for students and charity meal programs for kids in low-income neighborhoods, even though the school district is fully funded by the province.
A concerned mother in the local Edmonton Journal commented, “In my experience, it is far easier to raise money by providing workers for a two-day casino every 18 to 24 months than it is to organize hundreds of bake sales”.
However, Richard Smith, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Edmonton has decided that Edmonton schools will no longer be allowed to raise money by running gambling fundraisers as of October 1 2010. The expected funds have already been earmarked by the school and it is now facing a serious problem.
In order to give the schools a little breathing space, Archbishop Smith has expressed a willingness to negotiate and to work out a “timeline” for his casino fund ban in order to help out “school divisions that rely on revenue from harmful gambling practice”.
To override the decisions of the Edmonton school board, some are questioning the Archbishop’s legal power, but nobody is quite sure how the situation will progress. The district needs to proceed with care, since the Archbishop has the legal power to remove the phrase “Catholic school” from any institution that upsets him.