Re: “School district faces $633,000 shortfall” (May 19).
It is nearing time for all of us to decide to keep or lose something understood globally as critical to democracy: public education.
First, the painfully obvious: Governments collect and spend a lot of money. B.C.’s Liberal government spends a great deal of money on its priorities – billions go to oil and gas companies annually through various kinds of subsidies, for example. Private profit is a major B.C. Liberal priority for your tax dollar. The Calgary Oilmen’s Club raised more than $2 million for the BC Liberal Party at a single event a couple of years ago. The industry and the Liberals, well, they just get along. The premier’s bank account does pretty well by it too.
At the same time, a shrinking percentage of the provincial budget is spent annually on public education. More and more funds go to private for-profit schools – $341 million of your tax dollars in 2016. Meanwhile, more than 270 B.C. public schools have been closed since the Liberals took office. Since then, public education has been cut in half as a percentage of the provincial budget. It was nearly a quarter of the budget, and now it’s about a tenth. Public education is a B.C. Liberal priority – a priority for dismantling. That is what is being done here in beautiful British Columbia.
School District 48, largely because of an arbitrary “administrative clawback” added to the downloading of even more new costs, faces a substantial deficit next year even though it keeps growing. In a growing school district, one would think funding would increase; obviously, there are more students to serve and besides, there are higher costs every year simply through inflation. But not here, not next year, not for public education. That is not how it works anymore. The truth is, it isn’t supposed to work anymore. It does not matter that the government claims that it has a budgetary surplus. For public education, there are only cuts.
From a teacher’s perspective, I wouldn’t mind 18 to 35 per cent salary increases next year for school district personnel who already make double the average teacher’s salary quite as much if services to students in my school weren’t being gutted at the same time. That’s a salary increase B.C. teachers can only dream about. We’d be making almost as much as teachers in Alberta, in Ontario, in… all of the other provinces that don’t offer the very best education in Canada. That’s been here in B.C.
For many years, B.C. teachers have advocated for adequate resources for public education. We have spent tens of millions of our own dollars in that effort since the provincial Liberals came to power, in court cases and in lost wages when we’ve been forced into job action trying to slow down the cuts. We are very pleased to see that School District 48 plans to write a letter this year to the Ministry of Education about funding levels. The cutting has gone far and away too far. We have been saying so for a long time. Just about everyone is saying it now.
Very soon, the parents and electorate of British Columbia are together going to have to make a decision. Is the promise and dedication of public education – doing everything possible to create a fair start for every child, rich and poor – still important? If so, someone is going to have to convince the government. That’s not one of its priorities. Eliminating it is.
Are we OK with that? It’s about time to decide.
Steve Lloyd, President
Sea-to-Sky Teachers’ Association
