Students on board

The election is over, the Libs have won, Dix is (likely) out and the Green got one; now it’s time to return to the greater minutiae of regional education politics.

Photo courtesy: Google Images.

In response to @pattibacchus’ tweet announcing the development of a student trustee position to provide Vancouver students with a voice on the board (Vancouver’s School Board), trustee Mike Lombardi replied via Twitter:

@bkostinuk VSB will develop criteria in consultation with VDSC. We have lots of info from Ont. @pattibacchus

— Mike Lombardi (@LombardiMike)

Well, “We have lots of info from Ontario,” doesn’t explain too much when even basic criteria hasn’t been set out.

What this appears as is a meaningless attempt, a mere tongue-in-cheek maneuver, to give the students “a voice.” Pragmatically, it’s difficult to perceive that a single, teenage voice, sitting at the table with a dozen or so relatively high-figured adults, could gain any traction.

Will the trustee be required to speak at every board meeting? Will he or she be given a free time-slot to voice any opinions and concerns each week? Both may be necessary to begin with.

And say the trustee is listened to, respected, will he or she truly be a representative voice for the general student population? How would this even be achieved?

A student trustee position isn’t a groundbreaking idea, it’s the lack of foresight and creativity that’s irritating. Better ideas are required. To capture the attention of students and to really find the true pulse of a student population, a need to tap directly into the student body is a prerequisite.

• Student referendums. Especially given the success of the latest student mock-voting for this year’s election, sending out proposed initiatives or ideas district-wide for students to vote on with a simple yes or no better captures the student voice.
• The use of email and Facebook campaigns to reach students. Social media in the classroom.
• Hold mini-assemblies or during major scheduled events present initiatives and ideas to students. Present the good and bad, then have each class take a vote.

I am quite familiar with how Grade school was during my time at Cedar Hills Elementary and L.A. Matheson Secondary in Surrey. Students weren’t too involved, there were pockets of interested individuals but by and large many weren’t participants or knew anything that was developing on the horizon.

The above applies to Surrey’s school district as much as Vancouver’s. Interest begins with knowledge. Appointing or electing student delegates isn’t a novel idea (copying Ontario) nor one that appears to be a practical measure that will enhance students’ experiences.

The tirade is now over.

The VSB, politics and a timely infographic

VSB infographic taken from the Tyee: http://bit.ly/11jKLG9

The Vancouver School Board released a letter and handy infographic that detailed what the district claimed to perennial underfunding since 2002/03.

Based on a 10-year comparison to 2002/03 provincial funding levels, the VSB estimated that it is currently operating under a shortfall of $47 million.

In 2013/14, $486 million in funding will be provided to Vancouver.

But, even with a shrinking student population, according to the reporting of the Tyee’s Katie Hyslop, the VSB stated:

“The district’s base operating budget 11 years ago was $415 million. Taking into account salary increases, collective agreement increases and changes to employee benefits, turnover, enrolment levels, cost increases, and inflation, Landry and Krowchuk calculated the cost of the services provided in 2002/03 would be $533 million today.”

Yet, what a strange way, and perhaps waste of resources, to try to prove a fiscal argument.

What justification is there to use 2002/03 as a benchmark year? Further, how can an arbitrary year’s fiscal history be reason for a present need? I’m certain if teachers were using 10-year old history books, they would think it grossly inadequate for 2013. The economy was different back then, using decade-old comparisons is like recalling salary increases of the ’90s and using it as justification for a raise in 2013 — isn’t it or am I missing something?

As mentioned, elementary and secondary student enrolment levels in Vancouver have consistently dropped since 2002 from just over 55,000, to around 50,000 by 2012, yet BCTF salaries and benefits have gone up.

Here is a list of BCTF members’ salaries for the Vancouver school district.

The calculated 2012 living wage rate for Metro Vancouver is $19.62 per hour. Even at the lowest pay grade, Category 4 Step 0, a teacher makes above the standard living wage rate for the city.

However, every time the teachers strike and picket for new a collective agreement, its (almost) always about increasing wages or salary and benefits — and all the power to them.

But what about the students?

They are used as political pawns in the capitalist game to financial providence, while the youth of B.C., and in the rest of Canada, are jobless, with surmounting debt and diminishing hope.

Take a look (After page 5) at the extravagant salaries of Vancouver superintendents and treasurer. Surrey and other district supers too receive similar or greater salary packages.

The VSB’s infographic displays $31.5 million in lost staffing, which would have included 524 entry level teacher’s jobs. Plus, another $15.5 million in supplies lost.

These are speculative numbers of course.

But what’s real is the salaries and money going into the pockets of union members who time and again use students as leverage to securing increasing amounts of funding.

During last year’s dispute, B.C. teachers refused to lead extra-curricular activities in protest to the government’s handling of the labour relations snafu. The teacher’s, among other tenets, sought 15 per cent wage increases over the following three years. The government summarily denied such demands and the situation was eventually resolved.

Unions should be held under the same scrutiny as government. The VSB’s latest plea appears at a superficial glance as another juking of the stats in an attempt to turn the faucet on just a little more, and quite timely when you consider the election just around the corner.

Overcrowding a problem in Surrey, but MLAs skirt the issue

Photo courtesy: Google Images.

Local coverage of provincial MLAs by the Now’s Christopher Poon focused on the unique issue of  overcrowding in Surrey’s schools.

One-third of the city’s population is under the age of 19. Surrey boasts the largest school district in the province with student numbers trending in the opposite direction in most other districts.

While a good thing for Surrey, provincial politicians skirt the issue because no one has a real solution to what is most definitely a funding issue.

What the Liberal says

BC Liberal Gordon Hogg—Surrey-White Rock incumbent—said better communication was taking place between boards and the Ministry of Education, adding:

“The funding for students is worked out on a per-student ratio so that’s not an issue. It’s the capital that allows for the building of schools that continues to be an issue.”

Hogg is partially true. What he fails to mention is the logistics.

Schools are awarded block-funding on a per-student basis, correct. (i.e. $9,500 per student. A district of 10,000 students = $95 million.) But funding is based on actual student numbers not potential figures.

This means  districts receive funding for each student only after they have enrolled. No student = no funding.

It is a simple system that assures tax-dollars are being precisely funnelled to districts based on definite student figures, however the logistics of it is flawed. By the time capital funding is received, it may be too late.

In reality, the school and school board is left to manage the overcrowded building with portables and promises until funding does arrive. Once it does it takes three to five years, on average, to construct a new facility fully operational, up to contemporary rules and regulations. So, what happens in the meantime?

Well, I’ve been a student at a Surrey school during a time where student capacity was slightly above what could be handled. Three portables popped up in a space of three-years. One of which, I, a Grade 7 student, was placed in. The school eventually received its expansion—a new wing—but I never once set foot inside of it. I witnessed the before, saw it being built, but never benefited from it as secondary school beckoned.

Perhaps future generations will benefit, or perhaps many parents have since moved and the student population has now diminished.

There is an issue with the per-student ratio of funding because the program lacks prospective planning. But no one can predict the future and herein lies the issue.

Student population booms as seen in Cloverdale and south Surrey will cause problems under the current funding system—and has.

But Hogg ignores this reality. His remark is a veiled attempt to assure voters the current system works and that the problem is elsewhere, when it’s not.

Outside the issue

Hogg presented community-based schools.

Burnaby has something similar at its Youth Hub, where there is a clinic, counselling services and a school all in one area.

Surrey Newton candidate, B.C. Conservative Satinder Singh, acknowledges overcrowding as an issue, but directed the problem towards another, separate issue: special needs services.

(BC NDP) Silvia Bishop—Delta North candidate—stated funding shortfalls are the root of the cause for the state of education in B.C.

Bishop further states school boards are more expensive to run nowadays because the province downloaded costs to the school boards to manage.

She is correct on both fronts, recognizes the issue, but where’s the solution? It’s nice to be a critic until you’re in the hot seat, forced to make decisions.

The bottom-line: overcrowding remains an issue in Surrey schools and politicians are short on ideas to fix the current situation. Funding doesn’t mean a school overnight. A group of students are left to crammed classes, cold portables and school grounds occupied by temporary structures instead of open fields for children to enjoy.

Similar conditions then exist at the next level; it’s only thousands of dollars later, and piece of paper to show after, that you get a top-notch facilities with accompanying resources. This isn’t the sound of a jaded B.C. student, it’s reality and the opinion of someone that came out relatively ahead in a flawed system. It works only because the people along the way helped mitigate those blemishes, so much so that it wasn’t even noticed in the present, not until I reflect as an adult do they appear more glaring. And maybe that’s something to consider; but making the best of it shouldn’t be the motto our education should float on.