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.
Surrey BC'er 