Highlights: School trustee candidates on staffing, budget, and school experience

CAMPBELL RIVER, B.C – School trustee candidates came together for a forum on Friday and besides questions posed by the District Parental Advisory Council (DPAC), they also answered questions from residents. Here are the questions:

  • What is your position on staffing shortfalls, and building and school closures with respect to having a balanced budget?
  • What is your experience in the public school systems in B.C.?

Candidates had a minute to answer the question, if they chose to answer. The following are the highlights of their answers.

  • What is your position on staffing shortfalls, and building and school closures with respect to having a balanced budget?

Linda Jay

When I was on the board in 2011-2014, the hardest decisions that we had to make was where to cut budget because what that means is it’s people’s jobs, and it’s programs and it’s the things that – there’s so much good work that is being done in the district and it just makes you cry to think that you have actually to curtail a budget. So these are really difficult decisions, again, it makes so much sense for the DPAC, for the parents to come forward and say “where are the priorities? What is it that’s really really valuable?” And then the trustees, they’re able to make good, guided decisions.

Christian Stapff

Well, as a teacher, I’ve been working in the Gold River school district since 2011 and when the Supreme Court decision came down and the result meant that the government was forced to re-populate some of the vacant teaching positions that they had taken out – now they’re in a position, I think the trustees are angry and the superintendents are angry because they’re having to find a way to staff the positions for which there are no teachers right now. That problem isn’t going to go away anytime soon, unless you recruit from Australia or New Zealand or elsewhere and you provide a way for people to come over and do their job. There’s still a shortage: I can tell you in my district, there’s an acute shortage. We don’t have very many TOCs, we still have one or two positions unfilled, and I believe it’s the same in some of the other districts as well.

Daryl Hagen

I’m not sure if you’re aware that over the last, I would say 14 years, we dropped from 8, 000 students down to 5, 000 – that’s 3, 000 students shorter in our district. We have managed to slowly integrate and reduce our schools. We’ve actually moved kids around, we’ve changed the grade configuration, all to reduce the impact on kids and the classroom. That’s been this board’s focus, but can you imagine trying to find 3, 000 people? I mean, 3, 000 students have been lost. It’s a big job. But we have one of the best relations ever in the district and as long as we can continue to support education and be positive, we’re gonna do well. And we’re starting to grow again! I’m an optimist. We’re gonna make it. Support staff are something that we can lobby for provincially.

John Kerr

We’ve been very fortunate in this district that we don’t have to deal with staffing shortages because this is the district that people want to come to. But as far as closing schools goes, probably the hardest decision I’ve had to make as a trustee in the last four years, because I believe in community schools, was having to close two schools. But the reality was, each of those schools was costing pretty close to half a million dollars. Two schools were costing $900, 000 more than they were generating. We already have a structural deficit to provide services – that would’ve doubled the structural deficit if we kept those two schools open. It was a hard decision to make, it was hard for the people of Oyster River, it was hard for the people of Discovery Passage, but it was something that had to be done because the other students – all the students in other schools in the district were subsidizing those students for their small class sizes. So, a difficult decision, but sometimes you have to make the hard calls. That’s what they pay us the big bucks for.

Richard Franklin

As John said, we’re very fortunate in School District 72 to have a very professional human resources department. We go all the way to Quebec to get our teachers for French immersion, and we do very well in terms of staffing. In terms of funding though, the present government isn’t putting any more money into education than the last one except for what was demanded by the Supreme Court. One of the roles of the school trustees is to go after these governments, to explain that we need more money for special needs kids. In terms of Truth and Reconciliation, when you look at the Call to Action – it makes it very clear, that there’s a responsibility from the federal and the provincial government to put that money in to help us with that process of truth and reconciliation.

Ted Foster

Just a short response on finances… the school district, as with a household, we have to balance the revenue with expenses. In the case of the school board, if we don’t do that, the government could fire us, they’ve done it elsewhere. We’re required to put in a balanced budget and if we run a deficit, we have to make that up as one of the reasons we carry a bit of a surplus. But it’s a very challenging thing to do that. Because in every iteration of the revenue we get from the province is based on enrollment. As trustee Hagen mentioned, we used to have 8, 000 students, now we’re at  5, 000. Now this means 5/8ths of the revenue we used to have, we still have a lot of overhead expenses out there. I think the entire board, the entire community, would love to have things different.

Joyce McMann

I think that the former speakers have outlined what a lot of the issues are. I think that legislation requires that we have a certain number of teachers for class sizes, the class sizes determined by the government. The real challenge comes in having support staff and having educational aids and the support staff that we need to drive the buses and to keep the schools in good condition and to create the environments that we want students to be in. Our budget is about 85% staff wages. And so, when things are tight, it’s those support staff that we end up having to look carefully at. And that scenario, where we have to continue to advocate for the kind of support we need financially and otherwise to ensure that… (interrupted, time was up)

Manfred Hack

Children are our most precious commodity. They are. And I was looking at the budget today, and it says support staff – for the budget for 2018 – was $6 million. And I believe if we if we look at dollars, right now, I really want to take a moment: I thank the board for the decisions they’ve had to make. I appreciate that because it had to be hard. But I really believe we also have to pressure – each one of us needs to contact our member of Parliament to support our most precious commodity in this province. It’s not lumber, but it’s children. You never know what the gift inside the children that will turn things around.

  • What is your experience in the public school systems in BC?

Daryl Hagen

You know, I’ve tried everything to lobby governments in the provincial section. I spent five years in BCTC (BC Treaty Commission) negotiating contracts and they legislated the last contract and I resigned. I’ve been on both kinds of boards trying to push governments to support public education. And I’m such an advocate that through public education we can change the world around us. In my family, I’m so pleased. They went through the Campbell River school system, they – there’s a Harvard graduate, did pancreatic cancer research, published several things, one runs half the MasterCard in London, England and one is a successful mother up in Scotland. That’s my experience with the public education system (interrupted, time was up)

Kat Eddy

My experience in the public education system in BC is not personal. I was educated in Ontario. My son has gone through the education system here in British Columbia, in Campbell River. My personal experience with being in schools here in Campbell River is that I have run a program for families, for kids who struggle to read in elementary school grades. I’ve been in the schools, I’ve ran workshops, I’ve talked to parents, I’ve talked to educators and I know that our schools are brilliant. Our educators are passionate. And we must find ways to support them, both with EAs – coming back to the budget, with additional support – and just by supporting them as a community, as they move forward in assisting our children.

Christian Stapff

As I said in my introduction, my children have gone through or they’re about to go through the system. My son is now in university, successfully so. My daughter is in grade 11 this year and she’s doing well. And I attribute that to our teachers and the people that work in the school with her, that have given her the skills, that worked with her, supported her, believed in her. Public education is a cornerstone of our democracy and I can tell you, working in private schools, that public schools in British Columbia deserve more credit than they’ve gotten in the last few years internationally. And my commitment as a trustee is to ensure that that continues and to build on that.

Manfred Hack

I’ve been on the board too of two private schools, and I appreciate the ability to be able to serve there. But again, I just… I look at our children, I look at the education system, and I really believe we need to be involved. We really need to be involved. There are pressures on our children. I thank you for coming, I thank you for coming forward and sharing, thank you.

John Kerr

I started my education in eastern Ontario. Finished high school, became a teacher in 1975 in Mackenzie, British Columbia, in the Prince George school district. I’ve been teaching grades 2, 4, 5 and 7. I’ve worked as a behaviour resource teacher, with children with behavioural issues. I moved to Sayward, I’ve worked in Sayward, Cortes, Quadra, and the outlying schools. I worked in three other schools in town, two of them dual-track French immersion, so I’ve got a wide experience. British Columbia, by international results, is one of the finest educational systems in the world. I think as a trustee, I want to do my part, to keep our small part of it doing the job that we do so well.

Richard Franklin

I started teaching in 1975. People with grey hair who are grandparents are still calling me Mr. Franklin. So, I’ve been around for a while. My experience with the education system in B.C. has been very good. Like it has been stated by Peter, I think it was, that we have according to international tests, one of the highest functioning school systems in the world. And that is the result of hard work by a lot of people working together to collaborate and produce these incredible results. We’re talking about maybe Finland beating us in math but other than that, we do very very well. And my in is to make the context or the environment one that we can go further in that.

Vanessa MacLean

I had a great public education experience from grade 1 to grade 12 here in Campbell River and that’s part of the reason why I’ve applied for the school trustee position. Because I want to see the same for our future generations. And right now, I do believe our children are in danger of what they are being taught in the schools right now. And again, I will bring it back to SOGI because back in my day, I was not taught these oversexualized things like I’m hearing from parents right now, their children in public schools – one parent talked about their kindergarten child that was actually taught about condoms in kindergarten for their sex education. Like that, to me is very upsetting. I wasn’t taught this kind of stuff until I was in grade 8, and so I just see this oversexualization of our children – and now girls have to fear a boy coming into their locker room and change room and possibly videotaping them or taking pictures of them because of the SOGI policy (interrupted, time was up)

Andrew Beaudin

My remarks are simply about marks. You know our education system today, it doesn’t seem our children are getting marks; it doesn’t seem they’re being marked. I heard that the provincial exams are out the door, and that concerns me. And so I’m just wondering where we’re going from there. Those that have the same concerns, I would just say look into that and maybe we should be writing letters and such and talking to people, to see what you can do to get these things back in order. If we’re not testing our kids, how are we going to know where they’re at? How are their parents going to know where they’re at?

 

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