Liberals forget about children
COURIER-ISLANDER
By: Neil Thompson, President, Campbell River District Teachers' Association
APRIL 15, 2009

Once again the Campbell River School District finds itself in the difficult position of dealing with a funding deficit. Chronic under funding of BC's public education system by the Gordon Campbell government has again resulted in the need to cut services in School District 72. The $900,000 shortfall this year will result in more reductions of services and resources for the students in our classrooms.

According to the Ministry of Education figures, Campbell River presently has the highest class size average in the province for grades 8-12 with 63 classes over 30 students. We also find ourselves with 37 per cent of our classrooms with more than three students with special needs requirements. These numbers are in violation of 2005's legislated Bill 33 class size and composition limits. This year's funding shortfall will only continue to make this difficult situation for our students worse.

The Campbell government misleads people by continuously harping about the highest education funding ever, yet it fails to acknowledge that the reality is an erosion of funding to our students and classrooms due to inflation, unfunded legislated labour costs, a carbon tax and increased heating and transportation costs. This year, Campbell River is one of 34 school districts in the province to have funding remain frozen at the 2008/2009 level.

This government's reference to declining enrollment is shortsighted political rhetoric. They know kindergarten numbers are increasing. They also know that when a school district loses a number of students spread throughout the grades and system, it does not equate into savings for that district.

This government states that we need to manage through some challenging economic times, yet it has made the task of running educationally sound public schools increasingly difficult through constraining and under funding our budget for the past eight years. …They refuse to look after our most precious resource, our children in our classrooms.