School trustees deep concerns
By Sharon Gregson, Trustee, Vancouver school board
Vancouver Sun
April 14, 2010

Recently, on radio, I heard the B.C. minister of education accuse school boards of "fear-mongering" and say she is disappointed that the Vancouver school board is "undermining the confidence of parents and students in our schools." What a bunch of baloney!

I can tell her what strikes fear into the hearts of parents and undermines confidence in public schools: the underfunding of public education. It can't be a coincidence that every school district in the province is saying it is not being adequately funded for provincially mandated costs, not to mention that we have never been adequately funded for the true cost of providing extra supports to children.

Even if the VSB does its usual careful budgeting and perhaps has more students enrol than expected, and manages to save a million dollars that way, the shortfall this year is more than $18 million.

All the careful budgeting in the world won't make up that difference.

The minister said our problems have to do with low enrolment. Wrong again. With the move to full-day kindergarten, our enrolment decline is about 100 students in a district of about 55,000 students. Projections show that by 2015, with the move to include three-and four-year-olds in educational programs, we will have a space shortage in Vancouver.

There are so many things wrong with the direction the provincial government is taking that, as a trustee and as a parent with two kids in high school, I feel sick. How can it claim to be protecting education?