School cuts will be felt
Chilliwack Progress
May 14 2010
Opinion by Laura Dean, President C.U.P.E. 411

At some point the trustees for the Chilliwack School District will pass the budget for the 2010-2011 school year …The majority ofthe savings will be on the backs of the district's support staff, the members of C.U.P.E 411, those people that work in the background to provide service to the more than 12,000 students in this district.

These are the people that many, including some School District management staff, tend to think we could do without, but that's because

most people don't see the myriad of things that they do, either directly or indirectly, for our students. Whether it's the secretary at the school who keeps track of a child's absence from school and calls home to make sure they are okay, or helps them find a cherished item that's gone missing; or the custodian that spends hours sanitizing the surfaces in the school that might carry a bacteria after a serious outbreak of flu; or the maintenance person that gets a call at 5:00 in the morning because someone has broken windows in a school and it has to be cleaned up before students get there and someone is injured; or the bus driver that makes sure the kids are safe inside before driving away; or the EA that spends countless hours helping a struggling student until they can master the task at hand, these are only a few of the people and the duties that they perform, that are a major part of the day to day life of the school district.

Layoffs of fellow employees, or even a reduction of a few hours a week, both of which will hit support staff far more than any other group, will have an impact on the way that many of them will do their jobs. The cuts to support staff may seem minor to some but they still eat away at the morale of these hard working people; they leave them all with less time to provide the level of service that our students deserve and that they take pride in delivering; they pit employees against each other because of the fear that they have for their jobs; and they make their lives a little more difficult, as it is for many in our community, because there's a few less dollars to provide the necessities that their families need.

The decisions by the Trustees, acting on the advice they were given, to extend Spring Break in 2011 and to charge families for bussing, were arguably necessary ones but they will cause a great deal of hardship for many families in Chilliwack. Working parents will need to find daycare for their children, which is an expense that many can't afford (lucky for many C.U.P.E. employees, they won't be working so they won't have to pay for daycare; of course at this point it looks like many won't be getting a pay cheque for that week either), and an extra $20 to $60 per month may not seem like a lot for safe, reliable transportation but when many are already counting pennies it can mean the difference of a few healthy meals a month for their family.

We will all continue to do the good work that we do but I hope that the public, the trustees, and senior management, will soon take a stand and get the message to our Liberal government that we have had enough cuts to the education, and therefore the future, of our children and grandchildren.