Principals, former SFU dean pressure gov't on school funds
By Dharm Makwana
24 Hours
June 16, 2010

Inner-city school principals supported by a former Dean of Education claimed Wednesday the provincial government has failed to adequately fund schools.

The charge was made two days before the deadline for the Vancouver School Board to solve a $17 million budget shortfall and submit a balanced budget to the Education Minister based on hotly debated recommendations made in a comptroller general’s report.

“What [we are] left with is a top-down implementation of education in the province with a centralized form of governance that leaves other stakeholder groups with little voice,” said SFU professor emeritus Paul Shaker.

Noel Herron, former Principal of Strathcona Elementary School, expressed deep concern over the comptroller’s suggestions to cut non-core programs such as junior kindergarten.

“To take away a program that addresses the education and social needs of four-year-olds is not just punitive, it’s cruel,” said the former VSB trustee. “There’s something seriously wrong with education in this province.”

Herron went on to challenge the findings of the comptroller’s report and demanded an independent analysis along with the province examining its own education-funding model.

“Child poverty 22 years ago was a problem,” said the experienced educator. “It has doubled in this province, in this area, since that time.

“The suggested elimination described by our inexperienced – and I dare to say – platform-prone minister of education to eliminate the junior kindergarten program, I would describe in four ways: It is regressive, it is contradictory out of touch and punitive.”