Editor:
Re: Delta class size and composition stalemate, June 20
Sandor Gyarmati's excellent report on the B.C. teachers' strike is very informative, particularly for one who finished school over 60 years ago.
British Columbia's special education policy is that "all students are entitled to equitable access to learning, achievement and the pursuit of excellence in all aspects of their educational programs..."
Gyarmati reports: "Those specifically identified [by the ministry as] 'special needs' students receive additional funding support from the ministry. Other students considered academically 'at-risk' because they may be struggling in one or more subject areas receive additional support from the district."
If there's extra money to teach special needs and at-risk students, who gets it? Teachers are endlessly deadlocked in a pay dispute that in large part involves the added work of teaching those students.
Instead of limiting the number of students in a class that need extra help, why not settle the strike with a base pay for teachers having no such students? That should be easy. Then add a provision that teachers get paid an extra amount for each such student in their class or, at the district's discretion, they get a helper.
That would leave only the supplemental funding per student to be agreed. That should be easy given that in the case of Delta, for example, there are only 2,151 special needs kids needing supplemental funding out of some 16,000 students.
Certainly the supplemental cost would be modest and readily agreed compared to the provincewide $225 million per year increase now being impossibly argued.
Ed Ries
