I guess we were expecting it, as much as we hoped it wouldn't happen. As the education dispute continues, parents have been scrambling to make arrangements for their children to be looked after.
Uncertainty about your child going to school is an unsettling feeling, not knowing when school will start or where kids will spend the days until school does start. It's not knowing what will happen that is worse than a longer summer vacation for the kids.
While this is a new experience for most parents in Delta, there is a group of people who have had this feeling before. Many families were scrambling last September, not sure how their children were going to get to school.
When the school buses were cancelled for all but special needs students, many parents weren't sure how their children were going to get to and from school. Except for driving them themselves, many were left with few options. Eventually, the district was able to make arrangements with parents in Boundary Bay for a paid morning service, and to get other students on special needs buses through the farmlands in East Ladner up to North Delta.
The buses were cut after the Ministry of Education re-distributed provincial transportation costs. Delta's allocation was cut by 47 per cent, phased in over three years. The board absorbed the initial shortfall in the first year, but by year two trustees had to make the decision to eliminate the service for non-special needs students.
There were a couple attempts at convincing ministry staff that Delta was being unfairly treated, that Delta's geography was unlike any other district and needed special consideration, to no avail. A provincial election and now ongoing and sometimes tense negotiations have pushed the issue aside once again.
When school does get underway this year, the parents who rely on school buses to get their children to and from school will be hoping the transportation patchwork that was put in place last year will be available to them. District staff did all they could to get the pieces in place to get kids to school last year, but for many it was only in the morning. While it was very helpful, I think everyone affected agrees this is not a viable, long-term solution.
There are no sidewalks along the routes these kids need to take. There are no streetlights. Five kilometres doesn't seem like a long way, until it's dark, raining and cars can't see you.
TransLink's idea of acceptable service is arriving up to half a kilometre away within an hour of school starting or ending.
The board has to decide what programs and services stay or get cut every year. It's usually the smaller programs that have to fight for survival, like the kids from the culinary arts program in Ladner did last spring. Cutting the buses was a difficult decision, but it's also an issue that we can't give up on.
Somehow, we have to get kids to school. It just doesn't feel right until we do.
