Editor: Delta and B.C. citizens need to refuse to accept that $1,000 less per pupil funding than the average Canadian student should be status quo for B.C. students and schools.
It's time to roll up our sleeves and do what is tough. The alternatives are unacceptable.
Schools need libraries and librarians for those libraries. My heart dropped when I heard the Coquitlam school district won't have any librarians next year. Is that Delta school district's future too? Our amazing Delta culinary programs have already been threatened year after year after year. They keep getting "saved," but it is infuriating to think they'll likely be targeted for cuts again next year, and the year after that.
Teachers need math resources, manageable workloads, time to prepare for students within their workday, especially elementary teachers who get roughly an hour less prep time per week than teachers in other provinces.
Ideally our district could afford to bring in math or music or French specialists to teach some classes every few days and give the classroom teachers time to prep, mark and plan.
But provincial funding just hasn't kept up with rising costs.
Parents in one neighbourhood have time to fundraise and money to donate, so their kids get field trips and new playgrounds and books and computers, whereas parents in another neighbourhood don't have time or money because they're struggling to get by.
The purpose of public health, public schools, public anything is for it to be equitable. This imbalance between neighbourhoods of haves and have-nots that depend on charity is appalling.
I could work in a brand new school with books and computers and still feel gutted that a colleague teaches in another neighbourhood or town without enough books for her students or a heated classroom or old and broken gym/science/insertsubject-here equipment. Public education isn't charity. It's an investment that requires long-term support, longer support than a four-year political term.
This is a situation where anyone who cares about society and social justice and democracy needs to dig deep and do something.
Nicole Jarvis
