To the Editor,
Re: School superintendent receives pay increase, May 5.
The B.C. Liberal government continues to underfund public education at $1,000 less per student than the Canadian average.
As a result of this underfunding, teachers have seen a steady worsening of their working conditions. Underfunding has caused increases in class sizes and intensified composition issues for students and teachers. Many of our classrooms are less than an appropriate learning environment for every student. Underfunding results in students not having enough professional supports. Less student support teaching time, counselling time, and educational assistant support time affects the ability for teachers to fully meet all students’ needs.
Therefore, teachers are understandably upset when services to students are cut to pay for items such as a 19.5 per cent salary increase for the superintendent. Teachers urge the School District 68 board of trustees to demand that government fully fund all pay increases and not download these costs to the district.
Mike BallpresidentNanaimo District Teachers’ Association
To the Editor,
Re: School superintendent receives pay increase, May 5.
When a family needs to save money, they do it by cutting back in all areas. If we imagine our school board as that family, they have sold their house, are subsisting on KD, and don’t buy clothes anymore, shouted “Yay! More money!” and gone to the Bahamas to celebrate. Cutting back on essential services to our schools (like the recent CUPE cuts) is unacceptable, and then giving a whole other salary to the superintendent is abhorrent. I am a Grade 7 student at Rutherford elementary, and I think that John Blain’s new salary should go to students.
Keoni KerrNanaimo
To the Editor,
Re: School superintendent receives pay increase, May 5.
The Nanaimo Ratepayers Association continues to raise the alarm regarding the too-cosy relationship between municipal governments and their employees, a relationship that benefits both parties at the expense of the taxpayer. Now we have yet another example, with the superintendent of School District 68 being awarded a compensation increase exceeding $38,000. This brings his ‘package’ to $229,000 annually.
The usual rationale was immediately trotted out – first increase since 2011, in line with his peers, set by an independent consultant and so on. The whole thing reminds us of a type of ponzi scheme. The guy at the top gets a generous raise and the employees under him – in this case support workers – immediately and not unreasonably, raise their own expectations, which cannot reasonably be refused by the guy at the top, who just received a major dose of taxpayer largesse. And round and round it goes. There is no discussion of what the job entails or why $229,000 is considered reasonable, just an expectation that we shut up, accept it and pay yet another increase in our property taxes. It’s pretty clear that people in so-called public service have little respect for the public.
Randy O’DonnellpresidentNanaimo Ratepayers Association
