By John Horgan
Today, our young people will graduate into a global job market, and we need to make sure that the public education our province is providing will help them compete with young people throughout the world.
Unfortunately, Christy Clark and her government are playing political games that are putting that education at risk.
First, the premier announced she would address overcrowding in Surrey schools, where there are so many students learning in portables, they would make up our province’s 24th largest school district. The premier’s solution?
A so-called plan that will barely even cover the expected growth, meaning this government has no plans to reduce the number of children learning in portables.
Then, less than two weeks later, the Clark government was back in Surrey for another education announcement – this one was a promise of help for districts across the province facing devastating budget shortfalls.
But no cheques went to local school boards. Instead, the Christy Clark government just cancelled their plan to claw back $25 million from school boards across British Columbia this year.
The Christy Clark government is so out of touch that it actually thought families in this province would applaud these announcements.
They didn’t because these announcements weren’t about doing what’s right for families, and they weren’t about providing the secure, stable and adequate funding that our schools need.
They were all about Christy Clark and some bad headlines that she wants to make go away until after the election next spring.
It was the premier and her government that created the chaos we’re seeing right across our public education system.
The Clark government, which passed along increases to MSP premiums and hydro rates to school boards, failed to fund a $26-million broadband Internet program, and forced school districts to cut millions in administrative spending – all this after years spent starving our education system.
The result? School closures across the province, and problems like Surrey’s overcrowding getting worse.
Incredibly, throughout all of this, Christy Clark and her government tried to pretend there was nothing they could do about the chaos they had caused.
Again and again, the education minister tried to pass the buck to school boards, claiming the decisions they were making were on a “local level,” and nothing to do with his ministry’s failure to appropriately fund schools.
Worse still, the minister dismissed the thousands of students and parents who have spoken up to save their schools from closure. Asked about criticism over his government’s funding cuts, he dismissed those comments as “noise” coming from “a few groups.”
Only a desperate government would expect applause for the thin gruel the Christy Clark government announced last week in Surrey. And only a truly arrogant government would do so after years spent starving our public schools.
Kids in this province deserve far, far better.
John Horgan is the leader of the B.C. New Democrats.
