It’s proving to be a busy year on the education beat.
Last year at this time, I remember lamenting the lack of people at the school board’s public consultation meeting to collect feedback on the proposed budget.
Only about 20 people showed up – mostly school district employees – and their comments echoed around the empty gymnasium at Nanaimo District Secondary School.
It seemed no one wanted to comment on the $2.8 million worth of cuts proposed.
What a difference a year has made.
At least 150 parents, students, support workers, teachers and members of the public showed up to the meeting April 11 and 26 people presented their thoughts to trustees.
The presentations (as well as a quick explanation of the proposed budget) lasted more than three hours.
Speakers were often emotional, pleading with trustees not to take away different services or programs for students.
And it should be noted that the district’s deficit of $1.4 million is only half of last year’s.
Does this mean the district is scraping the bottom of the barrel?
Several people stood up last week and declared that enough is enough, that schools cannot sustain any more cuts.
The only solution to the dilemma was presented by the heads of the teachers’ union – simply don’t make any more cuts. Submit a deficit budget to the province.
Since 2002, there have only been three years where the district did not make cuts.
The new programs the district found money for at one time have been slowly disappearing.
Reorganizations to the educational leadership budget have meant fewer dollars put toward exploring new, innovative ways of teaching.
Students lose supports at schools every year it seems – fewer counsellors, special needs teachers and support staff, who are vital to keeping the system running smoothly but are easier to cut because they are not as visible as a teacher standing in front of a classroom of children.
In this round of cuts, there are a few that make sense – eliminating an old bus route or using electronic media in some communications instead of paper.
Having a principal or vice-principal supervise and provide leadership to the community school programs was one of the recommendations that came out of the recently completed review of community school programs. The review found that awareness of what a community school is and does is sometimes lacking, and the program is missing a strong advocate to keep the schools on track.
But to provide funding for this advocate, the hours of community school coordinators are reduced in the proposed budget. For every new thing the district wants to add, something else must suffer.
Some of the budget cuts will, no doubt, have a large impact on some students.
It’s heartening to see some members of the public paying attention and speaking their minds.
It was also neat to see the students get vocal during the faculty strike at Vancouver Island University, which ended last week after a month.
A couple of days after the strike began, students started organizing rallies and protests. As the strike progressed, they got more vocal.
There were concerts and theatre productions on the picket lines, all sorts of colourful, creative signs, pickets at VIU’s board of governors meeting, videos posted online, petitions and a student sit-in at the university’s administration office.
Many heated debates raged, and students expressed their opinions and vented frustrations on various Facebook groups related to the strike and on our website.
Every time a story was posted, online comments flew back and forth within seconds.
What’s next?
Well, the teachers are at the bargaining table with the province.
