Dear Editor:
I attended my first Burnaby board of education budget presentation last night. I learned many things. The Burnaby school district is underfunded through its grant from the provincial government by $1.4 million. It will continue to be underfunded for the next three years. The province has said that districts need to find cuts to cover inflation costs. Burnaby district's biggest cost saving measure is to let go of eight to 12 full-time teaching jobs. That is equivalent to all the teachers in my son's elementary school gone. And "thankfully," Bill 22 allows for all those bigger classes to get rid of 12 teachers.
The predicted budget shortfall for the following year 2013/14 is $5.2 million, and then a further $1 million in 2014/15. By my calculations, that would be cutting a further 36 teachers and then another eight teachers for a total of 56 teachers lost by 2014/2015 due to budget shortfalls. To put this into perspective, Burnaby will lose Alpha Secondary School.
Creating bigger classes and losing teachers does not make for better education. Bill 22 lets our school district make more cuts, yet the real dialogue should be that our district is not being funded adequately by the province. Our PACs are fundraising juggernauts trying to fill the holes already made by cuts. We have lost our librarians, counsellors and building improvement projects. The City of Burnaby now pays for school crossing guards and Strong Start programs that used to be funded by the school district.
Parents have to take a stand and demand that all our districts are funded adequately. There have always been teachers in the school system, so blaming them is not the answer. Fund education properly so that every child in B.C. grows up to become a strong and enlightened citizen.
Otherwise, in Burnaby, we could get a big glass bowl, put all the names of every student in Grade 4 and up in it and pull out 1,200 names. Hopefully, your child will not have to suffer with bigger class sizes. We could call it "Hunger Games: The B.C. Education Trilogy."
Louise Hazemi, Burnaby
