In Support of Public Education

When is small, too small?  When does preserving small schools start to equal undermining medium to large size schools?  Irrespective of the merits of having pleasant small, neighbourhood schools where your children and one or two of her/his best friends attend, what are the demerits of keeping schools open.  Small school struggles in Vancouver, as opposed to small-school struggles in rural areas, seem to be about preserving boutique experiences for parents able and willing to spend the time to campaign and lobby.  In her education blog for the Vancouver Courier, Naoibh O’Conner talks about the Garabaldi Annex situation.  Charged with increasing enrolment to a minimum of 77 from 41, the school has achieved 58 students in two years of work.

The future of the Garibaldi annex is up for debate again.

The East Side kindergarten to Grade 4 school at 1025 Slocan St. faced closure in 2008 because of its dwindling student population, which stood at 41 that year. It has room for 165 students.

Parents rallied to save the elementary, arguing the prospect of closure was scaring families away from registering.

The Vancouver School Board agreed to keep it open until September 2010 if it attracted at least 36 more students. In September 2008, enrolment grew from 41 to 49, then to 58 in 2009. That’s still short of the 77 students needed to meet the school board’s expectation.

The cost of keeping its doors open is $114,742, according to school board staff. Read the full comment here: Class Notes: Closing time?

I’ll be facilitating a workshop on “What do parents want,” at an upcoming  BCTF conference (Public Education: Protecting our children’s future).  I did something similar a few years ago (click here) and will draw upon some of the same resources.  However, several years later I have a few different ideas.

For one thing, as parents themselves mature along with their children’s progress through school, one’s ideas of what is possible shifts.  Along with such life cycle changes our expectations take on different forms and, one hopes, matures.  The frantic hopes and desires of the kindergarten parent becomes replaced by a more sanguine attitude as our children move through the intermediate grades.  A new bout of anxiety emerges with adolescence and the transition to high school.  And then, if we’ve made it through to grade 12 a healthy sigh of relief as they make the transition into adulthood and hopefully get a chance to live the ups and downs of their own choices in life -fore better or worse.

I look forward to seeing this workshop develop and to meet the different people who will become participants as we explore what it is that parents want for their children in our public schools.

West-side Vancouver parents in the news again on enrolment issues.  Over the last two years west-side parents, , Eric Mazi, Julee Kaye, Greg Lawrence (veterans of the Save QEA campaign), have argued hard to keep their small neighbourhood schools.  Part of their campaign has been to argue that the enrolment drop faced by VSB is not ‘real.’  Part of the attack of the enrolment drop has targeted private schools.  That is, Mazi and others have suggested that VSB is being out competed by the private sector and thus losing enrolment.  I have reviewed census data and school enrolment data for the past several years at several points over the past years and the thing is that private school drain thesis doesn’t hold water (for a previous comment click here).

In my February 2007 comment I concluded:

Based upon the BC Ministry of Education data we can infer that private schools in Vancouver have been able to pick up some students from the public system but the growth in the private sector can not be seen to have occurred totally at the expense of the public system.

Furthermore, declining enrolment is not just a local issue, it’s a national one.  Ultimately, the enrolment issue is a political question being fueled, in this instance, by parents who are working hard to ensure that their access to a privileged resource is maintained.

From the Vancouver Courier: ‘Activists’ question school enrolment information

Parents of Vancouver school students say the school district has misrepresented the reason for continuing drops in enrolment.

Enrolment fell by 250 students this year. Conventional wisdom suggests families are fleeing over-priced Vancouver properties for cheaper digs outside the city, but that argument isn’t borne out in statistics, according to Eric Mazzi, who calls that explanation a myth perpetuated by school boards.

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Update: Vancouver Sun Reporter, J. Steffenhagen picked up the courier story today. She adds the following comment:

This year’s enrolment has fallen by 250 students. The suggestion that families are leaving Vancouver because of high housing prices isn’t supported by statistics, according to parent Eric Mazzi. He says the school-aged population in the city is climbing while the Vancouver school district enrolments are plummeting.

Without the full data it is hard to comment effectively.  However, one thing that I wold be interested in learning is the reduction in international fee paying students and whether that is any part of the enrolment decline.

Reggi Balabanov didn’t mince words when she went up against opponents during the early years of the Campbell administration. Facing off against parents who saw what the provincial Liberal government’s cuts to education would do, Balabanov found it more useful to cultivate a political alliance with then education Minister Christy Clark.

Reggi Balabanov sentenced for fraud – Report Card

Reggi Balabanov was once the most influential parent in B.C.’s public school system. She was president of the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils (BCCPAC) when Gordon Campbell’s Liberals came to power with the intention of giving parents a greater role in public schools. Balabanov formed a tight relationship with Campbell’s first education minister, Christy Clark, and had as much – if not more – access to the minister as other education partner groups.

Chris Kelly is retiring as Vancouver superintendent (UPDATED) – Report Card

Chris Kelly told Vancouver school trustees last night that he’s retiring as the district’s superintendent effective Sept. 30, 2009. He distributed a statement to district staff this morning.

New Post Secondary Education web site set up by Rob Clift (CUFA-BC)

BC Needs Universities

Every issue in the 2009 BC election is linked in some way to the province’s public universities. Whether it be training medical professionals, conducting research that results in new economic opportunities, or helping communities and individuals adapt to a changing world, public universities are part of the solution.

We invite you to use this website to learn more about how BC’s public universities affect all aspects of our lives and to use that knowledge to help you decide how to cast your vote on May 12th.

Late Friday afternoon, a month after Ministry of Education staff put the U Hill rebuilding plan on hold, Liberal MLA Colin Hansen announced a major infrastructure program for Vancouver School Board that includes rebuilding U Hill Secondary and constructing a new elementary school.

We are all appreciative of this announcement. It’s been a long time coming. We look forward to rolling up our sleeves and getting to the hard work of designing and building our renewed community schools.

As members of the current Parents Advisory Council we want to say a very special and loud thank you to the many parents past and present who have lobbied, argued, emailed, discussed, pushed, prayed, begged, pleaded, and just plain believed that someday our children and our community’s needs would be responded to. We want to also thank school administrators, like former U Hill principal Jill Philipchuk, who worked with parents, staff, and senior administrators to keep the pressure on. It is also important to recognize the work of current and former school board trustees who worked hard on this issue: Kevin Milsip and Alan Wong (COPE), Carol Gibson and Ken Denike (NPA), and more recently former DPAC and PAC activist and current Board Chair, Patti Bacchus (Vision). Without the combined effort of politicians, administrators, staff, and parents the results of our education system would be much poorer.

We must, however, remember that this is a problem that we have all known about for close to a decade. There have been plans and approvals and pauses all along the way. Several cohorts of parent volunteers have grown tired trying to explain over and over again that schools are needed. We hope that for the future whom ever is in provincial office will change the way in which schools are planned and built so that real needs are met when they exist, not years after they have shifted from minor headache to major problem.

For those interested in such things and unable to access the BCCPAC web site here are minutes from the most recently published Board Meeting Minutes.

Additional commentary can be found on Janet Steffenhagen’s blog.

BCCPAC Board Minutes, Feb. 19, 2009

BCCPAC Board Minutes, Feb. 20-22, 2009

According to Vancouver Sun reporter, Janet Steffenhagen, the Premier will be making a funding announcement today. Questions remain as to whether the promised funding announcement will include the much needed University Hill area school rebuilding plan.

Future in doubt for two new schools

There’s no word on whether two new public schools slated for the University of British Columbia area will be part of infrastructure spending recently announced by the provincial government.

On March 17 Premier Gordon Campbell announced the B.C. government would spend an additional $424 million on new schools and school renovations.

But the Ministry of Education will not confirm if an elementary and secondary school to replace the University Hill schools will receive funding.