{"id":689,"date":"2013-05-07T22:09:12","date_gmt":"2013-05-08T05:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ices\/?p=689"},"modified":"2013-05-07T22:09:12","modified_gmt":"2013-05-08T05:09:12","slug":"bc-liberals-candidate-comments-insensitive-to-special-needs-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ices\/2013\/05\/07\/bc-liberals-candidate-comments-insensitive-to-special-needs-students\/","title":{"rendered":"BC Liberals candidate comments insensitive to special needs students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dean Recksiedler, News1130<\/em><\/a>, May 7, 2013–\u00a0Critics are blasting a Liberal candidate in northern BC who made some controversial comments about special needs students in the school system.<\/p>\n

In a recent all-candidates meeting, the incumbent MLA in Peace River North was asked if he thought there was a correlation between the degradation of the public school system and the increased enrolment in private schools\/home schools.<\/p>\n

Pat Pimm<\/a>\u2018s response was:<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is\u2026 We\u2019ve certainly seen a decline in the public system. The public system since 2001, there\u2019s been a decline of over 60,000 students. That\u2019s a big decline. What\u2019s driving that decline, I can\u2019t honestly say. But I do think that there\u2019s\u2026\u2026 People don\u2019t like to speak about this, so I\u2019ll probably get in trouble for saying anything\u2026\u00a0When you\u2019ve got special needs children in classes with other children, it does create some issues. I\u2019ve heard that across the province, it causes some grief. How do you deal with that is a real hard question and it\u2019s one that\u2026 is causing the teachers extra time and trouble and certainly, I think is causing some students to move into other areas in the private sector as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The BC NDP and BC Teachers Federation seem to lead the charge in slamming Pimm; critics call his comments \u201cinsensitive\u201d and \u201cappalling.\u201d<\/p>\n

One comment on Twitter was even more pointed, suggesting the incumbent in Peace River-North was de facto admitting the BC Liberal government has under-funded classrooms with special needs kids in them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dean Recksiedler, News1130, May 7, 2013–\u00a0Critics are blasting a Liberal candidate in northern BC who made some controversial comments about special needs students in the school system. In a recent all-candidates meeting, the incumbent MLA in Peace River North was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1527,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[406501,2251,2258,635,2262,3484,2273,4069],"tags":[1469,1063369,1063374,1063379],"class_list":["post-689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bc-education","category-budgets-funding","category-equity","category-government","category-k-12-issues","category-privatization","category-students","category-teachers","tag-bctf","tag-budgets-funding","tag-k-12-issues","tag-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":690,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions\/690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}