Presentation to School District 53
Ray Haddow, SD 53 Unit Chair, CUPE 523
Our K-12 membership is diverse and vital in the public school system: from the bus drivers and crossing guards who help children arrive at school to those who support students in the system – including IT support, education assistants, education support workers, lunch hour supervisors, library assistants, aboriginal education workers – to maintaining our schools – including maintenance and grounds keepers – through to clerical functions such as school office administration, secretaries, mail delivery drivers, and warehouse clerks.
We thank the trustees for the opportunity to discuss the School District 53 budget process and for providing a budget learning forum. This is an important process for partnership and an appreciated exercise in transparency.
We understand that due to significant and chronic underfunding of K-12 education in the province, the Board is under considerable financial restraint and has had to make some difficult decisions.
This being the case, we must state that we strenuously object to any cuts that would further reduce service delivery, and thus the quality of the educational environment in K-12 in our district.
In particular, the recent consideration of the closure of Osoyoos Secondary School has caused much concern in the community, and amongst CUPE members who take pride in helping to create safe, healthy and vibrant educational environments. We question the value of school closures for a number of reasons.
School closures are devastating to families and communities, as was witnessed by the 100s of parents that have spoken out against the school closures in their communities. Schools are the heart of a community, providing public space as a community hub, in some cases housing programs like strong start, childcare and Ulearn!
While we recognize the pressure put upon the board by the downloading of cuts from the province. Furthermore, school closures may provide a dangerous opening wherein valuable public assets become privatized,. This would drastically alter the community nature of these schools, and make it next to impossible to bring them back into the K-12 system when enrolments increase again.
What is more, school closures make future growth difficult to facilitate. In her response to public concerns over school closures, Premier Christy Clark said “the solution to school closures is to grow the economy”. This is an absurd comment when a critical part of growing the economy is having thriving schools in the community. And, as many parents have pointed out, they chose their communities, in many cases, because of the school in the area.
For these reasons, we feel that collectively we must push back against the 95% capacity rate requirement. It is unclear what purpose the 95% utilization rate is meant to serve. This rate, seemingly determined arbitrarily, has no educational basis. On the contrary, it appears to be based only on a business model that is indifferent to educational and community needs.
The 95% occupancy rate is an issue particularly for rural schools. It really affects communities in the Okanagan where we have small communities. Arbitrary occupancy rates put up another roadblock to keeping schools open and make it difficult for communities to grow.
Our members in the K-12 system are already stretched from years of underfunding, and now the province is asking for even more. While we are all too aware of the constraints school boards find themselves in due to underfunding, we also suggest that at a certain point the strain becomes too much, and we have to push back. For this reason, we are against any of the suggestions that schools be closed, or that staffing levels and programming be cut.
We thank the board for the information that was provided to us earlier, but without knowing the precise nature of these cuts we are limited to talking about the harm of further cuts in very broad terms. However, unsustainable underfunding, and the closure of 242 schools across BC under the current provincial government, does provide some indication of what we are facing. Of course, year after year of subsequent underfunding has a cumulative effect so that we have all witnessed the situation become even more acute with each passing year.
It’s difficult to imagine that already over-stretched staff could be asked to shoulder the burden of even more staffing cuts. And in such case, it is not just CUPE workers and other educational workers who shoulder the burden of underfunding, but ultimately students who lose support services, educational programming, and the guarantee of safe and clean schools. Suggestions that custodial services and secretarial hours will be cut, along with reductions in library support and EA hours, to name just a few, speak to these very concerns. Custodians across the province are already raising concerns about the inability to adequately clean schools. They feel that external expectations of cleanliness are being lowered to levels that they are not comfortable, and to levels that compromise the health of students and staff. They simply do not have the time to clean to a level they deem acceptable. Consequently, we think that any further reduction in custodial hours is highly disagreeable.
Our clerical staff, already stretched by the implementation of the problematic MyEdBC data management system will be further challenged by summer reductions, not to mention the influx of students that will come from Osoyoos Secondary when that school is closed. Clerical staff perform a plethora of duties every day that keep schools running smoothly – including confirming attendance and making calls to confirm children are safe and accounted for; helping parents and students with permission slips forms needed for the curriculum; and daily communications including announcements, emails, helping school visitors, and relaying maintenance needs to staff. In most cases our library workers also provide clerical services as well as keeping the library running effectively, helping students and staff find materials and sourcing items not readily available.
Our mechanic maintains the safe mechanical operation of all fleet vehicles – including buses and mini buses – inspects all buses and equipment to certify them for safety, and also deals with day-to-day breakdowns and issues. All CUPE members in SD 53 are an important part of our education system.
We believe that CUPE 523’s working environment is also the learning environment for students in School District 53. We keep this in mind in all the work that we do. This is a board that has always been transparent with us; we welcome the opportunity to work with you to meet these challenges.
I want to let you know that CUPE will be fighting the BC Liberal government’s plan to implement attendance management in B.C. schools. Many school boards are allocating funds to keep this unilateral process into place that largely duplicates the Joint Early Intervention Service (JEIS) program that is widely respected across the country for its innovation and success. JEIS is 100 per cent funded by the Ministry through PEBT and already allows for people to be contacted to assist in their return to work. They are automatically contacted by JEIS after their sixth day being away. It’s ridiculous that the government would even consider saddling school districts with even more costs in addition to increased hydro and MSP rates.
Finally, we believe that those of us that are committed to maintaining a vibrant K-12 public education system must challenge the amount of funding being directed to private schools in the province. Funding for private schools in British Columbia has increased 61.1% since 2005-06, while the public system remains woefully underfunded, and now we are being asked to bear the brunt of more cuts.
The amount of public funding provided to the province’s private schools is approximately $311 million for 2015-16, and expected to rise to $358 in 2015-17 – an additional 15.1%. This is simply disgraceful in the face of school closures and programming cuts in the public system.
In closing, we thank the board for listening to our concerns, and respectfully make the following requests and recommendations:
We recommend/ask that this school board:
- Demand an emergency meeting with government Provide more time for stakeholders to respond to proposed cuts
- Oppose further cuts;
- Reject the 95% utilization rate requirements; and
- Do not close schools
We look forward to continuing to work together with our other partner groups,school board and trustees to support students in K-12, and am asking this board to stand up together with other trustee boards across the province to a government that is out of touch with the needs of citizens. I urge you to reject BC Liberal cuts. Our kids deserve a better K-12 system that is properly funded.