In a room filled with educators, incumbent Eric Foster was never going to get an easy ride at the all candidates forum Tuesday night hosted by the Vernon Teachers’ Association, the District Parent Advisory Committee and CUPE 5523 at the Vernon secondary school theatre.
Vernon-Monashee Liberal candidate Foster was joined by NDP candidate Barry Dorval, Green Party candidate Keli Westgate and Don Jefcoat with the Libertarians.
Foster was questioned about the 15 years of legislation that led to the recent win by B.C. teachers in the Supreme Court of Canada.
“Do I have any regrets? Yeah, probably, but not with the process, which ran as it should run,” said Foster. “We now have a long-term agreement with the BCTF and we won’t be seeing labour disruptions by either management or the teachers over the next number of years. I saw the struggles with parents when I was in the school system at Charles Bloom. But we have tremendous outcomes in the schools in this province and we should be very proud of that.”
When asked about the past 15 years of legislation, Dorval said it has been heartbreaking as both a teacher and a parent.
“My two children spent their whole education under this regime,” he said. “For my son, who was diagnosed with a learning disability, he’s fortunate that he had two teacher parents who were there to advocate for him, to ensure that he got what he needed and he’s thriving, but it is heartbreaking to know how many students didn’t have that opportunity, so it’s the special needs students across the province who bore the brunt of that.
“But it wasn’t just special needs students. When we had to reduce our class size, the board never wanted to do this. As VTA president I went to meeting after meeting and watched them agonizing over the kinds of cuts they had to make in programming. So when they cut things like electives in high schools, electives are the things that gives kids joy, that’s what draws them into school and keeps them there. So that’s the heartbreaking part, all of those opportunities that kids didn’t have.”
The candidates were asked to explain their party’s position on government funding for independent schools. The government provides most of the province’s independent schools with grants for each student, worth 35 to 50 per cent of the per-student operating costs in public schools.
Jefcoat said one of the Libertarian party platforms is giving parents a choice on where they send their children to school.
“I’m not the one who’s going to advocate an outright position but I believe there is room for private schools, such as the Christian school or Catholic school,” he said. “I believe public dollars for education should go to each child and allow the parent to decide where they want to send their kid to school. It may allow for the school district to step up their game and make some reforms so that we’re not running a 1912 education system in 2017.
“We need to fund the students, whether it’s private or public. If we start cutting the private funding and make them come back to public you will have that much more of a burden. If they are at a private school you don’t have to build the schools, paint the walls, replace the furnace. Private providers can be a complement to the public system. Libertarian funding would be a student-specific funding.”
For Westgate and the Greens, it’s all about adequate funding for public schools.
“We need to support public schools much more than we have in the past,” she said. “I believe there is some room for choice of parents certainly but whether or not our tax dollars should be going to fund independent schools is a discussion we need to have.
“We’re going to increase funding beginning next year: $220 million on top of the $330 million already committed and that’s going to rise to $1.46 billion in 2010 so I think this really shows the Greens’ commitment to quality education that is well-funded, with plenty of teachers and EAs. We also have a plan for early childhood education, we’re going to help adult students fund their education, as well as nutrition and physical activity programs, but the initial push for the Greens is on public education. We’re not looking at a change, just looking at dramatically increasing the funding to public schools.”