Re: “School cuts for pay hikes off the table, minister says,” Jan. 26.
The Greater Victoria School Board deserves kudos for leading other boards around the province in rejecting Education Minister Don McRae’s early-December letter asking them to “find savings within existing budgets” to pay for a 1.5 per cent wage hike for support staff. This is the kind of trustee advocacy for public education that has been wanting during the Liberals’ decade-long tenure that has weakened B.C.’s public school system.
Districts around the province are now considering program cuts for the next school year. In this district, then-associate secretary-treasurer Debra Laser projected in September that there would be a $7-million deficit for the 2013-2014 school year. Given the cuts that districts have had to endure, it is commendable that the district has managed to make even modest strides in graduation rates.
Questions remain, however. Graduation rates are based on those students who begin secondary school. How many students don’t make it beyond middle school? And what is the effect of the ministry’s removal of three mandatory provincewide Grade 12 final exams — only an English final exam is now required for graduation.
This money-saving decision by the ministry, like its decision to end the limits on special-needs students enrolled in classes, is to the detriment of thousands of children in this province. It is also to the detriment of the high standards that graduation from B.C. secondary schools once stood for.
Starla Anderson
Victoria
