One New Westminster teacher had just 21 textbooks for 55 students, another didn’t have current math textbooks, and another, expecting to run out of paper this year, is hoarding it to have some for printing report cards.
These are some of the responses the New Westminster Teachers’ Union received when it asked members to share how they, and their students, have been impacted by budget cuts and shortfalls. The union shared the answers in a report it presented to the select standing committee on finance and government services. The committee, made up of six Liberal and four NDP MLAs, will make budget priority recommendations to the government in mid-November.
New Westminster Teachers’ Union president Grant Osborne gave the presentation along with three secondary teachers and two elementary teachers last week.
The presentation outlines how funding has impacted New Westminster classrooms and teachers.
“The numbers are stark,” the report says, stating that B.C. students are funded $1,000 less per year than the Canadian national average.
New Westminster school district has been under a great deal of financial pressure in recent years. It has a $4.1-million deficit from previous years and had to cut approximately 62 jobs – about eight per cent of its workforce – to balance this year’s budget.
“The result has been devastating,” Osborne wrote.
For a number of years, the district has had a “staff before stuff” mandate when it comes to making cuts to balance the books, which it is required to do by law. The already slimmed down “stuff” seems to be getting even leaner. This year, New Westminster schools are expected to operate on 10 per cent of the supplies budget they had from previous years, Osborne noted.
“Do they reach into their own wallets and try to cover the $33.95 allocated per students for the entire school year and throw their hands up in frustration?” he asked.
The document also asked teachers what they needed to do their job. The answers included calls for textbooks, reading resources for struggling learners, and computers.
“The only mouse still working in my classroom is the one that occasionally runs across the floor,” wrote one of the respondents.
Another wrote: “I have a student who actually cannot write nor read at all in Grade 5 … and I don’t know how I am going to support him.”
“I am really worried that I will burn out because I am trying to compensate for a system that is completely underfunded,” noted one of the respondents.
According to a statement from ministry spokesperson Matt Silver, even the best inter-provincial studies of education funding do not provide perfect comparisons. In B.C., school districts' operating funding will remain unchanged in 2013/14 at a total of $4.725 billion, a record level, he wrote in an emailed backgrounder.
The ministry is providing nearly $1 billion more each year to school districts than in 2000/01. That, despite September student enrolment over the same period declining by approximately 72,000 students, he wrote. Operating funding in the New West school district has risen from $35.3 million in 2000/01 to approximately $54 million in 2013/14, up by more than 50 per cent.
In the district, per pupil funding has increased from $5,688 in 2000/01 to an estimated $8,015 in 2013/14. This represents an increase of 41 per cent. Over the same period of time, full-time enrolment in the district has increased by approximately 9.6 per cent (600 full-time students). In addition to operating funding, the district is receiving $702,744 in 2013/14 through the Learning Improvement Fund (LIF). In 2012/13, the district received $698,679 from the fund, according to Silver.
