My only child started his journey through BC's public school system in 1999 and it's a huge relief to know that he will graduate this year. It feels like those movie scenes where the building explodes just as the hero hurls himself out the door -- except I know there's 500,000 other children still trapped in the building, and thousands more joining them every year.

I remember the first day of kindergarten like it was yesterday. We've encountered wonderful people and survived many challenges. We've both learned and grown a whole lot and I couldn't be prouder of the young man now going forward to face life as an adult. I'm also proud to be part of a progressive society that has valued and invested in ensuring that every British Columbians child, regardless of wealth, connections or intellect, gets an opportunity to realize their potential.

But these past 13 years have also shown the dangers of complacency, inertia, short-sightedness, and political expediency. Every year, special education resources critical to our son's success have been steadily eroded due to Provincial underfunding, which started under the former NDP government and accelerated under a decade of BC Liberal rule. Expertise and capacity amongst those who work with the most challenging students in the system has also been steadily eroded. Despite endless talk about putting students first, those with the power to reverse these changes have failed utterly to stop the damage.

In 2006, the BC Liberals and the Opposition NDP ignored the advice of all education partner groups except BCTF when they passed Bill 33, the Class Size and Composition Act. MOMS was one of the provincial advocacy groups representing students with special needs that penned a joint letter opposing Bill 33's class composition caps in particular as both discriminatory and pointless.

Our fears were realized, as Bill 33's class size limits forced schools to cut even more special education teachers, to gut more school libraries and shutter more schools in order to fund extra classes. Boards were also forced to divert millions more in scarce resources to fight futile Bill 33 teacher grievances - futile, because successful challenges only forced the Boards to rob Peter to pay Paul. Without new Provincial funding, it's a zero sum game, and all you're doing with rules like class size or composition limits is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

In a context of inadequate resources (which even I have to admit isn't going to ever change!), giving local Boards, schools and teachers the flexibility to allocate resources to meet the most urgent needs they face on the front lines, to use creativity, or to do things the way it works best for their unique situation is the most effective way to mitigate the harm to students. I've watched committed, resourceful staff over 13 years find ways to make the system work despite its flaws, precisely because they were given scope to do things differently. This is not an argument for underfunding or for letting staff go wild, but a powerful rationale for believing in people.  The BCTF continues to vigorously oppose this argument, and insists on restoring some version of the rigid class size/ composition limits that the BC Liberals finally repealed last week via Bill 22.

Having learned quickly how to advocate effectively for my own son, my own journey through K-12 included many desperate pleas for help over the years from families of students who weren't as fortunate. While the system provides costly and elaborate conflict resolution mechanisms for disgruntled teachers, it still provides almost no recourse for the student who is wronged or failed in any of this, or for the families who try to help them fight for their rights.

Surely such opportunities should be the cornerstone of an effective, responsive and accountable system? Perhaps if more attention were paid to providing student-controlled accountability instruments in a context of more flexibility and more resources, all the rest would be forced to fall into place. But despite the rhetoric, neither the Province, the Boards nor the teachers have ever made any meaningful attempt to promote reforms that would really, seriously and effectively ensure that students' interests were first and foremost in all decisions.

I've supported teachers in their last three bargaining rounds since 2001, because in the previous round they'd given up wage increases in exchange for contract provisions that Christy Clark decided to strip illegally in 2002. But each time the BC Liberals approved another compensation increase for teachers, they failed to fully fund it. So students had to finance the gap, sacrifcing more core services, or watching their schools shut down in order to balance Board budgets.

I have great respect for most teachers, their dedication and commitment and the amazing work they do. But their compensation has risen more in the past decade than that of most taxpayers paying the bills, many of whom work just as hard and demonstrate equal commitment and dedication in their own work. These are tight economic times and BC's teachers do not have a hardship case, but after almost a year of "bargaining" they're still demanding a 15% pay increase -- a demand that would guarantee more cuts and more sacrifices from students. Many dedicated public sector workers who serve our children out of school and in adult services have a much stronger argument for pay increases and yet they've settled for zero this round, asking that any new Provincial dollars go directly to addressing service gaps.

Despite the economic climate, BC taxpayers need to consider the business case for urgently reinvesting in public education, given the far higher socioeconomic costs of failing to do so. Today's students cannot wait until the economy is booming again. The window of opportunity in K-12 is all too brief, as any parent of a Grade 12 student can tell you. But the first priority for reinvestment today is to restore crticial student supports and programs cut over the past decade -- not another major increase in staffing costs that will provide no net benefit to students.

Many parents like me joined educators over the past decade to advocate for funding to restore the cuts we've seen on the front lines at our children's schools. We built a solid coalition and generated broad public support, finally forcing even the BC Liberal government to admit their cuts to special education had gone too far. But the BCTF's militancy and isolationism this time has severely fractured the teacher/ parent coalition that fought so hard in the past to mitigate a decade of provincial cuts. And our fractured opposition has only emboldened hard-right elements within the BC Liberals to strengthen their attacks on public education with some of the ugliest components of Bill 22 passed last week.

Fed up with the rhetoric and intransigence of both parties, most ordinary citizens are simply turning their backs on what might have been a pivotal rallying point. No matter how many millions both sides spend on costly TV propaganda campaigns, or how ideologically convinced they might be that they are the ones fighting the good fight, the only message that's coming across loud and clear from both sides is the self-serving one -- it's a message that turning off the public, forcing taxpayers to tune out and eroding the solid base of public support that we built together in support of public education..

I find it extremely sad to watch the very people who think they are trying to save public education ending up unwittingly helping to destroy it. The teachers are now threatening an illegal strike and/or withdrawing non-core services again, actions that will only further punish the innocent children caught in the middle of this, alienate more parent allies and support proponents of privatization, by further cementing and radicalizing public opposition to BCTF demands. Already, we are seeing growing calls for school vouchers, union-busting and the like. And while the Education Minister has finally confronted some key changes that put students first again, his poisonous pill is so full of toxic additives that it will do far more harm than good.

British Columbians go to the polls in another year. Public education certainly has the potential to be a defining election issue, as it was in Ontario when the McGuinty government swept the Conservatives out of office in 2003.

In our last provincial election, British Columbians concerned about public education had slim pickings indeed, with equally insipid and uninspiring platforms offered by both the BC Liberals and the NDP. We can ensure that's not the case in 2013, if we start pressuring all three parties - NDP, Liberals and Conservatives - to spell out what they're offering in terms of detailed plans for fixing our ailing public education system and putting students first, while respecting the roles of both teachers, funders and the broad public interest.

Success in placing Education at the top of the political agenda for 2013 is what will save public education. Not this.

Dawn Steele, MOMS

However, we do not support the positions taken by either the Province or the BC Teachers Federation. We believe neither side is putting students first, with key positions by both parties that are harmful to students with special needs in particular.

Our previous post addressed what to us is one of the key issues in the dispute -- class composition caps -- with links to a 2011 MOMS brief arguing that class composition caps are an ineffective, costly and discriminatory solution that has failed to address the problem of unmanageable classes, while accelerating the erosion of special education resources in our public schools.

This post focusses on funding, in particular funding for special education and other critical learning supports.

The bottom line is the Province has failed to fully fund public education costs for more than a decade. Students across the province have faced cuts to service levels almost every year since we were first thrown into the role of parent advocates in the late 199os.

In the 1990s, teachers traded pay increases for improvements in "working conditions": i.e. contract provisions limiting class size, composition and supplemental staffing.  Those provisions were always controversial and they were lost when former Education Minister Christy Clark illegally tore up the teachers' collective agreement in 2002. In 2006, the Province restored a new variation of class size and compostion limits through Bill 33, despite near unanimous opposition from other education partners, including parent groups. We argued that class composition caps, in particular, were discriminatory and ineffective. Six years later, with parents and teachers more frustrated than ever, students being left ever further behind, and parents avoiding having their children formally designated to avoid discrimination, those concerns have been vindicated.

When Christy Clark tore up the teachers' contract in 2002, she imposed a new agreement offering salary and benefit increases that added hundreds of millions in new education costs. She also eliminated targetted provincial funding grants for most students with special needs, creating enormous pressures for boards with relatively high proportions of students with learning disabilities, for example. The failure to fund these cost increases forced local boards to make unprecedented cuts and to close scores of schools, sparking grassroots campaigns like the 2003 Vancouver SOS movement and a hunger strike to save the only school in remote Wells Barkerville.

Since then, despite acrimonious relations between the Province and the BCTF, several more imposed contracts have each granted further pay and/or benefit increases. Increases in the average salary for BC educators since 2001 have outstripped inflation (Consumer Price Index) by 6%. Meanwhile, total provincial education funding has lagged inflation, and lagged actual costs even further, since staff salaries are (naturally) the primary component of education costs.

The result: BC's public school students have financed the growing gap by absorbing repeated reductions in front-line service levels.

Since the introduction of Bill 33 helped reduce class sizes and/or limit further class size increases, boards have been forced to cut other services to cover the costs of smaller class sizes, which the Province again failed to fully fund. This is why supplemental learning services like libraries and special education have been disproportionally hit, resulting in a devastating erosion of services for the most vulnerable students in the public education system.

(It is worth noting here that while overall enrolment has declined since 2001, the number of identified students with special needs in BC's public schools has continued to climb.)

• This spreadsheet sums up the relevant data documenting all this.

The above spreadsheet was initially developed 2 years ago, to support our advocacy efforts as public schools faced another round of harsh cuts in 2010 due to a Provincial Education budget that failed to cover rising costs, including teachers' salary increases. We have updated it to reflect the 2011/12 data.

In light of all this, we believe a position that puts students first would include the following:

1. A significant increase in provincial funding for special education (the Province's current offer doesn't come close to making a dent in what has been lost - a minimum would be $100 million in new dollars for special education in 2012/13, with more in year 2 as determined collaboratively under #3 below).
2. Agreement between the Province and teachers that any Provincial education funding increases will go first to restoring lost staffing and other front-line supports for students (e.g. libraries, special education, ESL and Aboriginal student services, early assessment and intervention for learning challenges, training, etc), before the Provincial government grants any further increases to staff salary and benefit costs.
3. Agreement by the Province and the BCTF to sit down and work collaboratively with parents and other education partners to identify all the causes of class composition challenges (including underfunding, teacher training and other structural barriers) and to develop and fund effective and mutually-acceptable solutions to class composition challenges.
4. No interrruption of services and an immediate return to teachers' performing their full roles.

Dawn Steele & Cyndi Gerlach, MOMS

• Read the Vancouver Sun report.

MOMS and other parent advocacy groups, along with trustees and administrators, opposed the caps imposed in 2006 with the passage of Bill 33. Only the BC Teachers Federation supported the caps at the time. Now, with another round of labour contract negotiations once again stalled interminably, the province's teachers are again demanding discriminatory class composition limits as a solution to unmanageable classes.

Below is an analysis I wrote last year on why class composition caps will never solve the challenges of unmanageable classes and unmet needs among students with learning challenges, and what we need to be looking at instead.

• Read: Class composition and the special needs problem

I've summed up key points in a letter to the Vancouver Sun:

Kudos to Education Minister George Abbott. He's absolutely right that legislated limits on students with special needs in K-12 classrooms are discriminatory.

Parent groups were united in opposing the class composition limits introduced in 2006. They have proved unworkable, failing to help students or teachers while creating nightmares for administrators.

The solution to unmanageable classes is not discriminatory quotas but better support for teaching and learning that addresses the realities of today's diverse classrooms. That means broader training for teachers, restoring learning supports eroded by a decade of provincial underfunding, flexible models that adapt to actual needs, and appropriate use of technology and innovation to help all students overcome learning barriers without expecting teachers to be superheroes.

Time for the Province and the teachers union to stop posturing and put students first by immediately reinvesting in learning supports and training, addressing gaps in teacher certification standards and supporting new multi-stakeholder frameworks for constructive and collaborative problem solving.

Dawn Steele

Catching up on a very interesting debate...

To answer the original question about private/independent education (the distinction being really just branding because independent schools are becoming less so as they accept more govt funding and consider unionization, etc), I think we need to consider what is the whole point of having public schools in the first place.

If our forefathers thought the most important features of education were choice, flexibility and competition, they'd have chosen the competitive, elitist British model, as the US did. They didn't. They very consciously chose a different way - one that was intended to give each Canadian child an equal opportunity to achieve their unique individual potential, regardless of the circumstances of birth.

Ryerson's vision

In Upper and Lower Canada, where this started as essentially a public Protestant school system, the power of the Catholic Church assured them of control over the souls of their own parishioners' children - so Catholic boards also got government funding (and in most provinces are still the only other schools that do get tax dollars). Children with special needs were not considered capable of being educated so they were left out. Other than that, all Canadians went to school in a free, universal system that offered a level playing field - giving every child an equitable (not equal) opportunity to succeed in life.

So for generations, Canadian children have been able to get a free and inclusive education together at their local comprehensive school, assured that they were getting essentially the same access, regardless of whether their parents were wealthy or dirt poor, or what neighbourhood they lived in, and with the only choice being between Protestant or Catholic public schools, in provinces where the Catholics had enough influence to secure funding. The super wealthy were always free to pay for their own private schools if they wanted to, but very few did so.

It's a system that served Canada remarkably well for generations, creating a highly productive economy, cohesive communities and a highly stable society with very few pockets of real poverty, making us the envy of the world (except First Nations, who had the whole residential school nightmare imposed on them, and kids with invisible disabilities, who were ignored and encouraged to quit early). 

Today, most children in BC can still attend some of the world's top schools for free, and receive a wider array of choices in education, all fully funded by the state, than ever before. There is no question our public education system has produced a more fair, successful and informed society than most.

Inclusion - in theory

Several decades ago, growing awareness of human rights prompted the realization that even children with profound disabilities should have the same rights, and the move to inclusion began - at least in theory.

What we face today is a move to inclusion that was never funded - just as community living was never funded - because they both occured at a point in history where Canadians, like everyone else, came to widely believe in the ideology of deregulation, smaller government and tax cuts as the way to stimulate a rising tide of prosperity that would supposedly lift us all ever higher. Today the BC government provides less than half of what it costs for schools - public or independent - to provide the additional services that children with special needs require (and that gap is one that has grown enormously in just 10 years). Public schools can't charge fees so they can't make up the shortfalls.

Most local boards have heavily subsidized special ed in the public schools to try to mitigate this shortfall. All together, they spend about $300 million more a year on special ed than the province provides in special ed grants. But with growing structural budget deficits since the late 1990s, those subsidies have been stretched increasingly thin. This year, even districts like Richmond are warning they can no longer afford inclusion.

Accountability gap

This slide has been hastened because the provincial accountability framework has an enormous (and growing) gap with respect to serving children with special needs. The Ministry no longer tracks outcomes for many children with special needs; it no longer monitors inputs either. Bill 33 selectively protects mainstream services at the expense of things like special ed. And the Ministry provides no effective appeal or complaints mechanism to allow parents to hold local boards, schools or teachers accountable. So service levels inevitably continue to slide. 

And it is not just the public schools that are failing our kids. Many independent schools won't even accept them. Many religious schools are guilty of the same failures that we see in the public schools, or worse. This failure is not unique to union vs non-union, religious vs secular or public vs private. The common factor is the overlap of the funding/cost gap and the accountability gap.  

Pockets of success remain in public schools and many children continue to survive or even to thrive (mine being one example). But there is no question that our public schools are increasingly failing children with special needs (and all the other vulnerable children who require extra attention). Those who can afford to are turning to private rescue schools or tutoring services. While this may be a good solution in communities like the North Shore or Vancouver, where there are lots of private options and lots of people who can afford them, it is a solution that leaves most British Columbian children with special needs out in the cold. In other words - it's a solution that directly contradicts the original mandate of public education.

Privatize private schools?

So why are people suddenly pointing fingers at independent schools? Since 2001, the BC Liberals have been quietly but gradually increasing funding levels for independent schools, even as they have failed to fully fund a series of new funding pressures on the public schools. BC's Catholic schools had complained for years because they got very little funding compared to those in Ontario, for example. They joined forces with other private schools, rebranded themselves as independent schools and lobbied very effectively based on the (largely unproven) claim that more funding for their schools would help keep down overall education costs.

Most British Columbians had no idea their tax dollars had been subsidizing private and religious schools for decades - so many have been surprised by recent news stories revealing this. Most provinces don't fund private schools like BC does, apart from the Catholic boards. And polls consistently show that most Canadians don't support public funding of private/independent or religious schools, which is why the BC government hasn't advertised this funding shift.

Private, religious and independent schools always have been and always will be there - that's not the pivotal point in question. And how much funding they should or should not receive is a difficult question that society will always wrestle with, although the prevailing societal view is clearly that the pendulum has swung too far.

Two-tiered access

But neither of these are the key question that we should be asking, IMHO. The key question is why are children with special needs being forced to pay privately to get the education to which they are entitled? Why is BC creating a 2-tier system for one "class" of students by denying them full access to a public education? I'm no lawyer, but if children with special needs as a category are disproportionately being denied access to appropriate educational services in BC's public system (and most of us would anecdotally agree that's what's happening), I think we have the makings of a massive discrimination suit against the government if families ever decided to pursue that.

This brings us to the final question of whether it's realistic to think that government can afford special education - a question that genuinely troubles many, even those who are parents of kids with special needs. I don't think we will ever afford the kind of system that will make everyone 100% happy (and as one commenter noted, a reasonable degree of challenge is a healthy part of the whole experience of growing up).

But when we look at the obscene amounts of public dollars spent on other "priorities" there is no question that special education is affordable - especially when we look at the longer terms costs of failing to do so.

Impossible dream?

And in the current context, it is fair to ask whether, instead of investing more in private solutions that will only ever benefit a few, and that will always be inherently inequitable, we are not better off focussing our energies on forcing government to invest in rebuilding the universal system and implementing a full accountability framework that will ensure that every child, regardless of need, has access to a fully-funded public education that meets their individual needs. And one with functional appeal/complaints systems that empower parents to resolve legitimate failures (bullying, denial of service, lack of appropriate expertise etc) 

That is only an impossible dream if we give up and turn our backs on public education. Thankfully the original founders of Canada's public system had more vision and confidence than that (because they certainly didn't have more money or clout than we do!) and I see absolutely no reason why we should settle today for anything less.

Here are some links to information on education and special education cuts:

• Vancouver Parents for Successful inclusion: letter to minister warning that provincial framework forces districts to concentrate cuts in areas like Special Ed to offset provincial funding shortfalls. Read the letter 
• Vancouver Special Education Advisory Committee documents loss of special education teachers despite a 35% increase in students with special needs, warns further cuts planned for Vancouver will present safety risks and deny access. Read the brief and district stats 
• BC Education Coalition/Stop BC Education Cuts: Provincial website and Facebook group gathering information about cuts and various initiatives to fight them.  The site includes a section devoted to special education news and impacts

Surrey: Last week, Surrey DPAC warned that some $18-20 million in downloaded/unfunded provincial costs will result in program cuts that directly harm students. (Press release attached)

Victoria: Victoria trustees told the Times Colonist yesterday they would have to consider cutting the district's Special Education program to balance their budget.

Vancouver: Last week, Vancouver served notice that up to 800 teachers could be laid off to address a provincial funding shortfall ranging from $17 to $35 million, depending on what the province decides to fund in the upcoming provincial budget. And at a meeting for parents of students with special needs this week, the Board Chair acknowledged that special education was particularly vulnerable to cuts, since staff costs are protected via contracts and class size is now protected by legislation, leaving unprotected services like special education as one of the few areas they can cut.

Virtually every school board in the province is confronting similar choices, given the limited number of unprotected programs, like special ed, that they can cut to make up for unfunded provincial costs, since all boards are required by law to balance their budgets regardless of provincial funding shortfalls. Accentuating the looming threat to special education is that the province only funds half or less of what districts actually spend on special ed - a subsidy that is hard for trustees to defend when schools are being closed and core programs slashed.

At the core of this unprecedented crisis is the growing number of downloaded costs that the province has so far refused to cover in provincial education funding grants. These include further increases for teacher salaries and benefits under contracts that the province negotiated, new provincial carbon tax and carbon offset charges, increases to provincial MSP and WCP premiums, implementation costs of new provincial requirements like Bill 33 and full-day kindergarten, and general inflation, which the provincial funding formula also does not cover.

The provincial government will present its budget for 2010-11 in early March and has to date refused to consider new funding to cover these new costs, leaving districts projecting the largest deficits seen in a decade, and cuts that will seriously impact students.

Vulnerable kids unfairly targeted

Provincial officials are justifying the cuts by stating that districts have to tighten their belts like anyone else. This response fails to acknowledge that districts cannot force most district services to tighten their belts because they are protected by provincially-negotiated contracts and requirements. Staff will not sacrifice pay or benefits and boards must also find a way to cover new pay and benefit increases negotiated by the province. Along with provincial requirements governing a host of activities, from class size to reporting and administrative roles, this means districts actually have very few options or "discretionary" spending that can be cut when they are told to tighten their belts.

In effect, school board "belt tightening" amounts to downloading a provincial budgetary crisis onto the most vulnerable students in our public schools - students with special needs, ESL and Aboriginal students and those who need additional programs and supports to succeed. In failing to provide any policy to protect these programs and students while protecting everything from teacher pensions to teacher-student ratios in law, the province has created an uneven playing field that forces school boards to unfairly penalize their most vulnerable students whenever cuts must be made.

ADVOCACY: What you can do

The harsh reality facing our kids is just emerging and there is very little time to act. Parents and advocacy groups representing students with special needs and other vulnerable groups need to act immediately, by telling their MLAs, Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid, Finance Minister Colin Hansen and Premier Gordon Campell that it is not acceptable to target BC's most vulnerable students to solve a problem they had no hand in creating.

1. We need to convince government to cover all education costs in the 2010-11 budget before it is presented on March 3.

2. Strength in numbers. We can be most effective if we join with broader groups of parents, PACs and public education advocacy groups to demand that the province fully fund all provincially-mandated costs, including special education - instead of fighting each other for shares of an inadequate budget and ignoring the roots of the problem.

- Contact your PAC and DPAC and encourage them to write the Premier, FInance Minister, Education Minister and your local MLAs - just as Surrey DPAC has done.

- Join our growing Facebook group "Stop BC Education Cuts" to find out what other parents and districts are doing, to find and share information about cuts and to connect with other parents or advocacy efforts in your community.

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