2001 Legislative Session: 2nd Session, 37th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
MINUTES AND HANSARD

MINUTES SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION Tuesday, November 20, 2001 1 p.m. Douglas Fir Committee Room,  Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C.

Present: Wendy McMahon, MLA (Chair); Reni Masi, MLA (Deputy Chair); Richard Stewart, MLA; Elayne Brenzinger, MLA; Brenda Locke, MLA; Sheila Orr, MLA; Richard Lee, MLA; Tom Christensen, MLA; Karn Manhas, MLA; Rob Nijjar, MLA; Jenny Kwan, MLA

1. The Chair called the meeting to order at 1:07 p.m. 

2. The following witnesses made statements and answered questions:
    1)   Partnership Express Inc.
          Drelene Gibb
    2)   School District 38, Richmond
          Sandra Bourque
    3)   University of Victoria
          Dr. David Turpin
    4)   Dr. Lyse Burgess
    5)   Green Party of British Columbia
          Adriane Carr, Gracie MacDonald
    6)   Camosun College Faculty Association
          Janet Beales
    7)   Lesley Ansell-Shepherd
    8)   Charley Beresford, Lise Wrigley
    9)   B.C. Chamber of Commerce
          John Winter, Andrew Wynn-Williams
    10) Parent Advisory Council for Victor School
          Jim McDermott
    11) Edward Milne Community School Society
          Lori Messer
    12) Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils of Saanich, District 63
          Cindy English, Sheena Hurn
    13) Barbara Adams
    14) Association des Professeurs du Programme d'Immersion et du Programme Francophone
          Anne-Louise McFarland, Aidan Brand, Penny Brand, Peter Brand
    15) U 2000
          Ian McKinnon
    16) Victoria Association for Community Living
          Bev Kissinger

3. The Committee recessed from 5:54 p.m. to 6:03 p.m.

4. The following witnesses made statements and answered questions:
    17) Lake Cowichan Teachers Association
          David Halme
    18) School District 68, Nanaimo-Ladysmith
          John Garenkooper, Tanya Lebans
    19) Saanich Teachers Association
          Mike Hayes
    20) Sooke Teachers Association
          Pam Joyce
    21) District Parent Advisory Council, Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District
          Kim Howland
    22) Save Our Strings; Advocates for Music in Our Schools
          Lori McElroy, Sher Morgan
    23) Gifted PSA
          Sandra Webster-Worthy
    24) Jane Forin
    25) Greater Victoria Community Schools Group
          Patricia Nichol, Marion LaRose, Jim Taylor
    26) Greater Victoria School Board
          Tom Ferris
    27) Harewood Family of Community Schools
          Debbie Lumsden
    28) Esquimalt Community School
          Bruce McIldoon

5. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 9:12 p.m.

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE 
ON EDUCATION

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2001

ISSN 1499-4216

[ Page 511 ]

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2001

           The committee met at 1:07 p.m.

           [W. McMahon in the chair.]

           W. McMahon (Chair): Good afternoon. I'd like to call our meeting to order this afternoon and give you a brief overview on the Select Standing Committee on Education. Then we'll ask the members to introduce themselves.

           On August 27, 2001, the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia asked the Select Standing Committee on Education to consider ways to improve access, choice, flexibility and quality in the kindergarten-to-grade-12 public education system and to consider initiatives to strengthen the universities, colleges, institutes and on-line learning agencies that make up B.C.'s post-secondary education system. The committee was also instructed to prepare a report of its observations and recommendations for tabling in the Legislature by February 28, 2002.

           We've been travelling throughout the province. We've had a number of meetings in Victoria and have touched on the East Kootenay region and Kelowna. We're on our way this week up into the northeast corner of the province — the Queen Charlottes tomorrow, Houston and then Prince George on Friday. We've been busy gathering information and listening to what people have to say. At the end of the day, I think we'll end up with quite a bit of information to go through to prepare our report and our recommendations.

           I'd like to start by having the committee members introduce themselves and their ridings to you. We'll start over on my right with Richard Lee.

           R. Lee: Richard Lee, MLA for Burnaby North.

           B. Locke: Good afternoon. My name is Brenda Locke. I'm from Surrey.

           E. Brenzinger: Hello. Elayne Brenzinger from Surrey-Whalley.

           K. Manhas: Good afternoon. Karn Manhas, Port Coquitlam–Burke Mountain.

           T. Christensen: I'm Tom Christensen. I'm the MLA for Okanagan-Vernon.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Reni Masi, MLA, Delta North.

           R. Stewart: Richard Stewart, MLA, Coquitlam-Maillardville.

           S. Orr: Good afternoon. Sheila Orr, Victoria-Hillside.

           R. Nijjar: Good afternoon. Rob Nijjar, Vancouver-Kingsway.

           J. Kwan: Jenny Kwan, MLA, Vancouver–Mount Pleasant.

           W. McMahon (Chair): I'm Wendy McMahon, MLA for Columbia River–Revelstoke, and I'm chairing the committee.

           Our first presentation this afternoon is by Drelene Gibb, representing Partnership Express Inc. Good afternoon.

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Presentations

           D. Gibb: Good afternoon, Madam Chair and the sitting Standing Committee on Education. First of all, I would like to commend you on creating such committees and going about the province. It's certainly renewed my confidence in good government.

           I would like to present to you our Partnership Express Inc. system, which was pilot-tested by the Ministry of Education in '92. During the period of the last several years there's been a lot of new development and questions around how we're going to communicate effectively with parents and the systems we're going to create in order to do that.

           What Partnership Express is about and has continued to look at over a number of years is how we support the child as the agent of delivery of information between the school and the home. They're the natural link that goes back and forth every day, and my question is: what systems do we have that are comprehensive, consistent and integrated that actually assist children in delivering information and engaging in conversation with their parents about their learning?

           Now, as a small business I've gone through a lot of ups and downs and mistakes. I've certainly made those mistakes in developing and maintaining a commitment to looking at and continuing to look at ways to perfect a system that will actually help every single child deliver information and talk about their learning to their parents and how to engage the parent community when in the home there are language differences, literacy and socioeconomic differences and a lack of technological capacity.

           What systems and technologies are we using that actually include the child in the process? How do we integrate things like auto phone systems that are calling into the home and the portal project that's being presented, I believe, to Treasury Board in the near future? How are we going to make sure that the access is there for every single parent and that they can actually afford it? How can we create a paper backup guide to actually integrate government information in terms of how it is having an impact on the home environment?

           For every different ministry or every different issue that comes, the first thing government or organizations want to do is to raise awareness. Then they think: "Well, we have to get our awareness campaign through the schools and home to those parents." Parents are basically hit with one different kind of awareness campaign after another. Yet we're really not asking the strategic question of how and what parents are actually

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supposed to do with all of this in terms of how they create a home learning environment and how they can support their children and family unit in facilitating and supporting these needs for building safer communities.

           Partnership Express has looked at all of these realities and built a system that actually would create a two-way communication link that would link every single home to every school not only in British Columbia but all across Canada, and it could go into North America. There's also been an interest on an international level about this, especially in developing countries, where there are not necessarily electrical connections or technological connections.

           At the same time, another big question concerns the hopes and the dreams in the IT to create a paperless society. Partnership Express, which supports paper home delivery through the child, is the old paradigm. I question that reality as to whether we actually are going to become a paperless society or if what we're being challenged to do is to better integrate paper information to support and actually enhance directives to the technology information bases that we have. That means, for instance, that telephones have telephone books. TVs have TV guides. Where would there be a paper-based education guide for the Internet delivered to parents in the home unit that actually helps give some directives and that gives a guide to building better home learning environments?

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           Parents need help. We're asked to do an awful lot with no training. For instance, within the federal government there's quite a comprehensive program that starts from birth to support parents in neoteny and caring for their children from birth up through preschool. Once those parents hit public education, because of the lack of a consistent, formalized system that works for every single child in the school, the connection with parents begins to diminish through the years. You can almost see a shift as the curriculum shifts — the detachment, more and more lack of parent involvement.

           A lot of studies haven't been done in this area. Particularly, if a system like ours got procured by the government, which is what I would like to see, B.C. would lead the way in buying the Partnership Express system and installing the equipment into schools for the classrooms. We'd have tests on children where the misses were occurring.

           We'd have physical mailboxes in the classrooms — like most offices have, like the teachers have in their school offices — and a courier pouch that's independent from backpacks and lunch kits. Most of the stuff that comes home for parents shows up like this, in the bottom of the backpack or lunch kit, and maybe you find it a couple of weeks later. There would be a specific mailbox in the home with a calendar with large-enough squares. Every child in the family would come home on Wednesday, communication day, which would be the delivery day, with the same vehicle to enable that simplified system so that content could actually be shared more effectively with parents and children in the family.

           There could be some backup support on television and the media. A Partnership Express minute could help to model how to talk to your children about their learning, how to build better learning environments in the home — little tips like this that are coordinated and support a vehicle for driving that value system.

           Basically, what we have here, too, is a framework for a software prototype to create the look and feel of the mail for children to read, so they actually know what this notice is that's going home. They can read it at a grade 2 level. If their parents have literacy problems, that parent is more likely to engage and not be embarrassed about their inadequacy in their education if the child is able to perform and share that information and show their favourite work sample, which could be showcased in the pouch. A lot of parents who have literacy problems will back off from involvement with their children because of embarrassment. How can we diminish that and still engage those parents and get them feeling more confident about participating?

           As well, with language we can prompt parents about what this notice is about in their language base. We have language clip art which prompts. It'll say: "This notice is about come to the school meeting or come to the standing committee presentation." There would be clip art for language bases on that notice. Even within the classroom, in a few minutes — in less than 20 minutes a week — teachers could manage this and fit it into a language arts curriculum.

           They would be able to say: "I've got two students. One is from China, and one is from Russia. Wei Chong, how do you say, 'Come to the school meeting' in Mandarin?" Wei Chong could stand up and say it, and the class will repeat that phrase. They learn a little bit of that Mandarin Chinese. It also enhances that multicultural reality, which is often where a lot of bullying goes on in terms of differences in the classroom, and it is how to bring that into inclusion. It's the same thing with Yaroslav. You could say to Yaroslav: "How do you say this in Russian now?" Within just a few minutes we've used that information, that notice the school is delivering home as part of language arts. It includes the multicultural reality. It supports the demographic realities that every single child may have when they go into the home. Whether or not they're special needs, everybody can use the same system, starting in kindergarten through grade 12.

           We'd be sending a very positive, good-news message on how to get the government to coordinate information into the home cross-governmentally and how to engage universities, like the University of Victoria, in research around these ideas of family-school communications. There are lots of them. Once we have a foundational system in, we've got some framework upon which to base how we are going to extend the mandate of public education to include two-way communication between the school and home. Right now it's basically a one-way communication. The children

[ Page 513 ]

don't have a bridge; they have a diving board — if we were to say form follows function.

[1320]

           We could engage the university in research. We could also have Camosun College being more involved in terms of a linkage with colleges, in bringing in a program something like Parent Academy in the United States. I've met the people who originated this. It was a way to say that when parents volunteer in the schools, let's give more support to the parents associations for actually dealing with family-school communications. The kind of volunteer activities parents might do could automatically be translated into skill sets, so they could actually get a certificate for having volunteered which gives them prerequisites for further adult education. Those kinds of things are very important for parents to begin to feel they are having more support in their vital and very important role as family educators and for how we see our cooperative efforts with the teachers within the public education system or the education system in general.

           Basically, what I would like to try to do is get on a new footing with the government — since I think I've scared people along the way — to look at how we can actually rebuild trust through broad-based participation of our shared systems, and how to include children in that process. Are there any questions?

           T. Christensen: Just a quick question.

           Thank you, Drelene. I think you mentioned right at the beginning of your presentation that this was used in 1992. At that point, the government looked at and tried it. Do you know where that was done?

           D. Gibb: It wasn't the system as it is now. It was a forerunner to that. At the time it was called Tell-a-Home Communications. It was a teacher-driven file box for collecting school information. It did have the courier pouch, but it didn't have a home mailbox. It didn't have the technological software or the idea for how to connect to the Web or the Internet or any of that stuff. It was done in 1992. It was supported by the director of communications. The pilot test took place in Sooke, Saanich and Victoria school districts. There were 15 classroom sites. It ran for an entire year. Schools are still using bits and pieces of the system. However, it's been broken apart. Many of them have fallen toward the direction of student planners. With student planners it's content; it's not a framework for delivery. Student planners would go inside this.

           Just out of curiosity, on my way here I was driving down Oak Bay Avenue. It was lunchtime. I stopped my car and asked 12 high school students: "Did you get a student planner at the beginning of the year?" All of them said yes. This was random. I thought: I'm just going to do this. I asked: "How many of you are still using your student planner?" None of them.

           We have a good idea, and it's modelled by parents, but once again, I don't think we're looking at the complexity of the reality of actually expanding the system into two-way. We're assuming it's there, because we've always done this, but from a system vantage point, there is no infrastructure between the school and the home for two-way communications. It's like everybody having telephones with no telephone line. It hasn't been laid. I'm trying to say: let's think creatively. It's actually the child who is the fibre optics. The child is the cable system in this particular design.

           As a result of that pilot test back in 1992 — and I think we had several thousand parents involved — there were no negative comments. Everybody liked it.

[1325]

           We did an interview with 120 dropout kids from the street to find out that most of them knew they were going drop out. They dropped out between grades 8 and 10, and all of them knew they were going to drop out in grade 2. It was because they knew that their home was different from the school, and they couldn't bridge that reality.

           We had an independent review from the University of Victoria that had glowing reports from everybody. When we all sat down back in the ministry at the end of this pilot test, nobody knew what to do with it, because there wasn't any fit for it within the given structure. I got: "Go down to the school districts. Go back. Form a company. Talk to the publishing companies." No publisher would touch this, because a call hadn't been put out by the ministry. It all ends up coming back to the Ministry of Education creating the mandate for actually embracing it, looking at this and finally dealing with it.

           W. McMahon (Chair): We have one more question from Richard Lee.

           R. Lee: Thank you for the presentation. In some schools they have an automatic dialling system. For example, if the student is absent — didn't appear — or late to school, then the parents are notified by automatic dialling from the school. Does your system have something like that?

           D. Gibb: No, it doesn't have anything like that. I think that's very positive. There are a number of parts to the puzzle here, you know. I think auto phone systems are good. Where the auto phone system falls down is when we're wanting to use it as a substitute for giving more extended information — for instance, something about curriculum or events. How many parents, when they get that phone message, are going to actually call back to the school and sit down and write down any of the information? That's where you lose it.

           I think having a prompting system for anything that has to do with emergencies or has to do with something related to attendance…. There are ways in which we can embrace these various systems, but that is not a substitute for including the child as the interface of a communication system so it's in your face. The kid comes home, we're talking to each other, and we're helping parents understand how to ask the right questions in a short period of time and how to have a delivery system that actually makes everything easier for everybody.

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           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation today. We appreciate you coming out.

           D. Gibb: It was a real honour to be here.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Our next presentation is from school district No. 38, Sandra Bourque. Good afternoon and welcome.

           S. Bourque: I have with me the superintendent of our school district, Chris Kelly.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Welcome again.

           S. Bourque: I'd like to begin by, of course, thanking you for giving us this opportunity to present on behalf of Richmond school district. I'm going to begin with the conclusion, because I know what it's like, being a school trustee, to hear many, many presentations.

           Ford used to say in its advertisements that quality is job one. The foundation for quality which must exist to make it possible to accomplish job one is productive partnerships throughout the school system. As important as policy, funding, curriculum and public accountability are to the school system, it is working relationships that determine the degree to which it will succeed and its efficiency in doing so.

           The most fundamental of these partnerships is the one between staff, student and parent at the school level. In Richmond we attend to this as a first priority. But the most important political partnership is the one between the ministry and local school boards, and that is the one you can do something about. We therefore urge you to begin by considering how that partnership can be strengthened and suggest that it requires three things.

           First, there must be a realistic match between the public expectations created by the provincial government for schools and the resources provided for them. This doesn't mean you can't dream, but we do have to set realistic parameters around our dreams. It serves no one's best interests to create expectations that exceed what is reasonably possible.

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           Second, there must be ongoing communication within a relationship of mutual respect. The ministry must consult with districts before it pronounces to the public, and districts must ensure that their comments and actions recognize the legitimate role of provincial policy. Both must respect the authority of each other; neither should point fingers.

           Third, districts must have greater stability and predictability in their funding and must be free to use available resources with the minimum of constraint. Micromanagement is not the way to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

           Now, as you can see in our presentation to you, we're going to focus on high-quality learning. Access, flexibility and choice, which are the other questions you've posed, are important, and we support what the B.C. School Trustees Association presented to you regarding them. To us they are a means to an end, and that end is high-quality learning for students. What people mean by quality can be quite elusive. To some people it might be a narrow focus on academics. To others it requires all that it takes to make a good citizen.

           For purposes of our presentation we mean it as it relates to the core purpose of the B.C. school system defined in the preamble to the School Act, which is "to enable all learners to develop their individual potential." We envision this will happen across the whole broad spectrum of intellectual, human and career goals stated in the mission statement.

           This can't happen as a system. It has to happen for each individual, one at a time, and only in relation to that particular learner's ability. Thus, the system has to be extremely flexible and responsive, and it must adapt to the learner rather than requiring the learner to adapt to it.

           Public education benefits from common purpose and consistent practices, but it requires creativity. It is doomed by uniformity. The major vehicle for ensuring quality is our professional teachers in the school. That's why professional autonomy is an important thing. This doesn't mean unfettered freedom for individual teachers, but it refers, from our point of view, to an obligation for them to adapt their practices to the needs of the particular learners they are serving in light of what the community of professional educators has commonly agreed to.

           In order for them to know the needs and abilities of their students, this requires them to seek information from parents to complement what they're able to observe and learn in the classroom. It requires a partnership between them and the parent.

           At all levels in the school system there is a delicate balance between individual perspectives and intentions, between recognized needs and available resources, between services, individuals and responsibilities to larger groups. The most challenging balancing act is between consistent structure and individual creativity.

           The dynamic balance that characterizes the school system is perhaps best maintained through partnerships between the ministry and the districts; between elected officials, their local constituency and educational professionals; between administration and teachers; and most centrally between staff, student and parents.

           We've attempted to illustrate that nested relationship by the diagram you have. You can see that at the centre lies the student, who we are serving, and the fundamental partnership between student, teacher and parent. This is our focus in Richmond. It's described in this document, which I'll leave with you, called Our Foundations. This is all about the relationship and how we set about improving and maintaining it.

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           As I said in the conclusion, the partnership of particular importance to this presentation is that between the ministry and local school boards. What's important about this relationship is that it has to happen. If school

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boards are going to successfully implement what you as politicians want us to implement, then we have to have a good working relationship. The goal for both of us is quality learning within what for us is a highly diverse context. That's across the province. A strong working relationship ensures that the needs and interests of individual communities are known to you and that the expectations of the ministry are interpreted and applied in ways that are relevant to our local, individual communities. This partnership is required in order to provide an interpretative bridge that enables communication and supports the common interest in quality learning for all learners.

           As I said before, if you remember only one thing from this presentation, I hope it will be our plea to nurture the critical relationship between the ministry and local boards. Diversity in this province brings difference, and differences bring conflict. It can be constructive or destructive, but it's the quality of relationships that determines which that will be. We mean not just communication but consultation in a meaningful way, sharing responsibility for the many challenges we face and maximizing our freedom to act. We believe that this is fostered when government sets realistic expectations and provides commensurate resources, when there's active and mutually respectful communication between us and when we have the minimum necessary prescription.

           There are two issues specific to Richmond I'm going to use to illustrate what it is we're asking of you. Those are special education and English as a second language. We understand the financial difficulties facing government. However, it simply must be noted that right now B.C. schools across the province spend $60 million more to provide special education than they receive in funding for this purpose. In Richmond that's $3 million. We do it because it's essential to ensuring access to learning for everybody. It's a two-way street. It's important for the special education children, but it's equally important that those special education children get those resources — and for the other kids in the class as well. Without it, we will not be enabling all learners. That's our core purpose.

           There's no option but to do what we feel is necessary. This means we draw from other parts of our budget. We're at the breaking point. We have no more ability to redirect funds. Even with that, we do not believe we're meeting the essential needs for all our special needs learners, both those who fit the ministry's strict criteria for funding and those who have recognized needs but are not funded. This is our biggest financial challenge, and it's the greatest threat to educational quality in our schools.

           However, if we could imagine that the financial crisis were alleviated, the next most important thing would be elimination of unnecessary bureaucracy in special ed as proposed in the special ed review, which you can refer to. Of particular importance to us is that we be able to direct more time and effort towards actually serving the needs of our students and not bureaucracy. For students with low-incidence disabilities the ministry policies are reasonable and manageable, but for students with high-incidence disabilities, they are wasteful of resources.

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           English as a second language. I have to tell you that Richmond has the lowest percentage of English-speaking households in British Columbia. Ten years ago we had virtually no ESL students. I'm sure you can imagine what that means in our classrooms. You don't pull out students when 66 percent of them have or have had English as a second language and are recent immigrants to the district.

           This isn't to say things are awful, only that they're very different and more complex. Actually, our academic results for students, and for our ESL students, are really excellent. I'll refer you to the provincial final results and FSA results. That's not the issue. The issue for us is that we are not able to provide the supports necessary to those students to fully integrate them into the population, and we're definitely not able to communicate with parents.

           Parents are required in that partnership. We have to have parents in that partnership, and if we can't even communicate with our parents, we're in dire straits. In cooperation with our district parents we've produced Learning Matters: A Guide for Parents. It's a wonderful resource for parents. We had a parent translate it into Chinese for us for free. We've got dozens and dozens of other language groups we're not communicating with at all because we can't afford to hire somebody to translate. Not every parent group has the skill and ability to translate — not so much a simple translation of English, but the intent, the culture and the understandings that have to go with it.

           More money, of course, would help us, but we need to have more flexibility in the use of our funds and not be constrained by an auditing system which is extremely restrictive. Besides loosening the constraints of the auditing system, the provincial government could help us by integrating its immigration support services with the educational system, which is the point of greatest contact for most immigrant families. That's where new immigrants have the chance to meet other families, other kids, to understand the system. We do it. We do it well. We're not supposed to do it. We're not funded, but we do it. Again, we have to find the money from somewhere. The money that's provided for ESL was supposed to go for settlement services like that, but now constraints have been put on it, so we can't use it for those kinds of things.

           The thing is, if you don't facilitate the full integration of those students by the time they exit in grade 12 and go on to UBC, they're going to return — and they are returning — to their homelands, where they might feel more comfortable, and with our education. We've lost a very valuable human resource, and we've lost a huge investment in terms of all that learning by those students. We think that's a really great loss to the community. We've worked really hard with the community to be able to support that. We've done a wonderful job. Our teachers are supportive; our parents are supportive. We have worked so hard in Richmond to ensure that.

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           I mean, imagine your population flipping from your standard Caucasian-dominated population to 66 percent new immigrants, primarily Asian, in ten years. Those students do well in school. The students born here do well in schools. We have worked so hard at that. But you know what? We need help. We really need help with the integration of those students and their parents and with maintaining that connectedness at the foundation of all learning, the parent-teacher-student relationship.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. Do we have any questions? We have just a couple of minutes.

           B. Locke: My question is around ESL students. About how long does it take for a child to learn English well enough so they are fluent? The second part of that would be: I understand you get additional funding for ESL. How long does that carry on throughout that student's school life?

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           S. Bourque: On the average it takes two years to acquire social English, which is being able to communicate with your friends and neighbours, get the bus, that kind of thing. It then takes five to seven years to get the English required to be able to perform well academically — to read textbooks, government publications and things like that.

           Students, on the average, are funded for five years now. It used to be longer, but that's been pulled back. There was a cap placed on that. In pulling back, they actually upped the amount that we get for a student, but we get it for a shorter period of time. In our district it's roughly $1,100.

           C. Kelly: That's right.

           S. Bourque: It's $1,100. Unfortunately, more and more of that has been directed towards only one way of providing a service to those students, and that is through an ESL teacher. As I've told you, pulling out students for an ESL teacher is not the best mode when most of your students are ESL. You don't function that way. Those are the constraints that have been put upon us by a government-initiated contract, actually.

           In our district we had provided the classroom with educational assistants as a way of providing support to the classroom teacher. We believe the best way of providing support to a student who has English as a second language is for the classroom teacher essentially to be the ESL teacher. She or he has to modify his practices in a way that lets all of those students in that classroom feel that they have a connection, that they see themselves reflected in that curriculum. Again, we have undertaken a large amount of professional development for all of our teachers to ensure they have the skills and ability to deal with what they see every day in their classrooms. This has been most successful with elementary teachers. It gets hard for a secondary teacher of, for instance, social studies to realize they have to modify and adapt, but they're doing it.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks. In the essence of time we're going to have to move on. I really appreciate you both coming today and making the presentation. On behalf of the committee, thank you.

           Our next presenter this afternoon is Dr. David Turpin from the University of Victoria.

           D. Turpin: I'll wait until the handout's made its way around. What I'd like to do is have you join me as I work through this handout, because I think there are some figures and data in there you'll find interesting.

           Suffice it to say that my message is rather simple and straightforward. Firstly, universities are absolutely fundamental to the revitalization of this province economically, socially and culturally. Secondly, the university presidents in this province are working together closely and are willing to work with government in order to achieve our objectives of building the capacity necessary to achieve the first objective.

           Basically, I'd like to give you a bit of an overview of the role of universities in the knowledge economy, then how we position ourselves for success and the importance of building capacity in the system and then how some of the new-era initiatives fit in with these goals and what we have to do in order to reach beyond that.

           On the second page you'll see a couple of quotes I've taken from a report this year from the OECD, which really served to underscore the importance of innovation in driving contemporary society. The ability to create, distribute and exploit knowledge is increasingly central to competitive advantage, wealth creation and better standards of living. Innovation is a key driver of economic growth, and innovation increasingly relies on cooperation between firms and universities.

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           In British Columbia the key thing is that investment jobs and income will depend increasingly on the strength and vitality of knowledge-based sectors and institutions. My great-great-grandparents moved here at the early part of the last century, and they came to an economy that was based on fish from the sea, trees from the land and minerals from the soil. Their great-great-grandson sees an economy based on a new natural resource. It's the intellectual resources of the people of this province. The challenge for all of us is to invest in that resource and make sure it's there so that we can meet the important objectives we're setting for ourselves.

           On the third page you'll see the case made for universities in the knowledge economy. It's Canadian data; the same applies here in British Columbia. What this figure does is look at job growth in different sectors of our economy over the last decade. It also indicates the proportion of jobs in those sectors that require a university degree. There's a stunning correlation, and it's not just a random correlation. What we are seeing is that the areas of growth in our society are those that require the highest levels of education. Even those sectors growing within the old economy are growing because of the investment of intellectual resources. There is no such thing as an old economy anymore. The old

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resource industries are now high tech. They are using the intellectual resources of the people of this province.

           The question, then, is: how do we position ourselves for success? One of the things I hope this committee will do in its report is to ask some fundamental questions. How are we doing? What are the challenges we face? How can we meet those challenges?

           On page 4 you'll see one of the key roles of a university. A university really has two roles. One is to educate individuals. Those individuals receive a personal benefit from that, but society also receives a benefit. The second major role is innovation and discovery. Those innovations and discoveries flow through to the citizens of our province and our country and result in the improvement of the standard of living.

           The first figure there shows how Canada ranks relative to other OECD countries in terms of our investment in research and development. You can see we're down there in the same sort of area as Ireland and the United Kingdom. The provinces and the federal government have recently signed a commitment to move into fifth place in the OECD ranking. If you look at where British Columbia is relative to the rest of the country, we're about half the investment in R and D. The challenge for us to move up to about 3 percent, which would be required to meet the commitment, is going to result in a real challenge not only for Canada but particularly for British Columbia. One of the reasons we're so low is because of the lack of capacity in the university systems.

           If you look at the bottom figure, one way to look at this is how we do in terms of our ability to grant degrees per 18-to-24-year-old. The bottom figure on that page shows we currently rank last out of all the provinces in Canada in our capacity to grant degrees to your typical university-aged individual 18 to 24 years old. We are dead last. If you are unlucky enough to be born in British Columbia, you have half the chance of getting a university education than if you were born in Nova Scotia.

           We ask ourselves what's going to happen in the future. If we look on page 5, this looks at the growth rate of the university-aged population in Canada. You can see we're going to see significant growth nationally, but that growth is not homogenously distributed. Newfoundland: big reductions in the number of 18-to-24-year-olds. The Atlantic provinces and Quebec: either no change or some reduction. Ontario and British Columbia: huge increases in the number of 18-to-24-year-olds over the coming decade. We will see about a 15 percent increase in that cohort in this province over the next ten years.

           What does that mean for the capacity of university systems? We can look at the bottom of the page. If we simply wanted to be average today, we would have to add 20,000 full-time-equivalent spaces to the university system within this province. That would make us average. If we set the goal of being average by the year 2010, given the demographic growth we're going to experience, we would have to add 35,000 FTE students. To put this in perspective, the current university capacity in this province is 65,000. We will have to increase the number of seats in the universities in this province by about 50 percent by the end of your second mandate as government. If we wanted to be bold and say let's do for the students of this province what they do in Ontario, we would have to add 53,000 seats, almost doubling the capacity of the university system over the next eight to ten years.

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           How are we doing? The next page shows us a little bit about how we compare internationally in terms of funding, government investment and higher education relative to the United States and Canada. You can see the divergence in resources there over the last two decades. If you look at what's happened in British Columbia and look at the bottom of the page at revenue per student as a sum of both operating grant and tuition, you can see that where we used to be slightly above average, we've now dropped below average. Not only do we have a system that is undercapacity — the lowest-capacity system in the country — but we're underfunding it on a per-student basis as well.

           Some of the implications of this are staggering. You turn to page 7, and you ask: "Well, what does this mean for innovation in the province?" We compare British Columbia and Alberta in terms of the research funding it's getting as a percent of the nation's available research resources. You can see the percentage coming to British Columbia has declined significantly over the past number of years, whereas Alberta has rocketed ahead.

           The other lines on there represent the relative population of the two provinces. You can see that in British Columbia we have a population of about 13 percent of the national population, yet we're bringing in less than 9 percent of the federal research funding. Alberta has about 10 percent of the nation's population and is bringing in 13 percent of the research funding. That's due to the lack of capacity. If we don't have the professors to generate the resources, this is federal money we're leaving. We're saying: "Alberta, Quebec, take it. It's yours." We're leaving a lot of money on the table.

           What do we have to do? Well, to be successful we have to set a goal of having degree completion rates superior to the national average. We have to concentrate on the best and brightest faculty. That will allow us to develop and sustain strong graduate programming, a world-class research infrastructure and leading-edge utilization of technology. It would allow us to position this province as a leader.

           Look at the next page, page 8: innovative approaches in responding to these challenges. The issue is really capacity-building. How do we build the capacity we need? That's a shared responsibility. It's a responsibility of the universities, of government and of the private sector. There are a number of innovative approaches in the New Era document that are going to contribute to this, but in fact, when they are fully implemented, they will meet less than 10 percent of the capacity requirements we need simply to be average. They're important initiatives, but they're really just the start.

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           The leading-edge chairs is an exciting opportunity to bring world-class researchers to the province. This double-the-opportunity program is a new-era initiative to double the number of graduates in high-tech fields. It maps perfectly onto the University of Victoria strategy in engineering, where basically every department in our faculty of engineering has been set up to map on high-tech — electrical engineering, the high-tech mechanical work that we do and computer science. That's our focus.

           In terms of medical education, the real importance of expanding the number of doctors is to service the communities in this province. You can see, on the bottom of that page, the Premier's commitments to that and his commitment to funding and supporting the Island medical program, along with the northern medical program, to ensure doctors are trained in the regions and have opportunities to work in the communities they are going to have to service.

           On page 9 you can see how that program maps out, how the increases in enrolments will occur over the coming years, with UVic, UNBC and UBC engaged in a very important and very positive partnership.

           I want to wind up and hopefully give you a minute or two for questions and conclude where I started. The universities of this province are going to play a key role in revitalizing B.C.'s economy and its economic, social and cultural infrastructure. The province's universities are working very, very closely together on a number of very important initiatives and look forward to working to meet these huge capacity challenges that we face and to serving the people of this province.

           I'll leave it there, Wendy, and hopefully we've got time for a couple of questions.

           W. McMahon (Chair): We'll start with Karn Manhas.

           K. Manhas: Thank you, Dr. Turpin, for a very comprehensive and to-the-point presentation. You mentioned that British Columbia is lagging behind in post-secondary participation and degree-granting. Where do you see the role of colleges and university colleges in helping bridge that gap?

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           D. Turpin: The numbers that I gave you were simply the pro rata share that would be required in universities. I'm a big fan of the college system. I'm a graduate of a community college. I did my first two years at Langara and then went to UBC and completed it, so I'm a big fan. We have the best-integrated post-secondary education system in the country. As I've said to the minister, we have a Ferrari of an education system. The trouble is, we're powering it with a Volkswagen engine right now.

           It works. You can do more effective credit transfer through the system than any other post-secondary system in the country. It's something we can really be proud of. Certainly within the university system we are.

           This is a shared responsibility. University colleges play a role. So do the community colleges in feeding students in. I would not sit here and make the case and say the answer is all in universities — absolutely not. There is capacity required throughout the system. What this says is if we are going to meet that challenge given the current distribution of students, what would we have to do in the university sector? The same would have to apply for the colleges.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Jenny, did you have your hand up?

           J. Kwan: No, but I'd be happy to ask a question. Based on your presentation, the biggest issue, of course, is capacity in terms of space. With the percentages you have given, how would you break that down in terms of a time line to achieve the capacity requirements you think are necessary?

           D. Turpin: As you are aware, we're five or six years, I think, into a capital spending freeze in universities. If we are given money tomorrow to build a building, the first students who will benefit from that building are the students who arrive in 2004. The time lags in planning are really quite significant. If we're looking at meeting by 2010 these goals we've set here simply to become average, the need to develop and invest in the capital infrastructure and the operating infrastructure is absolutely key.

           The challenge is in terms of the double-the opportunity program and the medical program. We simply have to get approval to go ahead on the capital spending now to meet the commitments the Premier has made for 2004-05. We can't not be building today for those commitments that have been made for the mid-part of this decade. That's the important thing. You can't simply decide we're going to increase the number of graduates this year. There's a big time lag involved in building the physical capacity and then bringing in the faculty who are going to teach in the system.

           One of the things I didn't talk about is the huge wave of retirements we are experiencing. Over the next decade half of our faculty are going to retire. If we look nationally, the number of jobs for faculty has gone from about 1,000 a year to 2,500 this year. Given the retirement of the early baby-boomers, it'll stay at that level for the next decade.

           The scary part is we haven't increased PhD enrolments in this province or this country for a decade now. Where are we going to get these people from? The academic labour market is heating up like you wouldn't believe, and we've all heard of the brain drain, people heading off to greener pastures. One of the challenges we have is to increase the capacity of our graduate schools, our graduate programming, so we can provide this current wave of students — these are real students in our elementary and high schools that are going to need access to university — with the professors they need.

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           S. Orr: Thank you, Dr. Turpin. On capacity-building, can we talk a little bit about increased tuition fees, how that will affect you and where you're at, what you need to do to put yourself in line with the other provinces?

           D. Turpin: At this point the tuition in this province is second lowest of all the provinces. Quebec is lower. The question becomes: how are we going to fund the system? We know the system is underfunded. We're waiting for some indication of what will happen on tuition. We've been told our grants will be frozen for the next three years. The question is: what happens on tuition?

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           People are pretty anxious about that. Students are concerned. Our planning, and we've shared this with the students, is if we're to meet our cost increases, say, in the coming year with a frozen grant without cutting our services — this doesn't increase capacity or anything; this basically keeps the water out of the boat — this year alone we'd have to be looking at somewhere between a 25 and 30 percent increase in tuition. Those are big numbers, and if you think of that for the next three years, tuition would go up quite dramatically. Within that there's no provision for increases in capacity. That's simply keeping the wheels on the bus, so to speak. So we do face some big challenges.

           R. Lee: Thank you, Dr. Turpin. My question is about a balance between research and the increasing numbers of seats at universities. We are right now, in both cases, the last in Canada in terms of research and funding and also in the degree of production. With limited resources, what do you think should be a priority?

           D. Turpin: Within a university I don't think you can distinguish that. The thing that defines a university is knowledge creation, knowledge transmission and knowledge application. That's the difference between a university and a college. What the universities do is bring bright young people into contact with leading-edge researchers, and they walk out with the capacity to engage in innovation. These go hand in hand. It's not one; it's not the other. Universities are unique institutions that require both in order to work.

           R. Lee: In your opinion, with limited resources, what do you think should be the priority?

           D. Turpin: That is my opinion: that by investing in capacity, you bring in more faculty that are going to generate more of this external resource. You see, the thing to remember is if you look at the total university operating budgets, less than 40 percent comes from the province.

           I'll give you an example at UVic. Of a total of about a quarter of a billion dollars a year, about $100 million comes from the province. The rest comes from self-generated money. It comes from tuition. It comes from research grants we bring in from somewhere else. The return on the investment of a provincial dollar within a university is very, very positive.

           What that money does is it's all spent on salaries. People within our region are going out, funding their labs and hiring people. This money immediately moves back into the economy with this multiplier effect, to say nothing about all the benefits that spin off from the ideas, the innovations, the spin-off companies, and all those sorts of things that happen. Again, investing in capacity also yields these incredible benefits on research and innovation.

           R. Lee: Okay. Thank you.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Our next presentation is Dr. Lyse Burgess. Good afternoon.

           L. Burgess: Madam Chair, members of the committee, this is a rare opportunity for the citizens of B.C. As a participating and concerned citizen, I value it greatly — particularly if today happens to be national child day. I haven't confirmed that, but I suspect it might be.

           As a parent I've struggled and worked with the education system for some 18 years at many levels. My children are presently in the post-secondary phase of their educational passage, and my younger child is just out of grade 12. I've tried to work with the public system, home school and correspondence. I've participated in parent advisory councils, district parent advisory councils and BCCPAC. I've served as president of school parent councils as well as the district council, and I'm presently serving my last term on the board of BCCPAC.

           I've had the privilege to partner with many superb teachers, but most often I thought these teachers were superb in spite of the system. I've encountered fewer superb administrators, but here again, I can say that most often I thought their excellence was in spite of the system.

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           What can I bring to your efforts to make recommendations about education? Talking about the K-to-12 system, my first thoughts are about parent partnership. The rhetoric about parent participation seems just that — rhetoric. In my mind, on the heels of the Sullivan commission the 1989 School Act attempted to include parents. We do have 30 and more years of research that proclaim the indispensability of parent partnership. Based on the occasion when I was fortunate enough to share a genuine partnership with a teacher, I can truly say that 30 years of research findings resonate with my experiences. In those special times, the kids thrived. At present, school organization does not foster those partnerships.

           In 1989 the Carnegie task force labelled administrator resistance to parent involvement as the single greatest barrier to parent involvement — administrators seeing parents as a group to be informed by the school rather than to be included in decision-making, or as a group cast as the fundraising arm of the system. My experience — and that of many parents whom I speak with — tells me this is unfortunately still the

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case. Over the last 12 years parent organizations have made a valiant effort to make that mandate for parent involvement work. For me, and I think for many parents, it's been hard to keep trying. As a parent I've experienced what feels like concerted efforts to keep parent participation in abeyance and/or managed. At present parent efforts do not play out on a level playing field but rather on a field of distinct power imbalances which do not serve the children, our students, well.

           The reality of parent participation in education is far too short of what education and our students need. Your government legislated the right for a parent to volunteer in our schools. Thank you for that, but we do need to go further. The legislated mandate for parent involvement in education needs to be clearer, stronger and firmly based in collaborative decision-making. The government must have a system in place for parents to turn to in cases where they've been isolated rather than included in a decision. For example, if you will keep school boards, then perhaps you should have recall-type legislation for school trustees. The legislated mandate needs to recognize and empower the organizational features of parent involvement, such as DPAC and BCCPAC, which have evolved over the years. That's one aspect of what I think.

           In addition to this need for a stronger mandate, I was thinking of another aspect of present school functioning. That leads me to think of administrative practices and administrative structures. It's become a practice in many school districts in B.C. to rotate administrative officers in their school assignments. This is usually done without material involvement from parents in the process of that decision. This administrative practice acts to bind the allegiance and loyalty of the administrative officers to a central administration or superintendent, not to the school where the essence of the learning community lies. That and other administrative practices negatively impact our schools and our students.

           District decision-making is too remote, too bureaucratic, too unaccountable and given to having managed meetings with parents, which then are presented as consultation. Sometimes parents are asked to sit on committees that meet during the day, requiring them to take time off work in order to go to meetings. If they can't make the meetings, administration moves ahead and says that since the parent was invited to the table, that counts as parent participation, even though they didn't get a say.

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           Dislocation between consumers' or client groups' wishes and what the bureaucrats decide can become rather wide. The current problem over the issue of school reconfiguration in school district 61 in greater Victoria is a good example of that kind of dislocation. Opposition from parents and teachers, in addition to a mounting 3,200-name petition…. It's important to understand that in district 61, 7,000 votes were sufficient to elect a trustee in the last election. Despite the opposition and a petition, that's apparently insufficient to challenge a 5-to-4 trustee vote endorsing a decision promoted by administrative officers. Devolution to local autonomy in this context is rather unlikely to drive towards any local accountability.

           To drive a closer link between the community and decision-making, I suggest you consider flattening the management structure to one of self-managing schools. I suggest you consider restructuring the Ministry of Education to the core activities of setting standards, allocating funds, accounting for results and an overall provincial view. Experience in Australia, New Zealand, Quebec and other jurisdictions can guide us in hybridizing a model for the B.C. experience.

           A flattened system closer to its constituents is more likely to respond with flexibility, accountability, choice and quality. Administrative officers need to be accountable to the school community. Parent involvement in such structures can be translated into reality by including ways to support and educate that involvement and other ways learnt from other successes. Here I refer you to a paper from Australia that describes the future of schools very clearly, with the lessons learned in terms of parent involvement and parent education in those structures.

           There's a lot I would have liked to share with you today: for example, articulation, flexibility and permeability between distance education and the public system; student evaluations of teachers; a third-party or independent complaint or appeal process for the education system. But time is short, so I'll just leave these few thoughts with you.

           I'd like to thank you for this opportunity. I wish you wisdom in crafting the recommendations you will arrive at. If there's time, I'd be pleased to answer any questions you might have. Although I may not have all the answers, I certainly have some ideas.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Do we have any questions?

           J. Kwan: You suggest that one of the considerations be the flattening of the management structure to self-managing schools. What do you mean by that?

           L. Burgess: That's a model that's been bandied about under different names. Some people call it school-based management; that's probably the more popular name. Self-managing school is a title that was applied to that type of arrangement in Australia by Caldwell and the political jurisdiction. I think it was '92-96 that they applied and changed that.

           It's self-managing in the sense that they look after their own budgets and their own administration at the school level. It's a very responsive type of immediate…. It's like a small corporation that responds to the needs and the choices of the parents in that school.

           J. Kwan: I'll just follow up with one other question. When you suggest "they," do you mean the parents of the school?

           L. Burgess: No. "They" would mean a council, much like some of the Quebec councils where there's representation from all stakeholders but a majority of

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parents, with the chairmanship going to an individual parent.

           In Quebec, after speaking to a superintendent a couple of years ago, one of the things they were finding is those councils were beginning to work reasonably well after there was a period of education or acclimatization of the parents to understanding some of the budgetary rules, some of the budgetary knowledge, some of the administrative knowledge. After a couple of years, with being in what Fullan would label the implementation dip, where things were not working as well as perhaps people might have liked, things were turning around and starting to function very well indeed. I think that's the same thing that was found in Australia and New Zealand.

           R. Lee: You mentioned a third-party independent complaint process. Can you elaborate on that?

           L. Burgess: In Ontario they have a tribunal, or they experimented with a tribunal, that was independent from the educational system — not really an ombudsman but a tribunal that had the ability to make a decision that would be binding. In B.C. there are many ways that you could consider a model for third-party.

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           Mostly what I'm talking about is having a complaints or an appeal process where you're not really looking at an administrative review. You're not having the same people who are part of making the decisions and hire the employees who make those decisions do the appeal process or do that review. It should be independent. You could think about an education ombudsman, or you could think about any number of approaches, but something that is independent from the management of the school organization as such.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation today.

           Our next presentation this afternoon is from Adriane Carr on behalf of the Green Party of British Columbia. Welcome.

           A. Carr: Thank you very much for actually putting on this opportunity for the public to provide input into your process.

           I have with me Gracie MacDonald, who has been an advocate in a team of advocates within the Green Party specifically on education. She and I will be delivering this together.

           I have also provided for you a copy of our Green Book 2001. Pages 30 and 31 have a section on our education platform. There are ideas in there we did not put into our brief because we were more focused on the questions your committee is directly focused on, but there is some other information there you may be interested in.

           I'd like to start by saying the Green Party believes a high-quality, free education is a right of all British Columbians. We believe it is a priority of government to strengthen and support our public education system. Although you're focusing in these committee hearings on a set of very important questions, upon surveying parents, teachers and students, in fact one of the primary concerns they have is around funding of the system. We believe you should at least acknowledge that or make a note of it in your report to government.

           Contrary to, I think, many people's ideas and certainly the information that comes out saying education is well funded in British Columbia, we are not the lead of the pack in the provinces or developed countries in terms of funding our education system. I think a prudent jurisdiction — province or country — funds their education system as a real investment in not only their youth but their economy and society and its good functioning in the future.

           You may not like this, but we believe the budget for the education system should be increased. I don't think there's any way to achieve that given the imposition of tax cuts which have left us with a $1.5 billion deficit, so we would ask you to think about actually recalling some of those tax cuts. I think it's so important to focus on the education system rather than, in a recessionary time period, trying to stimulate the economy through the tax cuts. The economists are telling us that this is not a good time period to do it and that we should be investing instead in some long-term fruitful projects. Education is amongst them.

           If you don't see the wisdom in increasing the budget, at least hold to the intent of the election promise of the Liberal government, which is to hold steadfast. That means take into consideration the cost of living, the per-capita funding of the education system. Don't say outright a freeze for three years, because an increase is certainly warranted under those circumstances.

           G. MacDonald: We're also concerned about the current system of performance contracts that has started over the last few months. The district I work for as a teacher, school district 63, has already signed their performance contract. However, this process is not done in public. The parents, the students, the educators don't have any input into that process.

           We have a big concern as a party about inclusiveness and about public participation in that process, so we would urge you, if we are going to continue with performance contracts, which is a new thing introduced by your government , to consider making that as open and as consultative as possible.

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           A. Carr: There are several other points we would like to raise. They might fall under the mandate of your committee that you call quality of education, although probably not what many people would automatically think of. That has to do with the actual quality of the buildings, the sites, the grounds that students learn and teachers teach within.

           It's our belief the physical environment does play a great role in the ability of students to learn and teachers to teach. We would ask you to think about the quality of those school buildings in terms of air quality and the grounds. I have a great concern, as a parent, about

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the spraying that goes on — the herbicides, pesticides or fertilizers that are sprayed on the grounds. For you to move to alternative methods would, I think, set a very good example in British Columbia.

           We also believe that children don't learn well when they're hungry and that the cutting of hot lunch programs is not a good way to go. I ask you to look into some situations in the United States. There are a number of states that have actually taxed junk food — a few pennies on a can of Coke or a bag of potato chips or other junk food. They've earmarked those funds to provide hot lunch programs within the schools.

           Teachers I've talked to have also said hot breakfast programs. They've seen kids fall asleep who are not adequately nourished. We would ask you to look into that.

           We'll now look at the different questions you have in front of you as a committee, including access. Here we'd just like to focus specifically on the idea of targeted funding and the fact that targeted funding does provide access that is really critical for special education and aboriginal education in particular. If you eliminate targeted funding, you really do put up barriers that will prevent access for students who do require that funding and those special programs in place for them to be able to have adequate education.

           Current underfunding of the system does mean that right now many special needs children are not being identified as special needs because there aren't the funds in place to do it. The ones who are identified don't have sufficient funding to really give them the service they need. I spent some time speaking with teachers in Prince George last week who indicated to me that as special needs teachers they had a lot more assistance, and that has dropped off. They simply can't adequately provide the kind of program and educational support to students without that assistance.

           We also ask you to note that special needs do include, at a different end of the spectrum, gifted children. We have greatly underfunded our gifted children in our school system compared to other jurisdictions. I have personal experience of that. Both of my children were tested as gifted. In my son's case, two extra hours of computer time a week is what he received. As a parent I don't think that's adequate. We believe that targeted funding should remain in place and that you should really look at the range of special needs and the evaluation of those students to provide them with the support they need to remain in our public school system.

           G. MacDonald: As chair of the special education department at our school, which is a high school for grades 9 to 12 with 1,200 students, I can really attest to what you just said, Adriane.

           Choice. I'm sure everyone in this room thinks choice is important. So do I. So do we. We need to have more choices. We currently have many, many choices in our education system on paper. Unfortunately, we're unable to deliver them. At the school I work at we're unable to provide first nations 12, journalism, environmental education — numerous interesting courses we cannot offer because we have to fill the class to pay for the course. I guess it comes back to the money. If we have better funding, or appropriate funding where we need it, then we can have the kind of diverse curricula in the schools that we have as they are.

           A. Carr: Another concern raised to us is around the issue of flexibility, and you do talk about that as one of the mandates of your committee to investigate. For many people flexibility has translated in recent weeks into whether or not teachers will be required to teach above what have been class size caps and particularly to also allow more special needs children into their classroom than has been previously permitted under the contract.

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           Again, in my conversations with Prince George teachers recently, they pointed out to me that it seems like the word is flexibility, but how it actually turns out at the school level is inequality. A teacher is often asked to take an extra student or maybe two so that someone else will have extra special needs students or will be able to cope a little better. A teacher, who in many cases is willing to please, to take on that extra load and who has a generous spirit, ends up coping with larger class sizes, which really is an unfair situation. In the end they are unfair to the students as well.

           Those class sizes have been put into place after a lot of thought and a lot of discussion about what situations students learn best under and what situations teachers teach best under. It's intuitive on our part to understand that smaller classes mean more attention and are better for the students and for the teachers. We ask you to hold to that size at the elementary level and look at decreasing the class size in the senior grades, where it's already higher than at the elementary level.

           G. MacDonald: Finally, I want to address quality for a few minutes. I've included a list of what are considered the indicators of effective schools. I didn't write them; they're from American research. These type of indicators are very commonly used to measure what an effective school is. They are very holistic, and I note that nowhere in there does it talk about performance on standardized tests. Standardized tests are a tool to gather statistics. They do nothing to teach children.

           Last year in our district we had a public consultation in which people from the area — not just people with students but adults from all over our district — came and commented. Their biggest concerns were funding of special needs, class sizes and teacher training, which they thought should be increased. Again, nowhere in there was standardized testing. They felt that school district 63 was doing the best it could but that unfortunately it was underfunded and more needed to be done. I can leave a copy of that, if you wish, for you to look at on your own.

           I surveyed my students this morning, and their comments to you are that we need better cafeterias, smaller class sizes and teachers who make learning fun.

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           Part of that is working to improve teacher training, to keep the class sizes small and to provide adequate curriculum resources. Right now at our school half our learning resource budget is raised by the parents. If we continue to cut the education funding to our district, how much more work are these people going to have to do to raise money for our learning resources?

           A. Carr: The final question you asked us to look at was post-secondary education. The first thing I'd like to point out is that in the fall of 2000 the federal government signed a contract with the provincial government to increase social services transfer payments, which would include health and post-secondary education, by $2.8 billion over a five-year period. I have a question as to where that $2.8 billion is. That transfer payment should be in some line item.

           I understand from doing some investigation that it may have gone into the general budget. I don't think that's adequate. If an amount of money is being transferred for some specific reasons like health and post-secondary education, I would like to see it as a line item in the books of those ministries.

           I would like to know, then, if that money is being transferred, should you not be increasing the budget for post-secondary education by a portion of that $2.8 billion, as is warranted by the increased money coming into this provincial budget? That would help raise the base level of funding and perhaps allow us to continue with some of the capital projects which have been cancelled at post-secondary institutions. I do ask you to look into that.

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           We do like the fact you have increased some spaces at the post-secondary level for some very needed occupations. Nurses in particular, I think, were targeted for increased spaces this fall in post-secondary institutions. A lot of work was put into that, and I acknowledge that was a good move.

           There are many other moves needed in terms of adult basic education and other kinds of high-opportunity areas. We have a teaching population that is aging, and we need to be encouraging more teachers within the system. Other health care professionals and certainly some of the new opening fields like sustainable technologies are areas we should be looking to increase.

           We also think that over the long term there should be a vision for the education system at the post-secondary level. You should be looking into the fact that in many European countries and even in places like Mexico post-secondary tuition is free for students. That really encourages higher participation rates. We have a very low participation rate in British Columbia, and I think it is part of a thriving democracy and a thriving economy to have well-trained people with good education behind them as part of our citizenry. We would ask you to look into that.

           In the interim, recognize that at the post-secondary level increasing tuition for students and placing an extra burden on them is not the way to go. In fact, when I was at university, every loan granted to a student was 50 percent bursary, enabling students to not have to accumulate an incredible debt by the end of their education period. We would ask you to look into that — again, in cooperation with the federal government.

           Thank you. We're open to any questions.

           R. Stewart: Thank you, Ms. Carr. You're the first parent I can recall coming to us related to gifted children. We've heard from other groups. I wonder if you have any suggestions as to how we might go about addressing the inequity. There seems to be quite a difference between the direction we head with some types of special needs. The funding for special needs on the gifted side has been described as inadequate, and I'd have to agree.

           A. Carr: I know, again from talking with teachers, that many have got training in teaching gifted students, and they don't have an opportunity to use that training. In fact, many teachers who have the ability to teach special needs used to teach some gifted students and special needs students in the same sort of forum or under their own contract. That gave them a variety in the work they were doing, and the response I had from teachers or teaching assistants or aides was they really enjoyed that. It was a really invigorating, different part of the work they do. I know that gifted students often work best in a group, so you don't necessarily need to have one-on-one instruction, but I think some extra time…. Often, it's done just because a teacher takes extra out-of-school time to really support a student. That's happened with my own students. I think there's some in-school time, where they're really ahead in one subject, like math, to be able to put them in a small group and do something creative together — and it's not just on the Internet and computer.

           S. Orr: Ms. Carr, on the hot lunch programs and, as you mentioned, the breakfast programs, could you see the breakfast programs being run completely by volunteers and maybe possibly the lunch programs being run by volunteers? And one thing on Richard's question: do you believe in clustering of gifted children?

           A. Carr: In terms of certain classrooms?

           S. Orr: Yes.

           A. Carr: I think they don't need to be clustered. I think they can come from diverse classrooms and be drawn out into…. I definitely think that having them out of their regular classrooms at times and in a clustered situation is fine, but they should remain in their regular classroom settings, just as special needs are.

           Regarding the hot lunch programs, we of course went into the situation with union contracts. I know that in the school on the Sunshine Coast where my children have gone — my son is currently in high school there — the parents started an organic-food hot lunch program and ran into difficulties because the cafeteria had been shut down. They then worked out

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those difficulties with the union. There was a special contract permitted there, and that hot lunch program has parents involved in it and the union support of it. I think that's the way to go.

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           J. Kwan: I appreciate that example of how sometimes challenges with collective agreements could be resolved. I know that in my own riding those issues have also been resolved, where parents are involved with hot lunch programs and the like. In fact, the trade unions actually fundraise for those programs.

           I have a question with respect to the corporate funding aspect. In your written presentation you talk about banning corporate funding. I'm trying to clarify. Do you mean corporate funding in a large sense? What scale are we talking about? In some schools there are instances of funding from corporations where, as an example, a corporation will come in and provide computers for the entire classroom, and there's just that computer. Is that the kind of example you're looking at? What kind of scope?

           A. Carr: I think I'm looking particularly at the fact that McDonald's doesn't belong in our schools. I think we don't need corporations there advertising or promoting their products. I feel no problem about a corporation that's willing to provide goods into a school where the labelling and the advertising — the promotional aspects of it or the exclusionary aspects of it — are not predominant. I had a great deal of difficulty with the contract that Coca-Cola signed with the University of British Columbia. It was exclusionary. For a sum of money, no other soft drinks and no other bottled drinks were allowed on that campus. I think it's a matter of the kind of product being provided and the return they're expecting in terms of advertising or exclusivity.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I was interested in your comments on effective school research. I notice the second point here is high teacher expectations. To me that equates with teacher evaluation. It seems to me that consistently over the years the BCTF has established roadblocks in terms of administrators being able to evaluate teachers on a regular basis. I'm just wondering where your party comes from on that.

           G. MacDonald: That's actually high teacher expectations in the context of teachers expecting a lot from students. It's actually teachers' expectations of students; it's not expectations of teachers. But I agree with you; I think that is part of this scenario. I am being evaluated by my principal this year. We do have teacher evaluation in our schools. I'm not sure what more you think…. I guess I'm open to some suggestions about what more we could be evaluated on.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): There are school districts where only negative reports can be issued.

           G. MacDonald: I'm not aware of that.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you both very much for being here today.

           Our next presentation is by Janet Beales, from Camosun College. We'll just wait for the distribution, and then you can start.

           J. Beales: Chair and members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to participate in the consultations on the provincial budget. I am Janet Beales, and I am a teacher in the faculty of nursing at Camosun College. I am currently president of the Camosun College Faculty Association, and I speak on behalf of 400 faculty. While I am expressing the views of faculty and what we believe is essential in the budget, it is ultimately on behalf of students, prospective students and the citizens of the lower Island regarding needs for post-secondary education. In my submission I wish to highlight three areas for the committee to consider: program growth and quality, which you heard about earlier; access and affordability for students; and faculty recruitment and retention.

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           Regarding program growth and quality, post-secondary education in British Columbia requires growth with attention to full funding for all programs and services. An increase in space is required at Camosun College to meet current wait-list demand, our anticipated growth and response to local and global market needs. Substantial growth in the 15-to-29 age group is expected to be over 2 percent per year. In addition, we expect the current general retirement trend will result in increasing demands for upgrading and training as others move in to replace those who vacate positions.

           Growth will also necessitate expanding physical and technological capacity and support for student services. Responsiveness with a broad and comprehensive array of learning opportunities is required to meet the developmental, academic and career needs, immediately and in the longer term, in the Victoria area.

           Level funding will mean cuts to our programs and offerings and service to our students. Level funding will not meet student needs in the Victoria area. Level funding will mean qualified students graduating from our high schools in June will not gain entrance into post-secondary next fall. Level funding will mean that one program will be cut at Camosun College to support another. Level funding will mean that it will take longer for students to complete their programs, because they won't be able to access the courses to complete their studies. An increase in funding will ensure adequate programs and seats to meet our growing need in post-secondary in British Columbia.

           Regarding access and affordability, I believe Camosun has made an enormously valuable contribution to our region serving broad community post-secondary needs. Government support is crucial as we meet our mandate to provide access to a variety of programs, including upgrading and literacy.

           Camosun provides opportunities to students who, either because of prior school problems or inadequate income, might never, ever have sought a post-

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secondary education. Our arts and science offerings enable students to move on to university. More than minimum-wage jobs we now know require a post-secondary certificate or a degree. Services and supports, along with low tuition fees and student grants, are essential for students to gain entrance into Camosun College and complete their studies successfully. Affordable, available, quality, public education must be a right in our society.

           Regarding affordability, we urge the government to continue to keep our tuition fees for students low. Most of the students graduating from my nursing class, when they exit with a baccalaureate in nursing, have in the area of $40,000 to $50,000 in debt. Many of these same students are working evenings and weekends, some of them with families.

           Regarding accessibility, I would like to emphasize here the importance of supporting Camosun College in being a comprehensive college providing a broad range of learning opportunities from adult basic education to career, technical, vocational and including studies in arts and science. Twenty-five percent of our students who go into career programs at Camosun College have come from either ABE upgrading or from the arts and science area.

           My last point is regarding faculty recruitment and retention. As we know, 50 percent of the faculty at Camosun College will be eligible for retirement within the next 15 years. With this exit of our senior faculty, there will be a significant loss of knowledge and expertise. Succession planning will enable a gradual pacing of retirements with replacement by qualified faculty. Camosun College will require government support in attracting excellent teachers with competitive salaries, benefits, working conditions, professional development and research capabilities.

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           Our programs and services will maintain high quality in meeting the educational needs of students with well-prepared and supportive faculty who will remain committed to Camosun College as a learning community.

           I am pleased to have had this opportunity to speak with the committee. The government of B.C. needs to build a high quality system of education. Community colleges such as Camosun have their roots in regional social development. Camosun College needs government support to remain true to these intentions.

           A well-educated society is a healthy society. Education provides a way for people to become self-directed, with the information, skills and resources to improve their lives personally, professionally, socially and economically. A healthy democracy where economic disparity is reduced is dependent upon citizens who make intelligent, informed decisions about their lives.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. Do we have any question? No questions — oh, Jenny Kwan. Sorry.

           J. Kwan: Previously we had a presentation from the president of UVic. He emphasized the need on the issue around capacity-building and, really, for meeting the demands of the increasing population base for higher education. On that question, with respect to capacity and the role of colleges, I'm wondering what your thoughts and comments are, particularly in the case of Camosun in terms of the role your college could play.

           J. Beales: That's a good question. Thank you. I think that Dr. Turpin expressed it longer term, and I'm talking about more immediate capacity. Right now at Camosun College we cannot meet demand. We have long wait-lists. We have students who wait a year or two years to get into Camosun College. We have students who are getting near to ending a program and cannot take a course. There isn't a seat for them to finish their course. We really need money to meet the demand now and to plan for the future.

           I think if we have level funding, we're going to have to cut. Our wait-lists are going to get longer. Our students will be more and more disadvantaged, because they won't be able to get into the programs they want.

           Did I answer your question?

           J. Kwan: Yes, in part. Can I follow up? We're allowed one question and one supplemental, so I'm going to go for my supplemental at the moment.

           In terms of the capacity piece, do you have the physical capacity to take on more students if the funding was there to provide for the operational aspects?

           J. Beales: The physical capacity at Camosun College, I would say, is pretty well filled, but we do not offer summer programming, so that would be something. If we had the funding, we could offer year-round and more evening programming. That would meet a big need. As far as classrooms and spaces and seats, we would have to look at alternate ways of doing that. I think we could, but we can't do it with level funding.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Do you have any degree-granting programs at Camosun?

           J. Beales: No, we don't. That has not been our mandate. I'm currently working on a strategic planning steering committee with the president and administration, and we are looking at that in certain areas. As you know, we collaborate with the University of Victoria in our nursing program, so the students spend their first two and a half years at Camosun College and then go on.

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           The college and faculty have not stated strongly that they want to become degree-granting, except in some areas. Personally, I feel we could meet some of the needs of students coming up in the Victoria area if we had some degree granting. We have associate degrees in arts and sciences, and we want to support that and keep those going, because they are a stepping stone for students who don't have the academic confidence, who will then go on to the university.

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           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation today.

           Our next presenter is Lesley Ansell-Shepherd. Good afternoon.

           L. Ansell-Shepherd: Good afternoon. Some of you will recognize me, I hope. I was here before on behalf of the Gifted Children's Association. I'm here today representing my children because, to me, my children epitomize the canaries in the coal mine for the education system in B.C. Although I no longer have any particular stake in the public education system, because of their needs I feel that if this committee does not listen to parents like myself, you will lose the population of children.

           I have spent some time recently in Ireland. The public system there, which did what our public system is doing now, is essentially the poor citizen in the education system. Children in Ireland predominantly go to Catholic schools in a private system. There are more one-room schools in Ireland than in any other country in the world. That is a country where a public education system once thrived. I'm concerned that it will happen here in B.C. as well.

           Both my children had to leave the public education system. One will graduate this year. He spent two years in public education. The other was in Victoria for six years. He's now working up to three years beyond his age peers, and he's unlikely to return. I asked him if he would like to come and present his views to you today because I think it's important that you have children who know what's wrong with this system, to talk to you. He said: "There's no point." I'm sorry, but a 13-year-old has given up on your system.

           When they began school, I supported the system. Neither one of them is willing to return to the system now. They've been excluded — discriminated against, bullied by staff and peers in the public system. The system has lost their trust and support. Increasingly they're advising their friends to leave. It's doubtful they'll support public education, having suffered exclusion. That's why I'm here today. I see the future as my children telling everybody else: "Why would you do that? Why would you put yourself through that?"

           My children needed access to programs which supported their needs. They didn't need anything particularly difficult to supply. We have never suggested the system needed to put more money into it to support their needs. They needed access to schools which offered them safety and the opportunity to learn material they hadn't already mastered. They needed the opportunity to work with supportive peers and staff who were able to teach the level of material they required. I sat down with them and asked: "What would have to change if you were considering coming back?" These are some of the things they said to me. They needed deeper and faster programming than most children their age. They were happy to work below their level for part of the time, but not constantly. They needed a system where they could move on once they demonstrated mastery. Standards-based education allows this. The school-based management they ran into, which lacked connections to all levels of learning, discouraged it.

           My youngest child has found that distance education offers far better access to higher levels. All distance education students do the same basic core curriculum. Once finished, you have credit for the course. In Richmond it's easily possible. Many of the kids in his courses are taking all the modules possible in English or art or something else they're interested in. My child could not have access to that in the public system.

           Almost inevitably they ran into lockstep age progression. All material was taught at one speed, and all of their teachers complained about extra programming or learning, if marking or other assessment of material was required. In Richmond it was possible, but not for credit. Individual education plans were the exception. They were generally much resented by staff, although, again, we have found exceptional staff. They're not the norm in the system, and the system seems to discourage those individuals.

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           In this particular school district there are enough children like my sons to form a full school. There are enough parents who are interested in forming a school. Despite repeated efforts by parents, the administration has ignored the learning needs of these children. Inevitably, the parents and the children have chosen something that's now called Bright Flight over public education. It's so widespread it has a term, and people are tracking the huge numbers of kids who are leaving.

           Access to programming would be vastly improved if many of the union issues weren't in place. I'm very supportive of current negotiations which look at some of the issues that cause problems for my children. In the local school district my children were identified only at my insistence. Many other children with similar needs aren't identified because once they're identified, they influence class sizes, and once they influence class sizes, they influence the entire school. So the rule of thumb is don't look for them; they're trouble if you find them.

           During one year my child had no access to appropriate math instruction. The teacher responsible for the split-grade class could not teach the math level. She was very up front about it. Union and seniority issues limited access to instruction. The inadequacy wasn't remedied by team-teaching. The only reason it was remedied was that class size fell below supportable levels because so many parents removed their children. Then something was done, but some students had suffered for two years without adequate instruction in a core subject. Parents had gone to the system to try and change it, but the way the system is set up now, the only thing that worked was leaving. That is what I fear for your system. I see that happen increasingly.

           Access was offered only to certain programs, regardless of the learner's needs. This won't work. All children have to have ongoing assessments of their individual learning, not comparisons to the mythical average across the province. Provisions for individual needs must be accommodated, or you're not allowing people access to what they need. It's not equal to say:

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"We're all going to do the same program." You have to look at individuals and allow them to access what's required in their education system.

           In terms of choice, all school districts need to eliminate boundary barriers to schools. The only effective system parents at our school found to eliminate the math problem was to leave. We could not leave to another public school because our district prohibits moving across boundaries, so they all went to the only systems they could: distance education, home schooling or private schools.

           This is increasingly happening because the system prevents movement that would influence change. If students and parents were allowed to vote with their feet or to influence the path that's followed by the school they wish to enrol in, schools would have to be accountable to the client base. Right now there is no accountability. There's no reason to survey or serve your market if you've got a captive population. If you've got people who are going to have to live with whatever you give them, you don't bother to try and excel or set up separate programs.

           Students have to be able to move on if they meet particular standards. Otherwise, there's no reason to achieve. If, as adults, you've met all your deadlines and finished your work but you're given double the workload of everyone else in the office, are you going to continue to work? How can we justify rewarding administrators who perform when there's no incentive for students to do the same thing? Why do we assume able children will do more and more work for no advantage?

           Funding models must be linked to the individuals, and individual development and achievement, rather than comparison to average. Group funding encourages administrative models which limit choice because they're more efficient to manage. That's not the way to encourage the independent thinking skills we need for economic recovery.

           In my role as the head of the Gifted Children's Association, I repeatedly had parents who asked about movement for technology-based industries in Victoria. Upon finding what the school system was like, they decided to stay in California. We cannot attract working people if there's not an appropriate education system for their children.

           Flexibility has to be modeled and supported with funding, and not necessarily more funding. Currently, funding for my children's special need is controlled entirely by the school district. In this district's case it means programs are hit-or-miss. They're not accountable, they're poorly designed, and they're almost never involved with the needs of the individual learners in mind. As I said, there are exceptions, but they're rare.

           Six years ago I surveyed all the district elementary schools. One told me the school choir was the educational provision for bright children. In another school sewing polar bears was the ministry-funded educational provision. In our category that was funding of $341 per child which went to sewing a polar bear.

           Flexibility without accountability will continue to promulgate this type of waste. Funding is awarded in our district on enrolment numbers, not needs. Schools where no children with a special need exist still receive the funding. Schools with large numbers of these children and dedicated staff cannot receive funding to support them.

           It's my experience that school district autonomy will create more and more of these pointless programs. It's a problem with the way the funding system is managed, and it's a problem with the lack of accountability for those funds.

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           Flexibility has to be based on surveys of the client base. Polar bear sewing was flexible, but it had no relationship to the needs of the children in that school. Without required assessments and without the need to answer for parents, flexibility becomes bureaucratic tokenism. I think Lyse said it very clearly to you a few minutes ago.

           Parents have to have the ability to change their local school and to anonymously critique the system. Far too often parents who request change find their children suffer. I hate to say it, but they do. I have sat through enough appeals with parents to know that that is the first point I make: "Do you really want to go through with this? Do you know what the consequences might be?"

           No child should have to leave the public system in order to obtain grade-standard instruction in a core subject area. Situations like this are on the increase. Quality needs accountability and control to flourish. Quality schools exist where families have the freedom to abandon poor quality in favour of something better. One of the best ways to improve quality would be to change voter eligibility for school trustee elections. Currently, the majority of the population hasn't had any connection for 20 or more years. In a school district like Victoria, where you have people increasingly getting to over 100 years, it's been a long time since those people had anything to do with a school system.

           When local tax rates were influenced by school board decisions, you needed to allow general electorate input, but right now it's time to turn control of those school boards over to those individuals who are stakeholders. Shareholders need majority control to create responsiveness and quality in the system. We're affecting our education system the same way communism affected productivity and quality on its collective farms by allowing a general vote. Without responsibility you can't have quality.

           Quality is also determined by leadership. If the Ministry of Education no longer offers leadership to local school districts or parents who seek information about school systems, we should shift the services over to the Finance ministry and downsize the Ministry of Education drastically.

           The ministry currently produces a lot of valuable information, but there's no means of control or accountability, and most of that information is ignored. I have spent the last 15 years trying to inform people on what ministry expectations of school districts are about gifted children in order to receive funding. There's no way the ministry themselves can influence that. The

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staffing levels at the ministry have far too many levels of administration and far too few individuals who impact programming after years of bottom-level cuts. It's time to decide to either make the ministry much smaller and move funding and accountability over to somewhere where it can be tracked and to make it a model the same as Advanced Education is, where there's a much smaller group of people administering an equivalent education system, or give it enough funding so you can hire those people back to do the job they did 12 years ago.

           If most of the current Ministry of Education vanished tomorrow, it would have absolutely no impact on my children's education. It has become a system which simply does not have any basis in the current education system. The systems my children are currently in are flexible with excellent choice and quality. They're responsive to their individual learning needs, and they make extremely efficient use of resources. But the access to both of those systems is limited to people who choose to economically support those choices. My family is not wealthy; we're a single-income family. We have had to sacrifice hugely in order to allow our children to achieve an appropriate education.

           In both of those systems there are incentives to provide and reward excellence. Both systems communicate clearly and responsibly with parents, and they respond to parental suggestions. Until the public system is equally responsive, it's going to lose anyone who can afford to leave. My children had to leave. We were advised by our doctors, our dentists and our psychologists to pull those children out before they destructed. That's a public system that was supposed to help children. The current system negatively impacted their academic ability, their emotional well-being and their sense of self-worth.

           I reluctantly abandoned the system. I have worked with it, written curriculum for it and trained people in it, but I had to leave. Once I left, I found that I should have left in the beginning. I should never have entered the thing. There are far better options. Exponentially more of the families I talked to are doing the same thing.

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           It's going to be a shame to see a model that once supported the majority of people in an area in a good quality education go to only supporting the few who economically depend on it and who have no choice. I'm very grateful to you for opening up this kind of discussion, and I hope there is frank discussion about what is happening in the system to individual children, not looking at: "Well, if we gave everybody wonderful amounts of funding and wonderful access to resources, everything would be wonderful." It wouldn't. The system is flawed at the base, and I think it's time to take a look at where it's flawed and why.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you, Lesley.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Thank you. That was very interesting. It was an excellent presentation. I would like to get to your ideas in terms of the public school system. If we see the demise of the public school system and in fact maybe the disappearance of it, what would we do to replace it? Would you be looking at something like vouchers and church-based schools, private corporation schooling — you know, that whole scenario? I think you've made the point very well in terms of what's wrong with the public school system, but we have hundreds of thousands of young people in there now. Are we talking about reforming the system, or are we talking about doing away with the system?

           L. Ansell-Shepherd: I think if you give parents open choice to move in a school district and you give them some kind of actual vote — a majority control of the school system they're in locally — I think you can retain the public system.

           I have one child in a private school, so essentially he's in a school where parents control the entire system. It only works if you have parents who can be bothered to do that much work. That's one of the difficulties with voucher schools. It's one of the difficulties where you have charter schools. It only works for certain groups who are willing to put huge amounts of work into it.

           In my case, for my child, it's working. Because he needs an education, I'm prepared to put that kind of work into it, but I think you need to have a model for people who cannot economically support that. That's who I think public education should serve, those people who either don't have the interest or don't have the time, have other things to do. I really feel you have to give those people a voice that's convenient and easy for them to use.

           I think we've gone too far with administration. The administration in this particular school district is problematic for parents. You can't approach it. It only operates certain hours. If you want to go and present something, you have huge levels of bureaucracy to go through. The appeals process is a disaster, a complete disaster. For the children and families I have represented, the only thing that has worked has been threat of legal action. That's the only way you can get an appeal, and that's appalling.

           If you have a voice, if people can vote with their feet, if parents in my school — when things went wrong — could have said, "Right. We're out of here. We're down the road to Sundance," which has an administration that's responsible, the school would have had to correct the model. I don't think that's anything which requires any more cost. It means you have to look at a management model that's quite different.

           Does that answer the question?

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Yes. I appreciate your answer, and I'm not going to be judgmental on your answer.

           R. Lee: Thank you for the excellent presentation. Within the public system, if the students can move upward in grades or have the freedom to take any courses in elementary school, high school, even in university, do you think that kind of vertical freedom will

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solve a lot of problems, if the school districts accommodate it?

           L. Ansell-Shepherd: A friend of mine who is an administrator in a public system refers to the kind of thing as "time to learn" — the fact that some children require more time, some children require less time, and if you can accommodate the timing, you can answer the needs of children better. There are models where that kind of timing is allowed, where you have core subjects everybody has to go through and then space is allotted differently so that teachers can spend more time with other children. When you have a school-based administration who have a particular theory and you have parents who have no impact in changing that, you can't have any kind of movement, even if the whole population of the school would benefit from that type of thing.

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           I think you need to look at how you can accommodate flexibility. I have said before in my last presentation that distance education is ideal for that. You can allow children to go through work at their own pace in some subjects where they need it. Not every child needs every course slower or faster. Right now the distance education system and the public education system are totally separate. There's a huge turf war between the two. There are all kinds of discussions about whether one is equivalent or better or worse or that you can't prove this actually works. It's ridiculous. The two systems function. Last year my child was in both systems, and he did equally well in both of them. So I can say they both work, but you have to allow cross-flexibility.

           J. Kwan: One of the issues you raise is around accountability, particularly at the district level. We had a previous presentation from another person with respect to that. One of the suggestions was to have a third-party tribunal process in place. I'm wondering whether or not you think that would be useful. What kind of system needs to be in place to address complaints and appeals and so on?

           L. Ansell-Shepherd: We have to have either an educational tribunal or some kind of education ombudsman. It's one of the major reasons I've found why parents abandon the system. If you feel there's no option, and in a case I took forward in a school district this year, people didn't send on, didn't follow the procedure laid down…. You couldn't hold anybody's feet to the fire unless you threatened them with a lawsuit. People simply didn't follow the procedure. They have a wonderful procedure in this district, but if somebody chooses not to follow it, there's no accountability. A tribunal not related to the district it's working in means you're not bound by: "Oh well, Fred'll be mad at me if I send this one over onto his plate." That's what the problem is. Right now it's just not working. There's no actual opportunity to have dialogue where one side doesn't exert far more power than the other.

           B. Locke: Thank you, Lesley. Your commitment to your children is admirable. I wanted to ask you about grouping children. I understand that your children are gifted children. Grouping those kids, perhaps in a district…. Does the size of the class matter? Will that make a difference if they're doing distance learning and that kind of thing?

           L. Ansell-Shepherd: Again, I have to go back to what the individual needs of the children are. I have worked with class sizes of 60 gifted children on enrichment programs, and I've had no problem. Those have been short-term programs. They have had a limited lifespan. I have been really well prepared to work with those kids, breaking them down into small groups. However, if you're trying to work on a particular project, you may only be able to have smaller class sizes.

           I have real problems with a union agreement which says there's no point in having more than 12 gifted children in a class. That proposal means the existing clustered classes would cost twice as much to manage. There are many teachers who are qualified and who would work quite well with that particular group of children. If you can choose to group children, almost stratify them…. You can't group 60 if they're all over the map, but if you have some kind of streaming ability, or if you have proper assessment at entry and exit points, then, yeah, you can do it. As I say, it's not necessarily something that's a cost basis.

           If you have administration levels that prohibit those kinds of things…. I was in a district discussion yesterday about possibilities for a middle school. The district discussion will hit a problem if we can't get the right staff to administer. If you can't get administration that supports clustering, you can't run it. Under current agreements we can't guarantee you can select staff if you have a school that's got a particular program. You can't guarantee that if somebody decides to have an arts school, they can have a principal or teachers who have any idea of what the arts are. And if you can't do that, you can't make your concept of choice work.

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           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you very much for you presentation, Lesley. We appreciate it.

           Next is Charley Beresford. Hi, welcome.

           C. Beresford: Thank you. I would just like to begin by introducing myself briefly. My name is Charley Beresford. Hello, Sheila. I am a local trustee here in district 61. I'm here today speaking as an individual trustee. With me today is Lise Wrigley. Lise is a parent in one of our schools. She's going to be addressing what she sees specifically at her school.

           We are here today to speak to you specifically about one particular aspect of education funding that is of significant concern across the province, certainly in our district and certainly in our communities. The education funding we are speaking of is currently lodged with the Ministry of Children and Family Development. This is funding that used to be known as the

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social equity envelope. It's now called school-based funding. It's about $43 million for the whole of the province. That's about one-third of a medium-sized school district's budget. It gives you a bit of an idea of the scale in the overall scheme of things. It's not really that much money.

           In global terms this government, your government, has said education and health care funding will be preserved. Every other ministry besides Education and Health has been asked to develop plans for cutting 20 percent, 35 percent, 50 percent of their budgets. That includes the Ministry of Children and Family Development. That is why we are concerned. We are concerned that the education dollars lodged with the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the programs they support are in danger of being on the chopping block.

           In our district, district 61, there are 33 full-time youth and family counsellors. They provide student, family and school support. The work of these professionals means more of our students stay in school, developing their potential and their ability to get along in the world. Losing the funding that supports school counsellors would have a significant and detrimental impact on the quality of education in our system. You could go through the list of other titles we've spoken of here as well: access, choice and flexibility. Losing that funding would impact all of those things.

           In addition to funding for youth and family counsellors, we are deeply concerned about other programs in the school-based funding envelope. School meal funding, inner-city school funding, community school funding and Kids at Risk are all located there. The consequence of cutting these programs and the education dollars that support them would be severe.

           B.C.'s economy is dependent on both resources and human capital. Every person can make a contribution to their community and the economy. That's where public education plays a crucial role. In neighbourhoods where income levels are low, where there are high levels of transiency and high levels of income assistance, many children struggle to participate in public education. That's where these education programs currently with the Ministry of Children and Family Development come in. Those are very strategically applied funds that make a real difference to those children participating in public education.

           We know that students who are hungry have a hard time learning. The school meal program here in Victoria ensures that about 1,900 students in 19 different schools have at least one hot meal during their day. Cutting funds for this program equals hungry kids, less learning, less potential developed, fewer people in the talent pool and more people in societally dependent positions as adults.

           I'm going to pause here for a moment and invite Lise to talk a little bit about her experience at her local school.

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           L. Wrigley: Hello. My name is Lise Wrigley. I'm a parent at George Jay Elementary School. I was asked to come here today to tell you that we at George Jay are very worried about the future.

           I first heard the term core review a few short months ago as I happily awaited the start date for a new government contract. I do social research. That fresh new contract did not survive core review, nor did three others I was involved in.

           I am currently out of work and raising a child on below social assistance levels. But I am luckier than many who do not have an advanced education nor paid job experience and who may have worked many thousands of hours of volunteer time but have never been paid a cent for their efforts. I'm worried about these people. I am worried about the immigrants and refugees who may have worked many years in their country of origin but now find British Columbia a chilly climate both literally and figuratively.

           Recent changes to legislation have meant dramatic cuts to financial assistance for welfare recipients. The age of formative years has been reduced from seven years to one. My friends and neighbours are having their welfare files red-tagged. They're in tears.

           George Jay is an inner-city school with the highest percentage of families living below the poverty line in the capital region and the largest group of refugee and immigrant families. Our future looks even harder and leaner than it has been. Families that were suffering are going to suffer even more. I know families with historical welfare dependency. What is going to happen to the single mom who has been a pillar of her community, volunteering years of her life to community development, who now will have to leave her kids to their own devices — she won't be able to afford any daycare — while she works in the service industry at her first real job at $6 an hour? We need increased support at school, obviously.

           George Jay school has a population of 320 students. Of these, 250 participate in the hot lunch program. Already I see at least one kid sharing his lunch tray with mom every lunch. I foresee this sad situation getting even worse. We currently enjoy a number of school-based services. We receive $80,000 inner-city funding, $11,000 from Kids at Risk, $133,888 from school meals and $30,000 for a youth and family counsellor. We need expansion of these services, not any form of reduction.

           Our family liaison community outreach worker performs the tasks of about ten people. The changes she has helped to facilitate, since the development of our parent resource room, have been phenomenal. If we were to lose her, I don't know what we'd do. Parents and children are able to feel more and more confident and self-empowered with the programs she's helped to coordinate. This saves the government money. Money applied to high-needs kids and families now ensures cost savings in the future. As we say to our kids, it boils down to logical consequences.

           As I listen to other speakers today, I agree the education system needs to become more interesting, more creative and more accessible to gifted kids. I have a bright kid myself. But before this, at the very basic level, we need to encourage students and their families

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to simply survive. It is only with the very basics, such as hot lunch programs and community liaison, that we can encourage quality education, increased rates of graduation and a better world for us all. To apply more cuts is to exacerbate a bad situation. It is your responsibility and mine and everyone else's to make wise choices, to make decisions that will best move toward a healthier society we can all enjoy. Thank you.

           C. Beresford: Our district has been concentrating on improved ways of teaching students who need support in gaining literacy and numeracy skills, the basics of a good education. In fact, 47 percent of our inner-city school funds and 57 percent of our Kids at Risk dollars go to support these literacy and numeracy programs. The other funds in these envelopes go to violence prevention — I'm sure some of you may be familiar with the stories that turn up in local papers from time to time about violence issues among our students — and behavioral and conflict resolution strategies. All of these initiatives help our vulnerable students to stay in school.

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           I guess I can't say strongly enough how well these programs work. They are absolutely key to our strong public education system, and public education dollars invested here will have a strong payoff for our economy. They mean more students will develop their potential and become part of the talent pool our province needs for economic prosperity. They mean fewer casualties in society and less need for public dollars to be invested later for support, rehabilitation or correctional services. There is, in fact, a compelling economic as well as a compelling education argument to be made for more investment here, not less.

           Also threatened are community school funds. Schools that have been designated as community schools by the province have been able to offer integrated services to students, their families and communities. There are about a hundred of them in the province. We have four here locally. There is a fifth one here which has community in its title but has been unable to access the coordination dollars that would make it a community school. That particular school has some challenges in the neighbourhood for which a community school designation and the resources that come with it could make a huge difference.

           The funds for community schools have made a much more effective use of our public investment in schools by opening them up to community use. The communities that have community schools are healthier and more dynamic as a result of community school leadership. As an example, I'd like to raise Spectrum's job search program, a program that was developed here locally. What that program does is to help bridge students, who have perhaps left school early, with a job search initiative. I'm sure that if you did a cost-benefit analysis based solely on the economic impact of community schools, you'd find, again, an area where it makes economic sense to spend more, not less.

           This government has promised repeatedly that education and health care spending will not be cut. This is a hard claim to maintain in view of the recently announced three-year funding freeze on these budgets. Inflation factors alone are going to make some difficult choices for those of us who are sitting on school boards and our communities. If the current budget-cutting exercise you're going through does result in the chopping of youth and family counsellors, school meal funding, inner-city funding and funding for Kids at Risk, then I have to say the promise to maintain education funding won't have been kept, and I think it won't have been kept at the expense of our children, our public education, our community and our economy.

           Many of the people I have been talking to have called for the transfer of these education programs and their dollars — and I think the really key thing here is transferring the dollars — back to the Ministry of Education so that they are protected from that 20, 35 or 50 percent budget-cutting exercise. These are education dollars. They deserve the same protection as the rest of the education budget.

           We ask you to take forward this message and to work to preserve these education initiatives. Thank you for your consideration.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you, Charley.

           Because of our time constraints right now…. I know Sheila Orr has one question and then Jenny Kwan, and then we'll cut the questions off.

           S. Orr: Thank you, Charley. I want to ask you something. Is this your second or third time on the school board?

           C. Beresford: This would be my second.

           S. Orr: Your second. Were you on the school board when that funding was moved from Education to Children and Families?

           C. Beresford: That's a very good question. I don't know exactly when in the history that occurred. I wish that I had a significant time to say that.

           S. Orr: Was it evolved in the school board funding? It was, wasn't it?

           C. Beresford: In our district the school meals, specifically, if you use that as an example, was actually started as a volunteer effort by one of our trustees who went around and consulted with local businesses and brought it together. There was huge relief when that program was taken over and funded more effectively by the province. My understanding about when those programs moved is that it would have been probably two or three years ago, when they were developing the whole service aspect of what was then called the Ministry for Children and Families. I really think that these are education dollars and that they need to have the same kind of protection.

           S. Orr: It's a shame they weren't fought to be kept there. That would have been very helpful.

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           C. Beresford: Well, it would have, but it doesn't prevent them moving now.

           J. Kwan: Along those lines, there are also some discussions around lifting the dedication of funds for particular programs — aboriginal children programming, special needs, etc. I wonder what your thoughts are around that.

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           C. Beresford: I have to tell you I'm feeling a bit apprehensive about that. I'll tell you why. We have had a very challenging time over the past few years with the amount of resources available to us as a school district. Something like 91 percent of our district budget is tied up with contractual obligations, so it leaves a very, very small amount for the rest of the things we have to make choices about as we face inflationary and other kinds of pressures. I'm very worried that if we don't have some sort of guidelines around things like spending on special needs funding and spending for our first nations students, there's going to be a lot of pressure on those funds. I'm worried about being able to hang on to enough funding, basically.

           Our district is like every other district. We've spent more than we've been allocated on special needs funding. It isn't enough. If I were to make another plea, I would make a plea about increasing that kind of funding, because it makes such a difference for our students. We know, for example, with our reading recovery program that we're working with the bottom 10 percent of readers in kindergarten and grade 1, some of whom are children with special needs. It's an intensive, expensive program, but we're having a lot of success with that. Something like 80 percent of kids that go through reading recovery never need learning assistance again later in their education career. If we know we could have more funds to funnel towards programs like that, I think we'd find a more effective education system with all those things we want: choice, flexibility and quality education.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you both so much for being here today.

           Our next presentation is from the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, Andrew Wynn-Williams and John Winter. Good afternoon. Thanks for coming today.

           J. Winter: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. It's a pleasure, on behalf of the B.C. Chamber, to be with you this afternoon. My name is John Winter. I'm the president of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, and with me is Andrew Wynn-Williams, who is our director of policy development. The chamber is a business organization. It's the largest, most broadly based business organization in British Columbia. We have 27,000 members and represent about 130 chambers of commerce in all parts of the province. Our key mandate as an organization is to advocate a policy framework that promotes a healthy and vibrant economy in B.C. Consequently, we're very pleased to have the opportunity to make this submission to you today.

           We'll begin with a discussion of the skills shortage and its potential impact on the economy and then talk some about our policy recommendations and the surrounding educational issues. Our focus will be on K-to-12 issues.

           Firstly, though, the skills shortage. The shortage is one of the most critical issues facing British Columbia today and in our view has to be raised in terms of its priority. Just how critical this issue is first became clear to us through the B.C. Chamber's landmark Moving Forward: The Vision of B.C. Business report of 1994, which reported then that over 400,000 Canadian job openings were vacant because employers couldn't find people with the required skills. It also correctly estimated that by this year 51 percent of all new jobs would require education of 17 or more years in the system.

           The recent report entitled Ensuring a Skilled Workforce for British Columbia from ITAC, the Industry Training and Apprenticeship Commission, clearly illustrates that the challenge we identified seven years ago is in fact growing in magnitude. It states we need to fill 700,000 new jobs that are expected by the year 2008. That's a lot of skilled people — skilled people we don't have.

           The B.C. Chamber is not laying blame on anyone on this particular issue. We're looking for solutions. This fall, for example, we conducted a series of policy forums throughout the province, trying to educate business as to its responsibility in addressing this issue. In other words, business, too, has its role to play in addressing this issue, and we think it's one of leadership in partnership with the other players. We also believe there are steps the post-secondary system must take to better respond to this issue, and those recommendations are included in the appendix to this presentation.

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           Part of the skills shortage challenge is due to the longstanding and fundamental disconnect between business and education. One half of this disconnect is that the education system does not always create the kind of worker the business community is looking for. The Moving Forward survey showed that 73 percent of the respondents, who are business people, did not believe graduating students had the necessary communication, work ethic and self-discipline skills to enter the workforce.

           This was borne out more recently when we surveyed our members about what issues mattered most in the context of the recent provincial election. Education and skill development was one of the top ten our members asked us to focus on at that time. In other words, our members believe the education system needs to produce individuals who are better prepared for the workplace and who know more about the world of work they are about to enter. That's why today we've chosen to focus on the K-to-12 public education system. I will not go so far as to make specific curriculum recommendations. We believe there are a number of policy issues that need to be addressed in advance, policy issues that will allow the school system to be more responsive, more flexible and better able to

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meet the needs of our economy, of employers and of the current fiscal realities.

           First, some comments on policy recommendations. The first one is the collective bargaining and education policy. We'd like to begin by expressing our support for the decision to declare education an essential service. There are two reasons for this support. The first, of course, is we do not believe it is wise to put the future of our students at risk due to labour negotiations.

           There is, however, an issue of greater concern, and that is the nature of the collective agreement itself, its content and its impact on education policy. A job action is generally short term, but we have to live with the new collective agreement for a period of years. Many of the issues under discussion have serious public policy implications. Without detailing specifics of the negotiation, the chamber's single biggest concern is the overlap between labour relations and education policy. Items like salary and bonuses are legitimate issues for negotiation. There are others, however, that are a matter of public policy, such as class size, the ability of parents to meet with their children's teachers and the curriculum itself.

           Let's take class size, for example. Recently the BCTF and the Public School Employers Association negotiated some restrictions on class sizes at certain levels of education. The position of the teachers is that restricting class sizes better enables the teacher to help each student. At first glance, this does make sense. Conversely, other advocates contend that most students don't need to be in such small classes. Their concern is that with limited resources, the public would be better served by targeting those resources. That way children who did not need the extra attention could be in larger classes, and this would free up more resources for areas where there are particular challenges, like English as a second language or other special needs. We were particularly taken with the two speakers who so eloquently expressed the same sentiment.

           The chamber is not advocating any particular position on this issue. Who is right and how class sizes are structured isn't really our issue. The issue to us is that when class sizes become an issue of labour negotiation, this debate becomes private instead of public. It means this and other important education policy issues don't receive the public scrutiny and public debate such issues deserve.

           Education policy must be driven by the greater public good. It must take into account proper consultation and allow for full input of parents whose children are going through the system and the input of other stakeholders in the community like taxpayers. This includes the business community, who will likely employ many of these students sometime down the road. This is not an attack on the teachers, and it's not meant to invalidate their concerns. We know their input into how the system can run and should be organized is useful, but the BCTF is only one stakeholder. It should not be able to control the system and dictate policy through the threat of a strike. That's why we were pleased to see education declared an essential service. We hope government will take the next step of removing education policy issues from the bargaining table itself.

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           On the issue of accountability, during the five years I've been with the chamber one of our most consistent policy recommendations from our education committee has been for greater accountability in the system. These recommendations of ours were borne out by the Report on Accountability in the K-to-12 Education System by the B.C. comptroller general released in 1997. Its recommendations were intended to guide government and school boards in moving to a new results-based model of reporting, ensuring the linkage of results and funding. Many of the comptroller general's recommendations have yet to be addressed. We believe government needs to take all possible steps to increase accountability in the system. Unless we measure the results and make those responsible accountable for those results, we will never have the opportunity to improve those schools that need our help the most.

           The issue of measurement. For purposes of measurement, we believe that the school accreditation process should be strengthened and continued, that the annual foundation skills assessment program should be maintained, that all students in those grades be expected to participate and that school results be made publicly available in a timely fashion. Annual results of B.C. student achievement should be published in comparison with results from other provinces and other nations. This will ensure our basic standards remain competitive with other jurisdictions.

           In terms of planning for improvement, just measuring is not enough. Subsequently, schools and districts should be required to prepare annual improvement plans, indicating performance targets in key areas. In order for this to be most effective, principals and teachers must have the authority and support to implement school-based management. School councils should make decisions around staffing and programs, and the school will be held accountable for its results.

           In terms of choice, by allowing the schools to make choices around programming, you allow them to be more responsive to their community. Specialty schools could form around the arts or perhaps around a local industry. At the same time, this would open the door to parents, allowing them greater choice on which school has the best program for that child.

           Incentives and sanctions. The final piece of the accountability puzzle is an incentive and sanction system that would allow successful schools to continue to thrive and innovate and, at the same time, ensure problem schools receive the help they need to improve themselves. Schools and their staff should have incentives for high performance, productivity, cost-efficiency and the use of modern technology to improve learning. They should also be encouraged to form creative partnerships with the community at large, be it the business community or some other sector that can provide resources. By the same token, the ministry must have recourse to intervene in non-performing schools and take whatever steps are necessary to ensure improvement.

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           It is our belief that this combination of reforms will allow for a more responsive system. It will show where we need improvement. It will allow us to plan for the future and ensure students are prepared for the future.

           Literacy, finally, is another issue we'd like to touch base on. Although we have not discussed any specifics today in terms of curriculum, literacy is certainly one area that must be mentioned. The chamber recognizes literacy skills are the foundation for learning. Furthermore, the ability to communicate properly is one of the key job readiness skills business looks for in a new employee.

           That's why the results of the British Columbia Foundation Skills Assessment 2000: Provincial Results Report are so distressing. They indicate 21 percent of students in grades 4, 7 and 10 do not meet expected standards in reading. At the grade 10 level, 32 percent of B.C.'s students failed to meet expected writing standards. The importance of a K-to-3 reading program that ensures all children become successful readers cannot be underestimated. We at the chamber recommend there be improved teacher training, preparation and support for the teaching of reading.

           In conclusion, let me say this is, in terms of government responsibility, a huge opportunity. It's a multibillion-dollar industry: $5 billion is going to be spent on education in this province annually. The absence of an economic development plan for the province makes it doubly difficult. The education system is not responding to any specific need.

           If we were to use mining as an analogy, if the government were to be putting forward programs to encourage mining development in the province, we're not sure we would have the skills necessary in British Columbia today or tomorrow to meet the needs of the mining industry. That analogy can be carried forward to any number of industries.

           We need to match the education system's product to business or industry needs. As we enter a period of continuous learning, we need a more flexible system that will provide that for us.

           Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. Do we have any questions?

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           B. Locke: Hi, John. It's nice to see you again. I want to ask quickly: with regard to apprenticeship training, specifically in trades training, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that apprentices often have a hard time finding not only the school but the job placement location. I wonder if you can tell me why there appears to be a reluctance by employers to take on early level trades.

           J. Winter: I think this was the disconnect I talked about earlier between the education silo and the business silo and the fact that they're not responsive to each other's needs. Clearly, as we move down the road toward significant shortages of skills in the workplace, we're going to pay a big price for that. I'm not sure I have the answer to the question specifically as it relates to today's problem, but certainly, as we approach the future, we're going to have to find more, better and faster ways to deliver those skilled employees to the workforce. Four-year apprenticeship programs with the kind of credentialing that entails is not necessarily going to be the answer to tomorrow's workforce. Employers are going to be looking for quicker answers than that, and I think they're going to be looking more specifically for specific skills rather than for educational credentials.

           R. Lee: Mr. Winter, what do you think of the CAPP program, the career and personal planning program? Is that useful for the business community?

           J. Winter: I'm not familiar with the program.

           A. Wynn-Williams: Actually, the B.C. Chamber has played a huge role in helping to bring that program to the business community. When CAPP was first introduced through the Skills Now program about six years ago, we produced a document called Classroom to Career, which was essentially trying to teach business about the benefits of the program and then teaching them how to get involved in a much more user-friendly way than a lot of the government documents had indicated. We still occasionally get requests from business or from the ministry for more of those particular documents that we produced. Unfortunately, we don't have any more.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you both very much for your presentation today.

           Next we have Jim McDermott from the parent advisory council for the Victor School. Good afternoon.

           J. McDermott: Hello. I represent the families of the Victor School, and I would like to speak to this committee about our wonderful little school and the enormous impact it's made on the students who attend and on their families.

           The Victor School is unique in that all the students are either severely brain-injured and have physical impairments or require intensive behavioral supports. My daughter Mariel is enrolled in grade 1 at the Victor School. Today happens to be her birthday too; she's six. She has cerebral palsy, visual cortical blindness and profound hearing loss. Her entire class consists of students who are deaf, blind or both.

           In order to speak to this committee with a unified voice, I conducted a brief, three-question survey. I will provide the committee with a more detailed account of the results in my written submission, but I would like to share with you the questions I asked and a few of the comments received.

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           The first question was: how would you rate the Victor School in meeting your child's individual education plan goals? The response categories were: excellent, very good, good, fair or poor. Almost everyone

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chose excellent. One father commented on how the Victor School has exceeded the expectations he had for his child, and he used the word "miracle." Now, I come from a scientific background, and I rarely, if ever, use the word miracle, but I wouldn't discourage anyone from using the word miracle in describing the wonderful work that's being done at the Victor School.

           In fact, I would encourage the members of this committee to visit the Victor School and see the results for yourselves. The teachers, the SSAs, the physio, occupational and speech therapists who work with our children go far beyond what would be contained in their job descriptions. They also give us something no dollar figure could be attached to, and that's hope. They give us hope.

           My next question dealt with a difference in philosophy between the Victor School PAC and the nice people at the Victoria Association for Community Living. I'd prefer not to use my time discussing philosophical differences except to say that some people view the Victor School as a segregated institution. This is inaccurate. The families of the Victor School prefer to call it a consolidation of resources to best meet the needs of its students in a most cost-effective manner. A good example of this in my daughter's class would be five students share what's called a vision tent. This has an enormous impact on gaining insight into what they can see as well as enhancing their communication skills. The school board, of course, could probably not afford to have one of these for each individual student in an integrated classroom environment. I would like to point out to this committee that the families of the Victor School support inclusion wherever it's appropriate.

           My third question had to do with how the families felt about issues surrounding our school. Some of the categories were ratio of students to SSAs, class sizes and space, number of hours for therapy — OT, PT, speech, etc. Most responded to class size and SSA-to-student ratios as the predominant areas of concern, which leads me to talk a bit about some concerns I have regarding special needs education in general.

           It would seem to me that children with special needs who have been integrated into the school district are having a difficult time gaining the resources they need to meet their individual education plan goals. In fact, I read recently in the paper that some of these students have filed complaints with the Human Rights Commission and are also exploring the possibility of court challenges in this regard.

           I would strongly urge this committee to let the school boards know we must shift from crisis management to conflict resolution in areas responding to special needs education. In my opinion, in a lot of these cases — like the FEAT of B.C. court case — if the families of these children go to court, they're quite likely to receive a successful judgment. Then not only are we going to have to provide money through our school boards to provide the resources they need, the taxpayers are also going to have to pay for the legal costs. In times where we're trying to save as much money as possible and target the resources we need, this doesn't seem to be very cost-effective.

           I would like to thank the committee for allowing me to come and talk to you today, and I would answer any questions.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you.

           E. Brenzinger: Jim, I've met you before — with your petition.

           You're speaking for a number of parents that are not often heard. I wonder if you could give me the viewpoint of the parents who do want programs or choice in programs of inclusion and parents who want their children in segregated programs. Can you tell me what the parents are saying about the segregation versus inclusion? Or do they want choice?

           J. McDermott: In the issue surrounding segregation versus integration, I have to tell you — and I take every opportunity to thank the board of school district 61 for providing this unique environment for our children — that the sense I get from the parents at the Victor School is they could not be happier with the school and the program and all aspects of the care and education they receive.

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           E. Brenzinger: How are you funded?

           J. McDermott: We're funded through the Ministry of Education and through the school board. However, in order to enable our students to integrate into the communities, particularly the students in the behavioral class, they do go to the Oaklands School for classes several times a week. They go out to the malls and have a chance to learn how to behave in public. These children are transported there through the Victory Van Association that was established through our school. It's entirely funded with donations.

           J. Kwan: I have two questions. One is: how many students do you have at your school? Is the catchment area for your school restricted just to the catchment of your district, or does it go beyond?

           J. McDermott: It is school district 61, I believe.

           I'm sorry, what was the first question?

           J. Kwan: The number of students.

           J. McDermott: We have 28 students at our school.

           J. Kwan: Just to clarify the catchment question, when you say school district 61….

           J. McDermott: It's greater Victoria.

           J. Kwan: Only students who live in that district would get access. If you were outside of that district, then you wouldn't be able to get access to that school. Am I right?

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           J. McDermott: Yes, I believe that's correct.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you.

           Brenda Locke.

           B. Locke: My questions were answered.

           W. McMahon (Chair): They were answered. Okay.

           Thank you so much for coming today and for your presentation.

           I'm sorry. Richard Stewart has a question.

           R. Stewart: I wanted to thank you for coming out here today and to wish your daughter a happy birthday. Your attendance here is a tremendous birthday present for her.

           J. McDermott: Thank you very much. Again, I would like the committee to accept my invitation. Please come by the Victor School and have a visit.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you so much.

           Our next presentation is Lori Messer from the Edward Milne Community School Society. Welcome.

           L. Messer: I'm really excited to be here this afternoon. I want to tell you about an absolutely exceptional school in Sooke. I'm not sure how many of you know where Sooke is. It's about 50 minutes away from here on the west coast.

           We used to think in Sooke that when we left school, our learning was over. We thought school was really just for kids. That idea has really disappeared in Sooke, with the understanding that in fact we go on learning all our lives. With the economy of multi-use facilities, it's really only made sense to make Edward Milne Community School a resource for everyone in our community.

           Back in 1987 when we were first established as a community school, we were constantly asked: what is a community school? Now, 14 years later, literally everyone in the community has experienced some aspect of our school. Our well-known programs and projects speak for us, demonstrating a vital link between the community and the school. You'll literally find EMCS learners everywhere in the community. You find them not only in the school classrooms but in the shops and gyms in all the Sooke schools on every day of the week. You find them in the theatre, in our employment centre and in the adjoining student services centre. They're at our community Internet access sites and work experience programs, out in our longboats and in community education programs. We've really become a school without walls.

           One of the oldest tools of influence is a story. My goal today is in fact to influence you. I've decided to tell you three stories about our school.

           The first story is the story of our building and what happens in it at night. I decided to speak in the voice of our school. Story 1 is "The Building Speaks."

           Oh, if my walls could talk, they would tell you many, many stories. They would tell you of my reincarnation from an old, grungy beat-up building next door into the beautiful light-filled facility you see now. My entrance is guarded by a T'Sou-ke first nations welcoming figure carved by an elder, Fred Peters, in the carving shed on the reserve just across the street. If you look on your left, you'll see a kepeset lellum. "Coming together" it means in Coast Salish. It was carried proudly on the shoulders of our T'Sou-ke students at the ceremonies that marked my opening.

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           It's November 7. A couple of weeks ago nothing extraordinary, just a typically busy Wednesday night. In the old days I was empty at this time of the day, save a few custodians pushing brooms down my halls. Since 1987 that's all changed. Hey, come on, take a peek. Come on in, and let me show you what I mean.

           Let's take a walk down the gym corridor. The Harlem Crowns from South Carolina are trouncing the senior boys basketball team. It's an absolute delight to behold. We didn't used to have a team, but now members of the community have volunteered as coaches. The game is a fundraiser, to raise funds for new uniforms for the team.

           In the theatre to your left the Stage West Players are rehearsing their production of Cabaret, along with the Sooke Philharmonic Orchestra. I remember in the old days in my building, when I first became a community school, that audiences used to come to my old gym and sit on cold metal chairs and listen to the Victoria Symphony, who would brave the winding road to Sooke and perform for us. Since we've had a new theatre, we've sparked a renaissance in local performing arts in our community.

           Off the foyer in the tight little meeting room our bookkeeping students are meeting for their evening class. Many of these people are starting home-based businesses and taking bookkeeping for the first time.

           Come in to my commons, and I'll show you something really spectacular, something you've probably all heard about. That's our grey whale skeleton, saved by over 100 Sooke volunteers to hang proudly in our rafters.

           Then, quite unusual for this evening, if you look down to your left, you'll see little girls in pink tutus. They've been kicked out of the auxiliary gym and are taking their ballet classes in the lower commons. They're twirling to music from a ghetto blaster.

           Watch; there's a young man coming across the commons. He's just about to hit you. He's carrying a project for the local 4-H who are meeting in the staff room.

           Upstairs in the library a couple of our student presidents are holding a meeting with the senior administration and people from the community. It's been seven years since they've had a field, and they're not giving up. They're working on a project to get a track and a field.

           Suddenly I'm a busy place. I never quite know what will happen next. One thing's for sure: I'm never empty anymore. I really like being a focal part of this community.

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           Community schools build capacity, both in individuals and in groups. This approach quietly underpins our greatest successes.

           The next story I'm going to tell you is a story about Nancy. Nancy is a single parent with one child and was on income assistance when she first came to Sooke. We placed her in a back-to-work project at the Sooke Region Museum. She had two choices when she got there. She could play Miss Tilly, who was a character who lived in the museum house and escorted visitors through, or she could be a blacksmith. Nancy decided to choose the less-traditional role and be a blacksmith. She absolutely loved it. She loved the heat. She loved the smell of the metal. She loved the challenge. She began making horseshoes but quickly grew impatient and wanted to experiment with other shapes, but her lack of skills held her back. When the grant expired, Nancy stayed with the museum and continued as a volunteer.

           She saved up enough money to enrol in one of our welding courses in the evenings. The class was really difficult and challenging for her, and she was really hesitant to use some of the heavy machinery. It was noisy and scary, and she felt unsafe, so she talked to Phoebe, who was the community school coordinator at that time, about exploring some other learning possibilities. Phoebe connected her with Keith, who was our regular daytime school metalwork teacher. Keith talked to her about her desire to explore the artistic side of metalwork, and she joined his class, along with the younger students. It had all the basics and the structure that she needed, and she was able to learn some of the safety features that she hadn't felt able to learn in the evening courses.

           Keith was really supportive and encouraged Nancy to go ahead and pursue metalwork as a profession. A Sooke Works employment counsellor connected her with resources to help her put together a business plan. One of our directors from the society, Fredrica Philip, one of the owners of Sooke Harbour House, invited her to set up a forge there. Nancy is now a successful blacksmith artist. She has her own studio, and you've probably seen her art at many local galleries. Last summer her crowning glory was that her work was featured in the juried Sooke fine arts show. Most days in good weather if you go down to Sooke Harbour House, you'll see her outside, and she usually gathers quite a crowd around her.

[1610]

           My last story this afternoon is the story of the Sooke Swing Kids, and you might have seen them as well. We know that community is fundamentally a set of relationships and that the health of the larger community reflects relationships between those smaller communities. The story of the Sooke Swing Kids really exemplifies this philosophy.

           It was in the fall of 1998 that a group of kids came to my office and asked if we could offer swing dance lessons. I'd never heard of swing dance lessons. Then, just by chance, we put out the word to see if we could find an instructor. Sure enough, we found a young, energetic and enthusiastic UVic engineering student. I have no idea how he found the time, but he was a passionate dancer, and he took this class on. Within minutes of our announcing it over the PA system at lunch, the classes were full.

           You have to appreciate that my office faces out on to a corridor, and I look down a long corridor to the gym. Usually the kids are at their lockers. All of a sudden I started to see kids practising swing moves and lifts in the hallway outside my office. I just held my breath. We didn't lose anybody. All of a sudden we were starting to hear Jimmy Dorsey in the commons at lunchtime, and the school dance DJs had to find twenties and thirties recordings for our dances.

           Pretty soon there was a group of ten individuals that got together and started meeting on their own. They went through their grandparents' — my parents' — 78 record collections for new music. I don't think they had ever heard of 78s before. They screened old films for new moves and lifts. Suddenly we had a group called the Sooke Swing Kids. They started performing publicly here in Victoria. They won a south Island regional youth talent contest performed at Government House with local big bands. They were semi-finalists in a national YTV youth award.

           It's when they performed in the local Remembrance Day concert at our theatre that I remember the most. It was the typical Remembrance Day concert — a predominantly white-haired group, sober, formal kinds of presentations, readings from soldiers' letters home, selections from a military band — and all of a sudden these young kids burst onto the stage with their piece. I looked along the rows in our theatre. There were tears rolling down the faces of nearly everyone in the audience and a huge, thunderous standing ovation. It was the first time I'd ever seen youth and seniors connect so profoundly in our community.

           Later that year the kids were invited to join those same volunteers, senior volunteers in our community, in the Sooke Pageant of History, which was a millennium project performed by hundreds of community volunteers — almost as many in the production as in the audience — for the Governor General.

           The Swing Kids are all pretty much at university now. Their instructor did graduate as an engineer, and swing dancing at our school has given way to other interests, but the legacy of respect it created between Sooke seniors and youth still goes on, and, in a spirit of Remembrance Day, neither party will every forget.

           What connects these stories? First of all, we know our success as a community school relies on our ability to facilitate asset-based community development. I don't know how many of you have ever heard a speaker called John McKnight, but he gives a very powerful presentation where he holds up a quilt. On one side of the quilt are all the things that are wrong with a community. It's what I call the needs assessment approach. You look out there, and you talk about pregnant teens, delinquency and vandalism, and you try and work from that place. Then he turns that quilt around, and on the other side he has all the positive things in the community. That's where we build from. We build on the strengths of the community. We build

[ Page 538 ]

capacity rather than dependence, and we ensure sustainability up front.

           Secondly, we know if we can engage people in positive learning experiences, they'll want to learn again. Many of the people who come into our school do not have good memories of school. They come into the building, and they're not feeling it's a real positive place. When they take one of our courses, and they do well and achieve, they go on. They learn more. We know, as speakers before me have said, that a highly skilled workforce that's continually retraining and lifelong learning is going to be essential to the economic health of our province.

[1615]

           Finally, I expect it's a little cheeky for me to say this, but we certainly know that public-private partnerships work. We could write the book on partnerships. I tried in vain, in fact, to find a list of all the partners we've ever worked with. We've worked with municipal, provincial and federal governments, businesses and industries, banks and logging companies. They've donated dirt and logs and paint and curtains and all kinds of things. As a result, we leverage the $75,000 we get from the Ministry of Children and Family Development to our annual budget of over $800,000.

           I'm going to leave you with three recommendations. The first one is that we just want to stay the same. We want to keep our community school, but we think it should belong to the Ministry of Education, and I think you've heard that before today. This is about learning.

           Second, we think this is a very, very economical and effective way for schools to participate and build their communities. We think there should be more community schools in the province.

           Third, we would really like to be accountable and effective and give quality programs. We know we can, and you need to know that as well. We would be absolutely delighted to work with you, along with ACE-BC, to develop benchmarks for our overall effectiveness.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Do we have any questions?

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I wonder if you could tell me about the involvement of social services in the community school concept in terms of health, human resources or any areas like that.

           L. Messer: In our particular community school, in terms of what we cover we're not really involved with social services. Every community school is unique, and in our case we have a group in the community, Sooke Family Resource Society, which handles that side of the needs in our community.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Any more questions? No?

           Thank you so much for your presentation today.

           Next we have the Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils of school district 63, Saanich, Cindy English and Sheena Hurn.

           C. English: I'd like to thank you for giving us this opportunity to address your committee this afternoon. We come here on behalf of parents of 8,000-some-odd students in our Saanich school district. We represent the parents at the district parent advisory council level, which is an amalgamation of the parents advisory councils in our district.

           We have worked on a submission, which you all have copies of. If you need other copies, I do have them. I would suggest you read this very carefully, because I'm not going to have time to talk about everything in that. I'm going to focus mainly on two issues that are of concern to parents in our district. They're ones we heard time and time again when we solicited information from the parents about what we needed to talk to your committee about, as far as what concerns parents in education right now. The two issues I'm going to talk about are fundraising and special education. There are other issues that are of concern to parents as well, and we've covered them in the submission.

           Our district has been very successful at maintaining a wide variety of programming, despite the fact that in the past seven years we have had budget cuts. What this does to our district is it puts pressure on parents to fundraise. Parents, in joining parent advisory councils, hope, as a part of the partnership, of being involved in their children's education, that they have the opportunity and the right to advise, as far as having impact on their children's education. Too often what ends up happening is when parent advisory councils attempt to become an advisory body, they in fact become a fundraising body.

[1620]

           In the past — and it's changed very much in the past seven years — this has meant we used to fundraise for the extras that would be nice to have in a classroom — things like a digital camera or a field trip or something like that. Now what's starting to happen — and we've seen it over the past two years — is the parent advisory councils are starting to fundraise for educational resource materials. I chose those words very carefully, because in the School Act it is stated that educational resource materials will be provided free of charge to every child in the province. Currently that's not happening.

           What we see parents being asked to fundraise for are things like computers. Parents are being asked to provide photocopy paper. Parents are being asked to supply for their children's education things that used to be provided by the education system. There are things like reference library books — things you would think would be provided as being essential to our children's education. Parents are now being asked to submit the funds and help administrators meet those demands on their already stretched budgets.

           I emphasize "already stretched" because it's getting to the point now where we're seeing changes in our classrooms that are not happy pictures, even though I must say our district does a very good job with the resources that they do have. Where you see that starting to play out is, even within our own district, between the schools where you know the average income

[ Page 539 ]

of the parents is higher than other schools. What this means is those schools where the parents can afford to supplement what's happening in the school will do so. They'll do it at any cost. What happens to those schools and those children where the parents can't afford to upgrade those resources? I suggest to you that they're not going to have them.

           We don't like to see that happen to anyone. We don't think you would like to see that either. As a just society it is imperative that all children have equal access to education. That's what's reflected in the School Act, and that is what we hope would be happening in the future for our children's education. Increasingly we see it's not happening.

           The other area that I want to talk to you about today is special education. This is a big concern to parents. You've heard a little bit about it today from some of the speakers, but one of the things that happens in our district is children are not assessed for learning disabilities until they're in grade 4. The foundation years, K-through-3, are when children learn to read. If a child does not learn to read by grade 4, they will fall further and further behind.

           What happens in our schools is children aren't taught how to read beyond grade 4, because it's assumed they already do know how to read. Those children who have learning disabilities and have never been assessed — and there are many — end up falling further and further behind.

           The ministry funds at the 4 percent level. That means that 4 percent of the school base population is assumed to be in need of special education funds. The actual figures in our district are somewhere around 10 percent, so what our district does is it takes money from other things and puts it into special ed, because they think it's very important. But even in our district there are children that aren't assessed. They wait for up to a year to be assessed. And when they are assessed, they're not always supported in the classroom, because there simply aren't enough dollars or enough people to go around.

           Then you have the children who are never assessed — those in the middle who have a slight learning problem. Because it's not right in your face — it's not something that stands out — they're not going to be assessed. Those are the children that fall further and further behind, when if there was a little bit more put into those children…. I'm not saying that the teachers can do anything about it. They're maxed out. We've heard from teachers that they do the most they can do with the children in their classrooms, but the resources are just not there.

           We've seen it in our district loud and clear in the past year. They've had to cut into our special education budget. What that means is they're no longer able to fund at the 9.8 percent level, which is what our level is in our district. If they kept up with what the ministry provides, which would be 4 percent, a large number of our student population wouldn't be receiving the programs that they desperately need.

[1625]

           What happens to a child who doesn't learn how to read, who doesn't get that early start? You see it playing out in the social system. You see it playing out later on in life, when these children get frustrated and drop out of school or simply stop learning. We pay for that later on.

           We would like to see integration maintained. I've heard that brought up. We believe it is important for students of all abilities, passions and interests to be together in the classrooms. We see that increasingly as a role of educators — to play, to bring people of many different backgrounds and abilities together. When teachers are increasingly asked to do this, they need greater resources at their disposal, not less.

           We heard Premier Campbell, before he was elected, stating there would be no cuts to education. What we are seeing with the accountability contracts is that if there is not the same level of services maintained next year when the budget comes down, the school district will somehow have to manage and will be accountable with less resources. What I say to you is it's not fair to move the accountability for education to a school district when they're already doing the best they can.

           Our trustees are doing a very good job managing with what they have, but it breaks their hearts and makes them very upset when they have to pare down a budget already stretched to the max. It also upsets parents, because we see that our children are our future. If we are not supporting them educationally and socially as they grow — and that's another issuer that I won't go into today — our education system will suffer. Our economy will suffer.

           We must think down the road, generations from now. The actions we take today will impact on us for years and years to come. It's in your hands, of course, but please remember that our children are very precious. We can't afford to take chances with their futures.

           Sheena had a few things that she wanted to say as well.

           S. Hurn: Basically I was just going to recap some of Cindy's points, but she's pretty well brought most of them out.

           Two other things parents in our district feel are really important as well, which are actually in the submission, are things that are happening with the career prep programs and first nations. We realize we only have ten minutes to present, but those are important. They're dealt with in the submission.

           We really believe accountability and education can't just be laid on school boards, administrators and teachers. The government's also responsible for maintaining the integrity of the system, delivering on its promises and recognizing the costs associated with reductions in service and in funding. To shift all accountability to school districts and not provide them with the tools and resources to provide an equitable education and the means to be flexible is a disservice to all of us.

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           There are two key things we see in special needs. If we don't fund at the actual level of need, it plays out all the way down the line. If you don't address problems at the beginning, at the foundation, you deal with them all the way down the line. We can't have this arbitrary 4 percent. It has to be on real needs.

           The other real thing we want to leave you with is funding and how much parents have put in. We're talking about a society that wants an equitable education. We say: "Education for all." We parents believe that. It's a good thing for our society. There's been a reliance on gaming funds, which has been capped. That's how parents have provided computer labs and such. It's now turned to $40 a student. School boards have started to rely on parents to fund some things that are absolute necessities. We don't have as much access to those funds. The worst part of it all is that you create have and have-not districts. You create have and have-not schools within districts. If we really believe in equity for all, then we have to fund it.

           Thank you for your time.

[1630]

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you.

           Jenny.

           J. Kwan: In your school district — this is certainly happening in mine, where the 4 percent cap has impacted not only students who actually need special needs assistance and therefore the supports that come with it — do you also have this problem whereby students are not assessed under the funding formula, so FAS students, as an example, are not actually part of the categories for special needs? Are you experiencing those kinds of problems too?

           C. English: We're experiencing that children aren't assessed because there's only one psychologist in the whole zone, and he simply can't get to all the students that have the need. Once they are assessed, there isn't enough money to give them the services they need. My own daughter has been assessed as having a learning disability, but this year they said there are children that have greater need than she does, so she doesn't get learning assistance. There's an example of a mid-range child.

           I wanted to bring her today. Sheena has brought her children to watch this afternoon, and I'm really glad to see she did that. I also wanted to bring my child. My child is with a tutor this afternoon, because she can't get learning assistance in school.

           There's actually one other issue related to that. Once a child is assessed, they move through the system from year to year. When they move from year to year, there's a file that goes with them that outlines the things they need to work on. It's got all the records of the problems they have. Those files are overseen by the teacher. When there are multiple children in their classroom, the teacher just simply does not have time to set out a plan for those children, even though they're supposed to, so it falls to the learning assistance teachers.

           In addition to that the plans, the folders that identify them, don't necessarily follow them. Parents have to go in every single year and advocate on behalf of their child: "This is what my child has, and this is what you need to do to teach my child." I've heard this from a number of people, and I've actually experienced it with a first nations student that lived with us for a period of time.

           I had to go in to every single one of her teachers. I'm able to do that, because I can speak for myself, but there are many parents who can't. What ends up happening is those children aren't given the programs that have already been assessed for them or identified that they need. There are a lot of things that go along with it.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you both for being here today.

           Our next presentation is by Barbara Adams.

           B. Adams: First of all, I'd like to introduce myself, so you know who I am and why I'm here. I'm an elementary school teacher. At present I'm working at Monterey Elementary, where I have a grade 4 class. I've been an educator since 1970 and have worked every year at least part of that time, for a total of about 28 years' experience. I've also taught as a sessional prof at UVic in the art education department, and I have a master's in art education. I'm a BCTF member in good standing, but I am not here to represent the union. I go along with what the majority votes, as far as the union is concerned.

           The purpose of my talk here, the purpose for being here, is to talk about the impact of government policy on my classroom and on my students. That, to me, is where I'm at. I'm in my classroom all day. I'm not really into the politics of what's happening. I'm looking at the impact on the quality of education for the students and the impact on my ability or opportunity to do my best job.

           I've got five points. I haven't got a handout except for the piece of information you all have, and I'll talk about that in a few minutes. Please ask questions so that I can be understood by the time I'm finished. I'm sorry I didn't have time to make a written submission.

[1635]

           My first point is the impact of the Ministry of Education's policy on art education. I just want to point out the piece of research in front of you. It is not Canadian research, though there are Canadian pieces of research. This is the only one I could put my hand on in the last couple of days. If you look at it, it shows that education in the arts enhances academic development. The title of this is for music, but if you actually look at the bars in the bar graph, it has acting, art history, dance and visual arts, which is my area. If you look in the box up here it says: "Children with no arts course work at all score the lowest in these exams, and students with a lot of arts score better." I just want to show you the research into the fact that arts education is very important to the academic development of students.

           I was part of a research committee that did this arts literacy survey of Canada in the early nineties. My job was to talk to the ministries of education across the

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country and ask two questions. First, do you have an arts curriculum? Surprisingly enough, some did not at that time. And how long did the ministry actually expect students to take part in the arts? In British Columbia at that time it was compulsory to grade 7; after that it was an elective. The best province in Canada was Nova Scotia. Their students are expected to be involved in some aspect of the fine arts through grade 12. If you look at the involvement of the community and the support for the galleries, etc., in that province, it's much higher than in British Columbia.

           I believe now there might be an expectation of students in British Columbia to take some arts through grade 8, but it's definitely not expecting every student to take arts through grade 12. This leads me to look at the fact that we have these very expensive and very good IRPs, but I don't know if they're being put to use very much in the high school.

           I guess my main point here is that I taught as an art educator, art ed 100, at UVic for one year. That course is the only course elementary school teachers need to teach visual arts to the students in British Columbia. When I started in this class, I asked the students: how many of you have had any visual arts past grade 7? I had 28 students, and three hands went up. What that told me was I was going to teach the course to those teachers going out to teach all the visual arts that the British Columbia population was actually going to know, except for a small percentage who follow on with fine arts through high school. I find that appalling.

           I think that we should be looking at changing either the expectation of elementary school teachers to have more than one course in each of the arts or that we should change the expectation of students and see they take some sort of arts right through grade 12. I guess you could do that if you started with grade 7 — grade 7 students already know about fine arts — and have it follow all the way through with that group. Then, you wouldn't be imposing something on students who felt they'd finished with that.

[1640]

           This takes me to my next point: the impact on myself of the policy on research grants for teachers. Following the arts, that's my field. A few years ago I was putting together something I wanted some research grant funding for. The province would have had the result of that; it wasn't for my private gain. I found that there was no research money available at all to a teacher who would produce a hands-on resource that could be used in the province.

           I guess what I've done instead is started an artist-in-the-school program in my own school. Because my school happens to be in Oak Bay, the parents are able to support me with that in my fundraisers and so forth. Again, the parents are taking over the funding of the arts programs in schools.

           My next point — I hope I'm not going too fast — is the impact of class size policy on my grade 4 classroom. Right now many of you may be aware that in the primary grades in British Columbia there is a ceiling of 22 students — less if there are special needs students in the classroom. I sympathize with the parents group from school district 61 who were talking about special education, which I'll talk about a little bit later on.

           There are 22 in the primary grades. That goes from K to 3. Now, I teach grade 4. After two months off, the students come to me. My maximum is 32. I have no reduction for special needs students in my classroom. In fact, there has been a decrease in support for special needs.

           Last year I had an autistic child in my classroom. Well, he couldn't be autistic in the afternoon. This year I have an Asperger's. I have a child that has a combination of three or four disabilities. That child has six hours per week of help. Where does that leave me? Twenty minutes out of every 40 minutes that I teach is dealing in some way with that child. The child needs it, and it makes the class run more smoothly, but I feel that the other children are being cheated.

           It has been mandated that special needs students be integrated into the classroom. I really feel you need to take responsibility and put the support there for those students in some way.

           I feel that you need to revisit the class size at the grade 4 and 5 level. I'm not saying they need to be made smaller all the way up. Students do have a more independent attitude past grade 5, but at grades 4 and 5 it would really make a big difference to have maybe 25 to 28, depending on the number of special needs students you have in the class. It just makes sense.

           I know you're thinking: what is the financial burden of that? I do have an idea about that. We took a program from New Zealand, the reading recovery program, which is a fabulous program. It starts right in kindergarten with students who show a little delay. We've had reading recovery at my school, and for the first time this year I have no non-readers in grade 4 — the first year.

           New Zealand has found some more money for the classroom. They have cut down, and in some areas eliminated, school district administration — amalgamated the school districts and have fewer administrators. I'm going to give you two examples right off the top of my head where this seems to fit. In our area in Victoria, district 61, we're moving towards a middle school area. Saanich has had middle school for a long time. Why do we reinvent the wheel?

[1645]

           The second thing is the assistant superintendent, who is all our representative, came to the school, and I was asking him what his support was. I was telling him about grade 4 having a class size of 32, and I asked him what his support for that was. He didn't want to answer the question. As I persisted, he said it was not in his mandate. I'd like to know who I as a classroom teacher go to, to talk about it. I'm here, and I know you have the power, so I'm letting you know.

           The next point I want to make is the impact of some financial policies relating to insurance rates, specifically, and the effect in my classroom. I'm not quite sure where this comes from. I know it comes somehow from a government policy, but I don't know how many places it passed through before it got to me — probably

[ Page 542 ]

quite a few. I have done the salmon enhancement program in my classroom for the last 12 or 15 years.

           For the first eight years I would always have the tank out in the hallway for part of the time so that the students from my classroom could teach the kindergarten, grade 1 and grade 2 students all about the emerging salmon and improve their skills and confidence in being able to communicate and relate information. Five years ago I was told I had to take my tank out of the hall. Liking a little bit to know reasons why, I said: "Well, I don't feel I should have to. This is a very good program. It's not educationally sound not to." So I didn't. Eventually the fire marshal came to see me. The students were aware that the fire marshal was coming, so I went out in the hall to speak.

           W. McMahon (Chair): You have about two minutes left.

           B. Adams: Is that it? I'll try and be really quick.

           The long and the short of it was that he said even though it was out of the way, it was a safety issue for earthquake. I said: "Well, if you were really concerned about earthquake, you'd condemn this building. It is a brick building. It is not earthquake-proof, and we are there." Needless to say, he didn't like that. I said: "Where did this directive come from?" He said it came from on high to him. He had to follow insurance. There had been some cut, something to do with insurance rates.

           I had another one. We are not allowed to have bulletin boards. Most of the bulletin boards have been taken out of our schools for fire hazard as well. I don't recall ever having a fire on a bulletin board, but they're mostly out of the school. To me, it is a real detriment to the students. They don't have anywhere to share their work. They are losing self-confidence and self-esteem from showing their work.

           My last point is the impact of confrontational bargaining on the students in my classroom. I feel this government and previous governments, since the teachers in this province have been made a union, have been unfair to the students and the teachers in the classroom, who take the brunt of all the action that happens. This is a win-lose situation, where it's confrontational rather than looking at how to work together as professionals to make the best education system in this province and the country. We insist on having power struggles and all those kinds of things.

           There are ways to get around that. We had a perfectly good bargaining method with arbitration or whatever it was called; I don't know what the name of it was. Anyway, there was arbitration involved. There was also another bargaining method, the European bargaining method, where both sides develop a contract and then an independent body chooses the best one that serves everyone's purpose. I feel the students feel insecure. They don't quite know what's happening. It's hard for them to understand what's happening, and I feel that there's a better way.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. We have a question from Richard Stewart.

[1650]

           R. Stewart: My question is a clarification. I've done a lot of work in building codes, and building code requirements — not, from what I understand, ministry requirements — are that the flame-spread rating of anything in an exit hallway has to meet certain requirements. It might seem silly, and perhaps we should examine the ways in which the building code gets developed, but I know why those ones are there.

           B. Adams: I understand these are not done for bad reasons. Everybody is thinking safety. I'm wondering whether they're thinking safety to cover oneself or to cover someone for insurance reasons, and I think that somehow they could be done in a little better way.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks. I'll take two more questions. Jenny Kwan followed by Elayne Brenzinger.

           J. Kwan: Just a quick question. Actually, a number of people have now mentioned this reading recovery program, and it appears to be a very good program for students. I'm curious as to whether or not it's a provincewide program, or is that a program that only applies to particular school districts?

           B. Adams: I'm not even sure it's districtwide in our district. Our school has chosen to do that because, you see, you get a learning resource budget, and you have to best apply that. Now, the primary classes in our school have decided the best way they can do that, rather than a 40-minute pullout as a band-aid effect after the first year, is they would test the students in grade 1 or kindergarten or wherever they test them. We have decided to do that. It has been very successful, and we're very glad we did put part of our budget to that. Our learning resource budget is mainly applied to the intermediate grades outside reading recovery.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks. Elayne's question has been answered, so I'll take one from Sheila Orr.

           S. Orr: Barbara, you've taught for a long time. Has the system, in your opinion, got worse? Strictly from a classroom teacher's point of view, someone who's out there teaching young kids, has the system got so very progressively worse? Can you give me an idea, from all the years you've been in the classroom?

           B. Adams: Yes, I can definitely give you an idea. I would say that right now we are worse off than we have been, but I'm not sure we're not in a continuum. We definitely need attention now. For example, we've had a lot of binders come to the schools over the last ten or 15 years of new programs, of new ways we're supposed to do things.

           Now, I think the IRPs have been well thought out. The only problem is we have no budget to buy resources to match them. It's like reinventing the wheel yet again. I would really like to look for some necessary funding for resources to back up the IRPs. I think if we're not attended to in our plants…. I'm in a very old

[ Page 543 ]

school — two plug-ins, copious extension cords, all kinds of things if you want to have any computers. Nobody can afford to replace the computer technology. I think the government should have a lease program for schools, so we can keep up with the technology. We need attention resource-wise, big time.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks for coming tonight and for your presentation.

           I'll defer the introduction of our next presentation to Richard Stewart, whose French is much better than mine.

           R. Stewart: Hello to l'Association des Professeurs du Programme d'Immersion et du Programme Francophone. On attend du comité je voudrais vous souhaité la bienvenue. Cet après-midi je vous remercie d'être venu nous parler. If you could please introduce yourselves.

[1655]

           A. McFarland: Bonjour. Je m'appelle Anne-Louise McFarland, and I'll do the rest in English for you. I welcome the opportunity to speak to you as a parent, a teacher and president of the association of French immersion and francophone teachers in British Columbia about the state of French immersion in our province.

           To start with, what is French immersion, and where did we come from? French immersion is an educational program designed to enhance the learning of our other official language through the curriculum.

           Children either enter French immersion in kindergarten or late immersion in grade 6. If the child is in early immersion, the teaching and learning of all the curriculum is done entirely in French until grade 4. English arts are introduced at that level.

           As the child goes through his school years, the hours of contact with French are gradually reduced but remain at about 60 percent until the end of elementary, 40 percent in English. In grades 8 to 10 districts usually offer 37½ percent of the instruction in French, and in grades 11 and 12 it's 25 percent. These figures are based on funding from the ministry, so if these levels are not maintained, the funding is, of course, decreased.

           The French immersion program was initiated by parents over 25 years ago to allow their children to have the opportunity to become bilingual in Canada. They wanted their children to be able to play a role in the promotion of national unity and cultural understanding. In British Columbia today we have 34,423 children in French immersion in 43 school districts, and in Canada we have over 300,000 children in French immersion. Every year 1,600 students graduate from French immersion. I can attest to that because I mark all of their provincial examinations. Sixteen percent of B.C.'s teenagers are bilingual now, and that number is rapidly rising. I can also attest to the fact that our first graduates have enrolled their children in the program. I'm seeing them coming through. It's scary, but anyway, it's good. We're renewing ourselves.

           The French immersion program is not mandated by the Ministry of Education. It's a program of choice which is chosen by the parents. APPIPC, our association, works very closely with our parent partners, and these are represented, for the most part, by Canadian Parents for French. The fact that enrolment figures increase yearly speaks to the success and the popularity of the program and also the commitment of parents and students. This is a program that is accessible and is a matter of choice for all parents, and all children do have an equal chance of success in our program.

           Some indicators of success in our program would be, for example, the high percentage of our graduates that pursue post-secondary education, those that qualify for scholarships and also those that receive the B.C. Passport to Education. In the latest FSA results all French immersion students, at every grade level and in every subject, performed better than the provincial average. That's in the statistics that have just recently come out.

           Other benefits of our program to the students. Of course, there are many of them — enhanced creativity, superior problem-solving abilities, ease of acquiring fluency in additional languages. A lot of our secondary students do Spanish, German — a third and a fourth language — and find it much easier. There's greater flexibility for career opportunities in a global marketplace. Due to the emphasis on oral communication at the secondary level, where I teach, 30 percent of the course is based on oral evaluation. They have to do a lot of oral presentations and public speaking, and they become very skilled at public speaking.

           Obviously, they have increased self-confidence, tolerance for differences and cultural awareness of their own country and other francophone countries. They have an increased curiosity and a willingness to explore, take risks and travel in other countries. We do offer them opportunities for participation in trips and cultural and linguistic exchanges.

           Our program receives federal funding to assist the province in covering startup and maintenance costs, but ongoing federal support is received in the form of yearly grants per district, based on enrolment in the program. This funding is absolutely essential to maintain the level of service that will ensure success for the students enrolled in the program.

[1700]

           We have three recommendations. One is that the government continue to support the federal-provincial funding agreement and to ensure funding levels are maintained and increased. We would like the services that have been cut to be restored — for example, support for immersion provincial conferences, workshops for beginning immersion teachers, bursaries for French-as-a-second-language teachers that wish to upgrade their language skills and therefore become immersion teachers. Hire more French-speaking monitors that would work with the children at the elementary and secondary levels in the classrooms, and remove district caps on program enrolment. That's quite important to us because a lot of districts at the kindergarten level will not allow more than 50 percent of the classes to be in immersion.

[ Page 544 ]

           Two, we recommend the ministry mandate a greater number of courses in French at the senior level as a requirement of the French immersion Dogwood Certificate to ensure all the students meet the program objective of functional bilingualism. It's also very important to us that the Ministry of Advanced Education ensures sufficient funding is available for teacher-education programs in B.C. post-secondary institutions to train an appropriate number of French-as-a-second-language teachers. We really do need to look at training more teachers for this program. We already have a shortage of qualified teachers in many areas, not to mention it's almost impossible to get substitute teachers. We must offer the best possible FSL training and in-service to maintain and enhance the quality of our immersion program.

           As president of APPIPC I travel across the country an awful lot and speak to a lot of immersion teachers and a lot of immersion students. B.C. is recognized as having one of the best immersion programs in the country. The parents, the teachers and the students are very, very proud of the fact that they can go anywhere and be among the best of those students. This is only due to the fact of our partnership with our parents, our students, administration and the teachers.

           We are so proud of our students who graduate from our programs. They will be the world leaders of tomorrow. They are self-assured and successful, and if you want to see a wonderful group of secondary students, I teach 20 minutes away at Stelly's Secondary School in Saanich. Doors are always open; we have lots of people that come in and look at our program, which I started 13 years ago at the secondary level. It is enormously successful, and the children love visitors.

           We get to know the families very, very well because of the close family contact we have with our program participants. A lot of the families, most if not all of their children are in the program. Of course, the families, in time, do become friends. I brought some with me today. Mr. and Mrs. Brand and Aidan. They have had two sons go through immersion. Josh has graduated, and he's just behind me. I also brought my son, and he's graduated from the program as well. I was his teacher for three years, so imagine that. Aidan is in grade 12 with me this year. I would like to open the floor to their comments.

           A. Brand: Bonjour, je m'appelle Aidan Brand. My name is Aidan Brand and for the last 12 years I've had the privilege of receiving a bilingual education. The French immersion program has allowed me to pursue my education with a group of students who have become like a family to me. The high expectations of the French immersion program have caused me to raise my own standards and have contributed greatly to my own academic successes.

           Last summer I had the opportunity to visit France, and I found that without language barriers, I was able to fluently communicate with the people and be truly immersed in the culture. That was a wonderful experience that would not have been possible without the bilingual education offered by the French immersion program.

           As I approach my graduation, I'm looking forward to the various horizons French immersion will open for me. This includes pursuing my post-secondary education in French and also being more competitive in the job market for jobs that require bilingualism.

           Last, I feel that since French is a distinct and important part of Canadian society, I think all Canadians should embrace bilingualism and promote any opportunity for students to become bilingual.

           Penny Brand: Good afternoon. I'm Penny Brand. I am the mother of Aidan and Josh. I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak about the French immersion program in which my children have been enrolled since kindergarten.

           My husband and I travelled extensively for nearly nine years, and we became acutely aware that most people in the world speak more than one language. We were therefore very happy to discover the opportunity existed in our local school to give our children the benefit of learning a second language.

           It's been a wonderful experience. Our children are functionally bilingual and can confidently take their place in a bilingual Canada. That is only one part of the story. Being exposed to a different language and a culture so early in their lives has helped to make them open and accepting of other people's ways of learning and being.

           [1705]

           Learning French in the classroom required they speak to one another and help one another, so they have learned to work with others in a cooperative and supportive manner. Travelling to Quebec and France has given Josh and Aidan self-confidence and enriched the cultural aspects of their lives. Learning to listen carefully and to work diligently towards a goal has given them skills for life. They have been part of a supportive community of other French immersion students, their parents and teachers.

           Let me talk to you about the teachers. We've been very impressed by the high level of commitment of the teachers, their patience and their enthusiasm. Often underresourced, understaffed and underfunded, the teachers in this program have been resolute in their efforts to provide optimal learning conditions in a fun, creative environment and to ensure the many indicators of success that Anne-Louise has mentioned.

           When making decisions about the French immersion program, I encourage you to keep foremost in your mind the question how we can ensure optimal learning opportunities for the children of British Columbia. Constitutionally Canada is a bilingual, bicultural country. Our west coast children deserve the opportunity to take their place as bilingual Canadians. The west coast deserves to be represented in government, business and public service by our own west coast leaders. Without a doubt, these young people you see before you are the leaders of the future, and it is our responsibility to educate them to reach their full potential.

[ Page 545 ]

           Peter Brand: My name is Peter Brand. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to speak about the excellent opportunities that our sons, Josh and Aidan, have had through the French immersion program in the Saanich school district.

           For the past 11 years I have taught at the Lau,welnew Tribal School in Brentwood Bay. During this time I have become heavily involved in the growing global effort to address the plight of indigenous language loss around the world. As a matter of fact, I met this morning with Minister George Abbott at the House of First Voices Cultural Centre, where I currently work, to discuss these issues.

           In the mode of indigenous education the immersion model is universally accepted as the most successful method available. The New Zealand Maori language nest is considered one of the most successful language teaching models in the world. In the language nest Maori elders spend the day in preschool settings, where they immerse their young children in their language and culture.

           For Josh and Aidan and their peers, the French immersion program has offered the gift of fluent bilingualism. As Penny mentioned, she and I have experienced the joy of this gift during our travels with our sons in Canada and also in Europe. To experience the vitality of another culture from the perspective of one who is able to communicate equally with the local people is a huge gift.

           In our home, when a broadcast of sports or culture is unavailable in English, or when a French-speaking political leader addresses the nation, our sons frequently tune into the French broadcast to dispense with the need for translation. Until you experience that and feel the shivers up your spine and your eyes begin to water at the joy, you cannot begin to understand how this feels. It is truly a wonderful, wonderful gift.

           It's well known that in this bilingual country only a small minority of Canadians are actually bilingual. The 1996 census indicated just 4.8 million people, or approximately 17 percent. From the statistics Anne-Louise just mentioned, that would mean British Columbia actually has something close to the national average. Nevertheless, it's still a small percentage nationally.

           This currently leads to a disproportionate representation in senior levels of business, government and the military for anglophone Canadians. If we wish B.C. to be better represented in the houses of power and have influence in eastern Canada, then we must continue to support and promote programs like the French immersion program in order to prepare our young leaders to participate in our bilingual country.

[1710]

           Having had the opportunity to visit over 60 countries and savour a great diversity of languages and culture, Penny and I celebrate the desire which our sons have gained, partly through their French immersion experience, to do the same. They have the linguistic freedom to thrive in many, many places beyond the borders of Canada and to enjoy full access to the literature, arts and culture of these places.

           Through their engagement in the French immersion program, students are exposed not only to French language but become heavily immersed in French and French-Canadian culture. Their minds are open to all forms of cultural diversity locally, nationally and globally. A high proportion of these students enrol in programs that engage them in other cultures, leading them to become well-rounded leaders of tomorrow who embrace all of humanity in our global village.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you.

           Do we have Elayne? Okay. We're running out of time.

           E. Brenzinger: Je parle français un peu aussi. I would say the majority of us sitting around here are bilingual.

           What I would like to know is: when the children are in your program and are identified with special needs, learning disabilities, etc., do you get funding from the provincial government to support those children?

           A. McFarland: The school gets the funding. The children are identified along with all the other children. It's just a matter of whether we can find specialists. At our school I am the learning assistance teacher for French immersion as well as the department head, etc., etc. Actually, we do have children in our program that have learning disabilities and have hearing disabilities, and they get the same amount of funding. It's the school that decides where the funding goes.

           E. Brenzinger: Merci.

           A. McFarland: De rien.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you all for coming. It's the first presentation we've had from teachers, parents and the students, so thank you very much.

           Our next presentation tonight is from Ian McKinnon, Advanced Education Council of British Columbia, and we'll be following his with one more presentation before our break.

           I. McKinnon: There's hope for the future, in other words.

           I should correct you. This evening I'm presenting on behalf of the regional districts of North Okanagan, Central Okanagan and Okanagan-Similkameen, and a private group — U 2000 — who support an extension of the university in the southern interior and OUC.

           What I will take you through is, very briefly, a study I conducted this summer in the Okanagan-Similkameen region looking at post-secondary educational needs in that region. I think I'm past the title slide by now, so we can go to the next one. You will also have an executive summary of that study, and I've given the committee staff the 90-odd-page detailed study. You need another 50 pages of data, followed by a 50-page transcript of hearings and synthesis, I'm sure, so your staff will have that.

[ Page 546 ]

           What did we try to do? We looked at the capacity and the needs for post-secondary education in the region. We consulted with a full range of potential students, service providers and with industry, the potential hirers. All of this was to find out where the region stood and to get an objective assessment of the region's needs.

           The first thing I want to show you is a very simple thing that turned up. A very similar overhead turned up in the open cabinet meeting the other week, I noticed, that looked at graduation rates. The facts are very straightforward. British Columbia has both the lowest post-secondary participation rates in the country, although occasionally we're higher than Prince Edward Island, and we have unquestionably the lowest graduation rate for post-secondary university degrees in the country.

[1715]

           The scale on this is a complex one, but I've compared us to the Canadian average and to our two principal economic competitors, Ontario and Alberta. We lag behind both those provinces on both the green scale, which is the proportion of the cohort that attend university, and the grey scale, which is those who attend non-university colleges.

           In addition to B.C. lagging behind the rest of the country, there's a deep division between the large metropolitan areas on the south Island, the lower mainland and the rest of the province. This shows the results of a student that Richard Allen at UBC did — a very elegant study, statistically — which looked at what proportion of 18-year-olds had a degree five years later, in terms of where they lived. What it shows is that for women, if you live in the north Island or anywhere in the interior, you're about 60 percent as likely to have a degree by that point as someone who came from Victoria or the lower mainland. The proportions are equally true for men. In other words, if you graduate from high school anywhere except the lower mainland and the Victoria region, you are around 40 percent less likely to attend and graduate from university.

           This is a quick summary of the position of the three major university colleges that are outside of those catchment areas. On the far right-hand I look at the dollar grants in their region, per person aged 18 to 24, that the ministry gave in the last fiscal year reported. What you find is that the Okanagan is funded at a level approximately 30 percent below either University College of the Cariboo or Malaspina University College catchment areas.

           Now, you will be told by the ministry that all of the funding is on formula. The real discrepancy is the number of funded FTEs in those regions. A further disparity, when you start putting it all together, is the fact that there are full universities available in Victoria and the lower mainland that siphon off some of the students. The dilemma here is that these students are much less likely to use them.

           The other issue that particularly affects the Okanagan you can see in these growth rates. These are the government of British Columbia's and the government of Canada's official median population projections from 1996 — the last census date — out to 2026. I've scaled each of them to 100. At the bottom is the Canadian growth rate. It will grow by just over 20 percent. In the middle is B.C. We're projected to grow over the 30-year period by about 45 percent, and the Okanagan by about 62 percent. It has, historically, grown faster than either British Columbia or Canada. It is likely to continue to grow significantly faster, yet it has a smaller post-secondary education infrastructure.

           There's just a factual background.

           Let's get on to what we found when we talked to people from the Okanagan-Similkameen. Who did we talk to? Well, we talked to the elected officials, economic development officers, and so on to look at overall regional needs and plans. We talked to employers, labour market specialists, and so on to look at what jobs were out there and what firms had problems because they couldn't get the workers they needed. We also talked to participants, students, people that use the education system.

           What do we find are some of the issues? Number one is access to the system. Waiting lists for popular programs ran in the years — three years — for some of the more popular programs where there was guaranteed employment once you were finished. Three-year waiting lists were fairly routine. Every university college and college measures its waiting lists differently, so it's hard to compare, but big problems. Extended time to completion was another one. People who were completing their university degree at OUC found routinely they could not get into courses required for completion. In fact, the university college itself views it as being very rare that a student can finish in four years. Even if he or she is fully loaded — takes a full course load — they can't take all the courses.

[1720]

           We actually saw some fascinating things being done by students. There were students who were taking Athabasca courses, because they could get them via the Internet, then having to petition the university college to recognize the course and that it met the requirements. That was almost the only way to finish in four years.

           I want to emphasize something. There's not only enormous personal cost; there is the actual cost in fees, living, and so on. And there's the opportunity cost in being held off the labour market for several years. The government has a terrific cost here. These people are not fully and gainfully employed because of the backlog in the system — more funding for the post-secondary system, more funding in student assistance, and so on.

           This next chart is a little flamboyant. It was just amazing, I have to say. Breadth of offerings was another issue in the southern interior. There was a host of specific courses people really needed that were either difficult to get access to or had long waiting lists — adult basic education right through to postgraduate courses. The BA was hindered by a lack of course depth.

           There were a lot of innovative suggestions when we went around and talked to people. They were very

[ Page 547 ]

interested in provincial mandates, not duplicating what was offered next door. There was a golf management course — I use it as an almost silly example, but that's how specific we are — that was superb at Selkirk. People were saying: "We don't want to duplicate it. We'll go there. But we've got terrific courses like a water quality management course. They should come here." They're looking at new ways of cooperating across the university college districts.

           They also wonder about underfunding causing a lack of stability. This caused real problems. Even successful programs like water management are seen to be at risk, and employers are worried about becoming too dependent on the graduates, on integrating the students into their courses, having them as co-ops, because they're not sure they're going to exist from year to year. Student see courses listed. We were given examples of courses that had been listed as often as once a year for the preceding six years and never actually offered. They were in the university calendar and were never offered, again, because of a funding squeeze.

           We looked on the demand side. I have a whole series, as you can see in the more detailed report.

           I wanted to talk briefly about high-tech. The number one request from people who wanted training was in technology and systems training. What's very interesting, though, is that it was extremely diverse. It wasn't just a series of high-tech firms emerging in the southern interior but also a lot of the classic, traditional firms saying they needed technology training. They also talked a lot about having somebody with a four-year-old or an eight-year-old two-year certificate not being enough. One of my favourite quotes was from one of the entrepreneurs who ran a software company. He said, "You've got to understand. In this business, it's here today, gone later today," which struck me as very true.

           At the other end was manufacturing. If the number one demand was for computer system training, the number two demand, the thing most often raised, was welding. I emphasize that to give you a sense of the enormous breadth of needs. In communities trying to make a transition off resource dependency, things that were related — welding, heavy duty mechanics, and so on — were the ones that were heavily oversubscribed. Again, multiyear waiting lists and an almost certain ticket to employment for people in very tough economic times. They also wanted to emphasize the Conference Board's so-called modern skills, the learning to learn working groups, and so on.

           You can just see here the range of demand in the service industries. Nursing is a typical one. Many people have thought through what it meant to have a significantly aging population in the southern interior and were very specific about the training needs required. Education, retail and tourism were other areas.

           Finally, I want to talk about some of the ways the institutions there were seen. First, vocational and technical needs are often seen as being really important, especially outside the major urban areas in the southern interior. Yet again, lots of individuals' aspirations are stymied by lack of access and lack of breadth of offerings.

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           A look briefly at the view from high schools. Lots of people said: "Oh, it's fine to go to the institutions here for our first two years and on through a full university degree." They also talked at length about the importance of local campuses. Something that OUC has been very successful at with many campuses around the region, particularly in communities like Lumby, where the mills have shut, where there's no tradition of post-secondary education, is to show it's possible to see people and have the so-called demonstration effect that there is a real avenue out.

           What are our conclusions about the southern interior? Firstly, there is an enormous pent-up demand for training on the part of individuals who want access to the kinds of training that will make them employable and successful through life. Secondly, we ran into a whole range of firms that found their growth and economic prospects hindered by their lack of access to suitably skilled and trained personnel and the opportunity to upgrade the personnel they currently had. Particularly important is the last point up there. The smaller communities are really concerned, as resources become more squeezed, that their satellite campuses — the regional and local presences of the post-secondary institutions — will be squeezed out of their communities, and that will be at enormous cost.

           In total, we've got an extensive study here that I hope you'll look through. It shows a wide array of demand in the southern interior for post-secondary education. It shows the importance, for its economic and personal development prospects, of having the courses they need accessible and attainable for the people.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. Do we have any questions?

           I have one. It's on page of 6 of your presentation. Being a rural MLA from the eastern part of the province, one of the things we find is that many students leave the area I'm from to go to Alberta. Along the eastern border I think you'll find that. As we look at the statistics, on the page here, for North Island and the interior, they don't take that into consideration in these figures, do they?

           I. McKinnon: That's correct. We actually spent some time and met with three different groups, for example, in Revelstoke, which is within the catchment area. I tried to estimate how many B.C. students ended up in Alberta and netted out against the ones who move the other way. Our results might look, maybe, a half a percentage point better. It's a significant effect if you're in Fernie, Cranbrook, Revelstoke and in the Peace, where it's much more convenient and there's in fact a real attractiveness.

           One of the things we've found is the Alberta system is also very aggressive in recruiting in B.C. They offer terrific scholarships. They spend a lot more money on post-secondary education and, therefore, have the capacity to attract. There's a two-edged sword. To answer

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your question directly, it would make a marginal difference. We looked at it. It doesn't change the big message.

           The second one — and I'm glad you'll let me talk about this for a second — is that Alberta, especially U of A and to a lesser degree U of C, are creaming some of our very best students as far away as Kelowna. Three years ago the major high school in Kelowna had four of their top ten students go to U of A — courted, heavy scholarships. It's going to be very hard to get them back. We're losing some of our best and most promising young people.

           W. McMahon (Chair): You're right. That's what we find in our area with Kimberley, Cranbrook, Fernie, Invermere, Golden, all of those areas. The students go that way.

           R. Lee: In the last page of your presentation it mentions expansion of access to graduate and professional degree programs. What kind of potential is there in terms of graduate programs in your area?

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           I. McKinnon: The demand tended to be very focused on professional and practical degrees. A lot of teachers wanted upgrading to masters of education. If I remember properly, they're beginning to offer a University of Alberta degree, because they can't work with the B.C. universities on this area. An MBA or elements of graduate business…. There's some interesting, highly specialized areas where there's potential for graduate work related particularly to the agricultural industry in the province. Again, there was relatively little demand, saying that they need MAs and PhDs in history or classical philosophy. They realized the initial scopes tended to be much more focused and much more pragmatic.

           R. Lee: Thank you.

           S. Orr: My own son — with very high marks — had to go to Alberta because he was able to get all the courses he needed. Now he's had his first year. He's had fabulous marks — the president's list and big scholarships.

           Tell me something. Looking at the college funding, how is the tuition freeze affecting these colleges?

           I. McKinnon: The tuition freeze combined with increasing the number of students has meant the participation rate has gone up and the average time for completion has lengthened considerably because of the lack of availability of courses. Ironically, because the principal cost for a student who does not live in a university centre — i.e., people from the interior or the North Island or the North Coast — is their living costs, the cost of attending university may actually have increased for them. If they have to leave their community, the cost is probably increased because they're taking a year, or potentially two years, more.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you so much for coming tonight.

           I. McKinnon: Thank you for your indulgence.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Our last presentation before our break is the Victoria Association for Community Living, Bev Kissinger.

           I'm going to ask the committee when we break, if five of us could try and ensure we speed up our time so we can get back, and we'll start the meeting as quickly as we can after 6:05 p.m. If anybody wants to volunteer with me, I'd be happy to have you come back.

           Bev, welcome.

           B. Kissinger: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm here in a few roles tonight, and I am fortunate to be able to come and talk to you.

           One of the moms who wanted to come and speak couldn't come because her computer crashed yesterday. She apologizes for that, but you will get a written submission from her.

           I'm here because of this little girl right here. This is my first discussion with you. I actually have two children. This is my son, and he would not want to be left out, so I'll put him up there too. In 1981 this little girl came into my life. This is my daughter, Tricia. She led me screaming and kicking into a life I had not expected to go into. I had no experience. I knew nothing about people with disabilities.

           I attended school in the fifties and the sixties, so I'm a bit of an historian. I'm older than I would like to admit some days. I didn't have classmates that I attended school with who had a disability. In my growing up years I met nobody with a disability. I went into nurse's training and at that time had my first experience, meeting a young man on the pediatric ward. I shudder to think how I treated him, because I had no idea. I never even saw him as a person.

           I had a nephew with Down's syndrome who was born the year before my daughter. Just as before I parented, I had lots of ideas on how other people should parent. I also had lots of ideas on how he should be raised. When Tricia was born, as I say, I had minimal life experience to guide me. I learned under fire, emotion and exhaustion. I learned at the expense of my daughter. It took me many years to figure out that she didn't need to be fixed, that she was absolutely wonderful for who she was.

           As a family we let our belief guide us in the fact that she was a child. She belonged in this world. She belonged to us, and we believed that she was part of her community. That was really what ended up guiding us to go where we went. She started school in 1987, and I was so scared. I was just petrified. We'd worked hard to figure out what she should do. We initially thought she would have to go to a segregated school. We were offered that. We then thought she would be bused across town to another school. During her preschool years we travelled across town to a day care, because that was our only option, and to the child development centre for different therapies. We were out of our community.

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[1735]

           We went to a workshop that helped us learn that our daughter belonged, that our daughter had a right to go to her neighbourhood school. We started as a six-week experiment in 1987 at Monterey Elementary School. It was neat to hear a teacher from Monterey Elementary here today, because that was where we re-entered our community and our neighbourhood. I'll never, ever forget the first day of school, when she started kindergarten, how we all walked to school together, her being pulled in a little red wagon and all the kids in the neighbourhood going along. I got to get back to seeing the people that I was in prenatal class with, that I saw at the corner grocery store prior to having to be out of our community so much to get the supports and services she needed.

           As a child carrying so many labels of disability, she started at her neighbourhood school. This was a first in school district 61 and one of the first in the whole province. That's only back in 1987; it's not very long ago. You know what? She went to school with our future doctors, future lawyers, future moms and dads and brothers and sisters of our very next generation.

           She died at age 11 after completing her fourth year of school. She touched many, many people in her short life, and over 300 people came to her service, her celebration of life. I don't know how many of us will be able to watch as our celebration of life happens and see that many people there who we have touched in our lifetime. Because of her there are better teachers, better principals, better school board administration. Because of her I'm a better person, and society is a better place.

           Inclusion is the right thing to do — not because it's cost-effective in the instant but because of the ripple effect over the long haul. It is making a difference to the whole classroom, to neighbourhoods and to communities. Something that struck me, which someone said at a school board presentation, is that disability is really a natural phenomenon of human existence, and it is the one minority group that in an instant any of us can belong to.

           Having my daughter led me to the role I now have with Victoria Association for Community Living. My role is one of family support and advocacy. I have the absolute pleasure of meeting many families who embark on a life they perhaps didn't think they were going to be in. Some of them embrace it absolutely in a second and walk into it totally celebrating who their children are. Others struggle and try to figure out what it means, where they go, what they do, how they learn what they have to learn.

           I go to many school board meetings. I go to many school meetings with families. I help them. I'm involved with a couple of other colleagues in our community, and we do a lot of learning together with families of how to access different supports and services and how to be part of their community.

           One of the other wonderful things I have is working with an organization that has a strong commitment to people with disabilities and a strong, very rich history. So I present the rest of my brief to you on behalf of Victoria Association for Community Living. We are a non-profit organization that has been providing services and supports to people with developmental disabilities and their families for more than 45 years.

           We began as a group of parents coming together who had children with disabilities. These parents wanted to keep their children at home with them rather than sending them to live in institutions, the only support offered to families in that era. Essentially, our organization and many like it were some of the first schools for children with disabilities, as there was no acceptance for them in the regular public school system.

           The association has a long history of supporting families to access what they know is best for their children in regards to education. Overwhelmingly those parents want a truly supportive, welcoming and inclusive option for their child. They want the same opportunities as their siblings and peers to go to their neighbourhood school, to receive an education that meets their individual needs and to have an environment where friendships, social networks and self-esteem are nurtured.

           Children with special needs often bring to the classroom additional supports that when used efficiently and effectively benefit the entire classroom environment. When inclusive education is implemented with all the right ingredients — which are adequate support and willing attitude — the benefit to students with special needs is clearly evident. Compared to students who have left segregated environments, those who have been included with their peers often have more enhanced social skills, are stronger advocates for themselves, are more likely to become employed, enjoy a wider variety of social activities and have a greater friendship circle. Beyond benefiting the child and their peers, the entire community is rewarded when the school system produces well-educated, supportive and tolerant students.

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           Inclusion means different things to different people. A range of support is required, obviously, in that needs and learning styles are so varied. Some desire and do well in full-time-included classrooms, while others do better with some resource time and extra attention of a case manager. Despite what choice is best for each student, the main factor that determines the success is attitude.

           The following are some suggestions of how things could be improved, but they are almost all affected by attitude. The policies in existence, the support available, the accommodations made, the creative solutions, the effectiveness of the team and the learning of the student are mostly guided by attitude. I see that time and time again in the school meetings I attend. When people are sitting around the table willing to look at how to make something work, as you probably all know, you can make it work.

           It is known that teachers do not receive education at the university level that adequately prepares them to enter the classroom. This has been a concern of ours. Values and attitudes come from personal, family and life experience. Life experience of present-day teachers,

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learning alongside peers with diverse support needs during their schooling years, has not yet come to fruition. I believe it's just starting to.

           As teachers experience their new role in working with another adult in their classroom such as the teaching assistant, there can be confusion as to who is the teacher, what each other's responsibilities are and the newness of teamwork. As teachers welcome students with varying designations into their classroom, they must understand the importance and the value of the IEP as a working document. It is essential in supporting the designation of the student and as a tool to promote teamwork. It is critical all team members are at the table, including the parents and the teaching assistant, as these documents are created. Time and time again there is confusion between adaptation and modification of curriculum. All methods of adaptation are not pursued before modification is brought in.

           The area of school that causes the most urgent solution becomes the student whose behaviour is not understood. The approach of extinguishing the behaviour becomes the focus instead of understanding the disability and the behaviour as communication. As I've sat around meetings, I have such strong feelings for students who end up in the behaviour category. So often that becomes the whole focus, and it's forgotten who they are as individuals. Therefore, it is our belief that ongoing professional development must happen for teachers that focuses on attitude, values and beliefs, teamwork, writing IEPs, adapting and modifying curriculum and understanding behaviour as communication. These are not areas that are strongly emphasized in university education for teachers. These areas of focus will benefit all students and challenge teachers' personal and professional growth.

           We are including with our presentation the article called: "Helping or Hovering?" It describes perfectly the evolution of the role of teaching assistant within the school system. We also included Roles and Responsibilities. That was done just recently by one of the school districts on the mainland; I believe it was Delta. It's in here as well. When we think it's only been a bit more than ten years since the teaching assistance has been in that classroom…. That role has evolved so quickly and with so little preparation and thought. They have been in there by fire doing and creating that job as they go.

           Who the teaching assistant is can be pivotal in the success of inclusion for students who meet the ministry designations. Parents and students themselves must have input into the process of determining who the teaching assistant is. It's a strong belief we have from parents and from ourselves. Again attitudes, values and beliefs are equally as important as skills and abilities. We have seen what appear to be extremely qualified individuals, when looking at their schooling and course work, who have a disastrous effect on the inclusive schooling of students.

           I've seen what appears on paper to be unqualified individuals who have been instrumental in supporting students to learn with their classmates, to be included and welcomed by classmates and have after-school friendships fostered. The difference is attitude and the strong belief that children are children first and that we all belong together. With this belief and attitude they look for ways to include instead of reasons why inclusion cannot happen. They look at and model that every child has the right to participate and be included.

           We do not believe that teaching assistants should not be qualified, but they should have the attitude, values, beliefs and qualifications. We believe parents and students must have input into the process of hiring. There must be a match between student, assistant and family and a process to change the assistant if the match is not working. We do not believe seniority should be the deciding factor in who the teaching assistant is.

           We do believe that general and specific training should be required and should be ongoing for teaching assistants and that specific training should be mandatory when supporting students who have autism, students who use behaviour as their way of communicating and students who have exceptional health care needs. Education must be available on an ongoing basis. Teaching assistants benefit all children in the classroom and must be acknowledged for their valuable contribution to the team, the classroom and the school.

[1745]

           Collective agreement language is a real concern of ours. We feel, in fact, that the language in that collective agreement is discriminatory. The cost of adhering to class size and composition language must not be charged to special education but charged to regular education. Funding that has been allocated to special education must be spent on direct support to students. It's not adequate as it is, and it can't be governed and eroded by contract language.

           The policy book, the manual of policy, procedures and guidelines. We would like to see the guidelines changed and that it be much more directive so that it isn't the decision of the school or the school district whether inclusion happens but is a directive and a policy that is in place that must be practised.

           Funding must remain targeted. I've heard rumours that targeted funding may removed by this government. That's a real concern we have. Accountability and tracking must be developed first. There would be catastrophic implications to direct student services if targeted funding were removed prior to accountability measures that are tested and agreed to by educational partners, stakeholders and consumers. Financial accountability must be understandable, transparent and accessible to parents.

           Again, we spend a lot of time at school board meetings trying to figure out where the funding really is being used. That needs to be clearer. We need to not have to have an accounting degree or a parent who has that degree to help us understand how those funds are used. We need to be able to see that as we walk in and know that it's put in the right place.

           W. McMahon (Chair): You have three minutes. Thanks.

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           B. Kissinger: Funding for special education must be increased, as I've already spoken to. We've experienced a fair bit of discomfort at budget meetings where on the block around dollars is music versus special education. That's really uncomfortable for families. You shouldn't have to feel you're begging at school board meetings to have a basic right for your son or daughter for education.

           To provide or not provide inclusive education is, to us, not a question. We strongly believe it is what is right for all students. Delivering good education for all students directly impacts positively on our community and societal attitudes.

           I'm enclosing for you our statement on inclusive education that we submitted to our school district this past year. Jim was here and spoke of Victor School. We have, as he mentioned, grave concerns about having a segregated school, the only one in the whole province, in our district. It is becoming, and has become over time, the place where the problems are solved versus the neighbourhood school.

           Parents are only searching for what is the best education for their son or daughter. It's not about parents against parents; it's about what the school board should be doing. As a direct result of supporting all children, all children should be able to walk into their neighbourhood school with their parents and have an education there. They should not feel they have to go somewhere else. If they need a vision tent at their school, it should be there.

           In ending I would like to say that people with disabilities are actually being seen as teachers of higher-order principles such as tolerance, acceptance, trust and understanding.

           We wish you well in your upcoming work.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks, Bev. Do we have any questions for Bev?

           J. Kwan: I'll just ask a quick question. You may not know the answer to this. How many schools are there across the province that are like Victor School?

           B. Kissinger: Victor School is the only school in the whole province that is segregated. We have it in Victoria.

           J. Kwan: The entire province. I see. Okay.

           B. Kissinger: Then situations do not get solved at your neighbourhood school. They get solved there instead.

           J. Kwan: Can I ask one more question?

           W. McMahon (Chair): Quickly.

           J. Kwan: In terms of special needs assistance for school, for it to be fully integrated and effective, what is your perception of the ratio needed in terms of number of students per support staff?

           B. Kissinger: It truly depends on the needs of the student. There are students that do need someone with them all the time, but they need to have a person who isn't hovering and in between the students. They need to be there as a shadow and support as that student needs support, and they support other students in that classroom at the same time. They need to be within.

[1750]

           One of the resources not used well enough is peers. Peers are not used within the school system, and I don't mean used in a bad way. I believe high school students are an absolute natural resource that are absolutely underutilized. People have the attitude: "We can't ask them. That would be imposing." If you ask them, they are more than delighted to help. They actually are absolutely passionate about inclusion and about kids being included, but they are very egocentric. They don't move outside that egocentric piece unless they are prodded and asked.

           I remember, in embarking on our experiment when Tricia was in elementary school that I was told: "We can't have peers helping around the playground. That would be babysitting." No. It's called supporting yourself and your community, supporting each other. What better lesson are you learning than how to support each other?

           I must tell you one story. The resource teacher at that school would have two students assigned who would help my daughter at lunch. She was going out and giving them all these detailed instructions on what to do and how to help and be supportive, and she decided she just needed to back off and let them do what they thought was right. One day they came running in and got a skipping rope. She said: "What are you getting that for?" They said: "Well, Tricia wants to skip." She thought: "Tricia can't skip." Physically, she can't. She looked outside, and there they were. They all had their turn, then they'd put it on the ground. Tricia would walk over it and walk back. That was her turn. They'd pick it up, and they'd skip, and the next person would have a turn.

           They knew how, far better than the adults did. We don't look to that as a resource and use their ideas.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Richard Lee. It's the last question.

           B. Kissinger: I'm too passionate. I'm sorry. I shouldn't apologize.

           R. Lee: It's just a quick question. You put a lot of emphasis on attitudes. In the individual education plans, IEPs, you cannot write down what kind of attitude. If you encounter problems with teachers or teaching assistants, how do you deal with that?

           B. Kissinger: How do we deal with that? We try and work with it. In the school districts I'm in, we have resources who come in as district staff — as principals and as administrators — to deal with that.

           I had a teaching assistant who worked with my daughter who insisted on carrying her. She was in grade 1; she did not need to be carried. This teaching assistant told me that she'd never been spoken to so

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rudely since her husband left her. The principal said, "Bev, you have no problem communicating," and he encouraged that assistant to leave. That was before all the contract stuff was really strong. He encouraged her to move on, and we got someone who had the right attitude and values.

           The numerous times I'm in schools that is the biggest issue. If you don't have a strong administrator who can work with that attitude and support that person to look differently at the issue, then you have lots of problems. Your school's totally based on your principal.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks. Elayne is begging to ask a question. I'm going to let her do that, and then we are breaking.

           E. Brenzinger: Can you clarify one thing for me? Are you saying that Community Living believes the school district should make the choice for parents whether they go to segregated or integrated schools?

           B. Kissinger: What I'm saying is that the school district should be ensuring every family and child feels welcome at their neighbourhood school.

           E. Brenzinger: But you support the choice of parents wanting to go to segregated schools.

           B. Kissinger: We support the choice of parents to look for the best option for their son or daughter. Our statement talks about it. What we would support at this point in time is a segregated classroom within a school, but we will not support a segregated school. That's in our statement. It's not about parents against parents. That's not fair to the parents.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks so much.

           The meeting has recessed.

           The committee recessed from 5:54 p.m. to 6:03 p.m.

           [W. McMahon in the chair.]

           W. McMahon (Chair): We'll call the meeting back to order. I would like to introduce our next presenter, David Halme, from the Lake Cowichan Teachers Association. Thanks for coming down tonight.

           D. Halme: Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is David Halme. I represent the Lake Cowichan Teachers Association. That's local 66 of the British Columbia Teachers Federation, which operates under its own collective agreement with the Cowichan Valley school district 79. I'm the president of the LCTA, the Lake Cowichan Teachers Association. On behalf of the teachers of the LCTA, thank you for the invitation to address the committee this evening. I said that our written submission would be distributed to you, so it's already out.

           The members of the LCTA have continually worked under the stress and strain of cutbacks to supply budgets and limited funding to support the programs necessary to maintain quality education. However, this moment is an opportunity for input to point out the need to preserve and improve the learning conditions and the learning opportunities of all students by adequately funding all areas of the public school system.

[1805]

           The B.C. public education system is considered to be among the best in Canada, and its graduates have found success throughout the world. Despite media reports declaring poor graduation rates, poorly prepared teachers or student difficulties in reading, B.C. students, through global comparative testing, have ranked consistently high in every curriculum area. This was accomplished by teachers considered by many to be the best prepared in the world, teachers who belong to one of the strongest unions in North America, which has developed a well-respected, self-supported professional development network.

           Most troubling at the moment is the failure to date of the present government to communicate a consolidated vision of a public education system to the public, to the teachers, the education support workers and the students. The present government has had four years or more in opposition ranks to develop a vision for public education. Instead, teachers have heard only rumours of a vision that has the intent to base the direction of public education on best market decisions. To substantiate these rumours, the hon. Minister of Education and the Deputy Minister of Education have made public statements to the effect that if you can't count it, it doesn't count.

           What continues to worry the teachers of Lake Cowichan is the exclusion of B.C. public school teachers from the decision-making process in public education. Under this government, there appears to be an attempt to marginalize teachers' input. Instead, various self-interest groups are suggesting changes to the public system that have failed in other jurisdictions or have undermined the education system in those areas to the extent that it will take a major effort to restore quality and equality.

           The BCTF teachers who have participated in the development of the B.C. public school system have done so voluntarily under a protocol established between the Ministry of Education and the BCTF. Their contributions to curriculum revision, the development of new curriculum and the review of learning resources have modernized B.C. education.

           At the same time, teachers have attempted to guarantee through collective agreements the learning conditions and the support for special needs students. Input from the classroom teacher has been responsible for much of what the public has come to expect as normal in any British Columbia public school. To some extent it is envied by the rest of the world. BCTF teachers have to be represented in all aspects of decision-making that impact on the students and the learning conditions in the classroom.

           The current budget freeze for education is, in effect, a reduction to education spending that is already in-

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adequate to serve the needs of the modern student and to maintain what has become the normal operation of a school. As a limited participant in the school district 79 finance discussions, I can say that the board members are continually put through gut-wrenching sessions to make decisions to continually cut back funding in all areas of the school district budgets.

           The fallout has been the continual search for funding by teachers, students and parents at any school level to support programs. Extracurricular activities related to athletics, fine arts, science and many other areas of school life have to be supported by continual fundraising. There's simply not enough time in a day, a week or a month in the daily schedule of a teacher to maintain the effort to raise funds for a field trip, more library resources, new uniforms or a vehicle for student transport.

           Inadequate funding through the current budget freeze and the intention to untarget current funding will drive the public education system back 30 years. There was a reason for the targeted funding and the trust accounts. It was a method to guarantee support for programs and resources so that all students of British Columbia were served in the most equitable way possible, regardless of geographic regions and the existing socioeconomic conditions.

           The move to accountability through performance contracts may be a solution, but they should not result in an exercise to please a political agenda. If the current government were serious about accountability, they would enlist the BCTF to be more involved in the formulation of such performance contracts. The expenditure of curriculum implementation funds during the 1990s is an example of financial and program accountability. In a collaborative arrangement involving teachers, parents and the board, there was a controlled, accountable procedure of spending limited funding kept in a trust account. Those moneys were spent in a prudent manner, which eventually produced a positive impact on students.

           There needs to be some attention paid to the special education funding. To untarget funding without some consideration as to the impact it may have on the classroom is unwise. The present government is assuming that boards around the province understand current funded categories. With all due respect, the boards, meaning the trustees, for the most part would not have the time nor the ready understanding of special education to act as stewards of the funding.

[1810]

           Gifted education is a good example where the inadequate funding of $341 per student, capped at 2 percent of a district population, has been misused or ignored to the extent that true gifted programs do not exist in every district of the province. At this end of the student spectrum, mist exists in the minds of many to expect these students to develop and flourish unsupported throughout their school careers.

           Teachers of the gifted know this to be untrue. The identification of the gifted and the development of tailored support for the gifted costs more than $341 per student. In fact, the district may have more than 2 percent of its students identified as gifted. The concept of what is gifted can have variations not unlike those found at the other end of the spectrum for students who fall into a particular category.

           Here you have one of the most important resources in society, the gifted individual — that you at one time in your life most likely will depend on — being shuffled through the B.C. public school system without the attention he or she deserves.

           There can be improvements to the way we educate students in this province. These improvements cannot be dropped into the system without meaningful input from teachers, the public and the business community. The intended improvements cannot show up as a knee-jerk solution to serve isolated interests, nor can improvements occur without planning to consider feasible implementation and funding. The current implementation of performance contracts to measure accountability is attempting to validate the questionable collection of student achievement data and its use as a public window into the classroom.

           What is this exercise attempting to prove or improve? Even at this point this program of data collecting and proposed use can be seen as terribly expensive, lacking a sense of direction and not substantially serving to improve classroom instruction. If this government wants improvements to the public school system, announce a formal plan of action and invite the partners to get on board to participate.

           If this committee intends to influence the direction of education in the decades to come, let us hope that the decisions impacting students, teachers and society are made collectively. Let us hope that the sense of community remains, that schools are adequately funded to develop as caring, safe, humane institutions that are there to equally serve the educational needs and the interests of all students in every area of British Columbia.

           Thank you. Has anybody got any questions?

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you, David. Any questions? No.

           Our next presentation tonight is Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district 68, John Garenkooper and Tanya Lebans. I'll let you introduce the other gentlemen with you. If you are going to be speaking, if we could get the spelling of your name for Hansard, that would be great.

           J. Garenkooper: Madam Chair, committee members, this presentation is the presentation of the board of school trustees, school district 68, Nanaimo-Ladysmith, which has been prepared in consultation with the Nanaimo School Administrators Association, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the district parent advisory council and Nanaimo District Teachers Association.

[1815]

           I'd like to introduce the presentation committee at this point. On my right, Tanya Lebans, trustee and vice-chair of the board. On my left, Nelson Allen, trustee and chair of the business committee and BCSTA

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council. We have with us Dan Ryan, the vice-principal of Dover Bay Secondary; and also our superintendent, Carola Lane, who is helping us with the presentation. She's at the overhead projector at this time. The spelling of my name is John Garenkooper. At this time I should like to hand the presentation to the vice-chair of the board, Ms. Tanya Lebans.

           T. Lebans: Thank you very much, John. Thank you very much to the committee for having us here this evening. As for Nanaimo-Ladysmith, we thought we'd start out with a bit of a context of the district. We are a medium to large district within the province that includes urban, inner-city and rural neighbourhoods. One in four students in our district live in poverty, which is one of the highest rates, if not the highest rate, in all of British Columbia. Our district includes more than 11 percent aboriginal students living on- and off-reserve, with 82 percent of them off-reserve.

           As Mr. Garenkooper has pointed out, it was a collective group of educational partners who came to put this presentation together. When we began our discussions as a team, we decided to focus on the cornerstone of the decision-making process for Nanaimo-Ladysmith, which is our vision. It focuses on equity, partnership, excellence and accountability. These principles, from our perspective, should be reflected in government decisions relative to policy and legislation on education.

           When our group met, we discussed a number of issues. In the process of coming up with how we would talk about the four topics you asked us to speak to, we felt there were some key conditions, or what you might call lenses that we were looking through, that affect the way we see access, flexibility, choice and quality.

           The major focus in our district is equity. For us, in fact, a basis tenet of public education is the equitable delivery of programs and services. It is essential to us that this basic tenet be reflected in any new directions for public education within British Columbia.

           Another crucial lens was the funding issue. Public education must be funded adequately. Current funding levels are not adequate. An adequate level of funding defines the quality of education and the ability or the flexibility of schools and systems to address student needs. Current funding levels in district 68 limit our ability to provide a quality education to a diverse population.

           To move toward greater quality, access and choice, in our opinion, we need to look carefully at funding and at the factors used to define those funding levels. For example, in Nanaimo-Ladysmith, one of the key factors for us is poverty, which is not currently considered in the funding formula but which we feel would be a very important addition.

           When we consider the four issues of access, choice, quality and flexibility, we felt and noted amongst ourselves that they are completely interconnected. Any decision to address choice, quality or access for one segment of the student population needs to be balanced by any impact the action might have on choice, access or quality elsewhere in the system.

We believe it is crucial to the quality of our district's education system that choice, access and/or quality adjustments in one area do not adversely or inequitably impact any one of these items elsewhere in the system. For example, if you were looking at providing choice in one school and if that meant you were limiting the quality or the ability to provide choice elsewhere in the system or to another segment of the students, then that would question whether you're providing quality to the overall system.

           As we looked at choice, quality and access, all of our partners agreed that they currently exist in our system. We see students participating in a curriculum that is much more complex than any of us in this room experienced in our high school or educational history. The dreaded first-year calculus course I took at UBC now runs in our high schools.

           Our community looks at our system and sees choices of many kinds, including some that have become very familiar, such as small neighbourhood schools and French immersion. In your package is a list of all the choices available in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district.

[1820]

           Finally, the final lens we talked about was that any legislation needs to enhance the public education system's ability to address all students and recognize the diversity of those needs. Equally important is that any new direction must allow sufficient time for development and implementation to be sure we get it right and don't make change for change's sake. That's one way of saying that the community is having a tough time keeping up with the change you've been thinking about for the last four years. We weren't maybe running as quickly as you were in those first 90 days.

           Access. We saw it as the first and most crucial point in the four areas you talked about. Access in our district and to our partners is defined as the freedom and ability to take advantage of available choices. Access means more than providing academic programs. We feel student services which enable children and youth to build their access skills are needed. We see the ability of disadvantaged students to access the system is effectively reduced as government and community supports are cut or reduced. Access is an issue in some schools where numbers limit the ability to provide courses. We'd like to see mechanisms to address this without adding costs for the students.

           When it comes to choice, you can see we have defined it as an array of educational programs and services that meet the needs of a diverse student population. We see choice — or as we like to define it, differentiated programs and services — as a cornerstone of the public education system. Our community sees many of the familiar things, like neighbourhood schools, as choice, especially when their operating cost has some people suggesting amalgamation. We see choice as programs occurring within our schools as well as between our schools. Both are equally important.

           A number of people use the terms magnet or charter schools when they start talking about choice. We

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feel wide consultation will be needed prior to implementing any such change to ensure that any charter or magnet school meets a wider need without compromising the wider system. Local communities should be able to determine what level of choice they are comfortable with, and any choice additions should be fiscally sustainable.

           We felt a key aspect of choice should be the creation of courses outside the core academic area. This would address those students whose post-secondary choices are other than university. We also feel that the concept of choice would be improved if parents had more information about the breadth of choice currently existing in the system. I can speak quite up front about that as an elementary school parent. We aren't necessarily knowledgable of what is available to our students as they get older. Again, it gets back to their ability to access those choices. We need to give them the skills to do that, and it needs to be part of the whole equation.

           Flexibility is vital to the local autonomy of districts. It is inextricably linked to adequate funding. Without adequate funding, districts currently have no control to address the quality and choice needs of the community. We believe a frozen budget eliminates our flexibility to address access and choice issues. Alternative methods of raising funds like local taxation may be necessary if the province intends to stay on this track.

           More flexibility in grade 12 requirements would give students more real choice — maybe a broader spectrum of opportunity for a Dogwood — recognizing that a number of post-secondary opportunities exist for students these days. We need to be careful that our grade 12 requirements aren't solely decided by universities, especially when that level of requirement is necessary for only 8 percent of Canadians students who choose to go on to university. Students need the opportunity to understand their aptitudes earlier on so that they can better link to their long-term career choices.

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           For us a quality program is a broad-based program. Public education means a quality program for all students in all areas of learning and development. How that system is assessed is key. Quality assessment, in our opinion, leads to a quality program. Participation in educational programs needs to be part of the assessment. Students need the flexibility to build choice into their program without worrying about their GPA. Then quality will mean a diversity of learning and more engaged future citizens.

           Finally, Nanaimo-Ladysmith believes the province must build community understanding of the quality and sophistication of today's curriculum. A vision of school in 1970 is not an accurate reflection of the curriculum requirements today. We believe greater community understanding of what the system is accomplishing will improve people's appreciation of the quality and choice currently in the system today.

           J. Garenkooper: In closing, our government has said: "Education is our future." This is so true; education is most definitely our future. Today's learner is our tomorrow. We cannot afford to get it wrong. Getting it right is imperative to the future of today's learner and to our future as well. Public education needs to be about all students in all aspects of their learning. We need to be thorough now and have every child and youth in mind as we proceed.

           Madam Chair, as chair of the board of trustees and on behalf of our district, I wish to thank you and the committee for providing us with the opportunity to present this paper on education.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. We certainly appreciate you being here tonight. Do we have any questions from the committee?

           Our next presentation tonight is from Michael Hayes, Saanich Teachers Association. Welcome this evening. We're just a bit ahead of schedule. Whenever you're ready.

           M. Hayes: I've been extremely busy doing a number of other things today. If in fact there are typographical errors in this presentation, I apologize. Normally, I let my wife see these things, and she does an amazing job of proofreading. In fact, she will be disheartened to know I actually presented something in public without her telltale sign of perfection on it.

           I'm going to read the brief, although that is not normally my style. Since it's fresh off the press, as we say, I think reading it is probably the best thing to do.

[1830]

           As a representative of the teachers of school district 63, Saanich, I speak to the committee this evening with very mixed feelings. I want to think that this is an open, meaningful process, that this select standing committee has integrity and purpose, that this is not a dog-and-pony show intended to keep backbenchers busy while the real work is being done by highly paid political appointees in the Premier's office. I want to believe it, but I'm having great difficulty with optimism and trust these days.

           That difficulty comes from persistent rumours, supported by comments from the Finance minister in this morning's Times Colonist, that the government intends to intervene in the teacher collective bargaining and to legislate a settlement that will include significant changes to the terms and conditions under which teachers work and students learn. It would appear the reshaping of public education to fit the current government's agenda is well underway, and I wonder what purpose this committee really serves. I hope the Chair of the committee will address these concerns in some way before I leave this evening.

           However, I am going to put aside my cynicism and speak to you as an educator with 20 years' experience as an elementary school classroom teacher, as a French peripatetic specialist, as a teacher-librarian and, yes, even with time, as a school administrator. I will speak to you as a teacher-activist, as a union leader and as a representative of the more than 600 teachers in Saanich. I speak to you as an educator with a tremendous passion for public education and an awesome respect for the work that teachers do.

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           I come to you with a plea that when you listen to these presentations — not just mine but all you have heard and will hear — you do not listen with the mind-set of someone who went to school ten, 15 and perhaps 20 years ago, that you do not listen with smug knowing that because you once went to school or your children went to school, you truly understand what goes on in the modern classroom.

           I ask that you put on the eyes and ears of a young teacher who is entering a world unlike the one you or even your children experienced in public school. Schools, classrooms, curriculum and students have changed. I'm not talking about minor shifts in focus or pedagogy. I'm talking about profound changes in expectations, curriculum, resources, tools, accountability and, most significantly and importantly, students. Let me address these issues one at a time.

           Expectations. There was a time when the slow and the weak were allowed to slip to the end of the line, where they would eventually give up and go away. The physically and mentally disabled were warehoused in institutions. Those with learning and behavioral problems were encouraged to leave to join the workforce. That is not the reality facing today's teacher. Society expects that all children, regardless of ability or disability, will be treated equally by the school system.

           Each child has the right to be successful to the greatest extent possible. One need only look at the latest government initiative, the accountability agreements, to see this new emphasis at work. The Ministry of Education expects that teachers and schools will put an emphasis on continuous improvement, focus on early success for all students, improve student progress in reading, writing and numeracy and improve transition rates. To meet these expectations, many things have changed. None of those changes has made teaching easier — quite the contrary.

           I'm sure you all remember the classroom of your childhood. There's a pretty good chance kids sat in rows and, for the most part, everyone did the same work. Remember the basal reader? Actually, mine in grade 5 was Under Canadian Skies, but then I was educated in Ontario.

           Remember the teacher saying things like: "Okay, children, turn to page 36. Read the story and answer the odd-numbered questions at the back of the book"? Well, that isn't education in today's classroom. Today's teachers are expected to practise resource-based learning. That is education talk for teacher-selected, teacher-created, teacher-implemented teaching units that can draw from an almost limitless world of resources, everything from textbooks to the Internet.

           Teachers spend countless hours reviewing, assessing and buying learning resources. Once selected, units must be prepared with specific learning outcomes that are consistent with the learning outcomes contained in the IRPs, subject by subject. That's not all. Each unit must then be modified or adapted to the individual learning needs of each child in the class, especially those with IEPs. I'm sure you've heard lots about individual education plans and individual learning plans and much of the letter-driven linguistics of modern education.

[1835]

           I spoke with a teacher not long ago who was in tears with fatigue, frustration and anger. This was not a new teacher but a veteran, one of the best and most respected teachers in our district. She had come to the end of a math unit and was preparing a test for the next day. She had to prepare eight separate versions of the test in order to meet the individual education plans of the special needs children in her class, a grade 7 class with 27 students.

           Resource-based learning is hard work. It's time-consuming and challenging. Teachers support it, but they need time, resources and training to do it well. This is especially true if you factor in the new age of the Internet. While many see this wonderful new tool as a panacea for everything from underfunded libraries to the perfect world of total individualization, many teachers see it as another challenge, another demand to be met, usually on their own time and at their own expense.

           The alarming rate of growth in information technology is yet another challenge for teachers. Parents, students and politicians expect schools and teachers to be computer-literate and Internet-savvy right now. New attendance programs, new report cards, new marks programs, new referral forms, new tracking devices — there's new just about anything you care to mention, and it all requires a fancy new machine and the skills to use it.

           In industry the workforce would be trained to use new technology before it is introduced for production purposes. I doubt very much that any manufacturer would let an employee learn new fabrication techniques by trial and error, but that's the way it is in public schools. Where industry spends about 50 cents on training and in-service for every 50 cents it spends on new equipment and technology, I'm told that the ratio in education is more like 90 cents for hardware and ten cents for training.

           But teachers are up to the challenge. They deal as best they can with the frustrations of system crashes, computer incompatibilities, lack of technical support and all the other joys of the new technological age. They buy their own equipment and train themselves. They help one another. They learn from their students. They take workshops, when they can find them. It takes time, lots of time. It's time that must be found outside the classroom after marking, preparation, parent contact meetings and administrivia have been dealt with.

           Accountability, the new government mantra, is seductive, as seductive as it is simplistic. It also promises to be time-consuming. A review of the accountability agreement for Saanich shows an alarming emphasis on quantitative data and graphic representation. The fear of many teachers is we will follow our American neighbours down the unhealthy road to reliance on standardized testing to measure success.

           Teachers know that with new, complex diversities among our students, progress and success cannot be

[ Page 557 ]

measured in numbers alone. True accountability requires qualitative as well as quantitative data. Both are time-consuming, especially if added on to the demands placed on schools and not drawn from the existing evidence presented by authentic teacher assessment data.

           In the United States there is a growing revolt against the use of standardized tests as the predominant measure of student success and the best way to achieve accountability. Parents and educators are finding the complex riches of student experience and learning are being sacrificed to the teach-the-test mentality that stifles creativity and breeds false results.

           Schools and teachers are already among the most accountable professionals anywhere. They are constantly monitoring, assessing, testing and reflecting on the progress of their students. These processes actively involve both students and parents. The myth that schools and teachers are not accountable or that teachers are reluctant to be held accountable for their work with students is dangerous and untrue.

           Our fear is that in responding to the myth, government will create yet more layers of bureaucracy, focus on number-crunching and divert true learning to the cause of better test scores, pie charts and graphs. It is our very real fear that data-gathering and report-writing will create administrative work for teachers and managers alike and will divert essential resources from kids in classrooms.

           Students are the most important part of my presentation to you tonight. The world of today's classroom is more than just years apart from our own school experiences. Today's classroom is worlds apart from the one you and I sat in so many years ago. The key to the difference is the diversity of children found in today's classrooms from kindergarten to grade 12.

           A great deal of that diversity comes from government-mandated integration and inclusion policies that require schools to accept all students and to provide them with an educational program, but it is more than that. It's also the astounding increase in the range of the medical, emotional and learning needs of all students, not just those meeting the narrow definition of special needs that will generate additional funding.

[1840]

           Many students don't fit nicely into categories, but still we are expected to meet their individual learning needs and respect their individual learning styles. It may be a student who has below-average intelligence and therefore does not qualify for a severe learning disability label but who scores too high to qualify for support as mentally disabled. It may be a grieving child, a child experiencing parental separation or violence in the home. It may be a child with one of a host of developmental disorders that haven't yet made it onto some ministry list for funding. The needs are real. The needs are extreme. The needs are there, and they must be met.

           Even if we do not consider the many special needs children who fall between the cracks, who don't qualify or who aren't severe enough, we are still looking at an alarming change in the makeup of our classrooms. Attached to this brief you will find a summary of the district special needs enrolment for Saanich covering the period 1995-2001. Look at the numbers. They tell an alarming story, but they only tell part of the story.

           If you could, I'd ask you to just flip over two pages to the chart. I will point to only a couple of them. Physically dependent, handicapped — from 11 to 22, a 100 percent increase in five years. Look at moderate mental disabilities — from 16 to 24. Physical disability — from 39 to 112 in five years in Saanich, a district of 8,000 students. Autistic — from 4 to 17. That's a fourfold increase. Those are the identified kids. Those are the kids lucky enough to have a label and attract some money. This is a very telling piece of paper, but it only tells part of the story.

           The dilemma facing classroom teachers is there are not enough specialists in the schools to work with these children, so they bring their challenges into the classroom where it is the teacher's responsibility to do the best they can. If a child has a severe physical disability, he or she will likely have the support of a teacher's aide, but there are not enough aides to support the low-functioning, the distractible, the violent, the ESL — the list goes on.

           The fact is we have gone from warehousing children in institutions to abandoning them in our schools. Integration, inclusion, is a valuable and proper social policy. It is supported by teachers and the public, but it is hideously and tragically underfunded. We have given our schools and our teachers an impossible task. I believe we have set them up for failure.

           One of the most important parts of my job as president is to assist teachers with grievances designed to get extra support for the children in their classes. These grievances are possible because we have contract language that requires the district to provide support for classes where either the size of the class or its composition require that additional support be provided.

           Sitting in on those meetings is not easy. The complex problems faced by both teachers and students are heartrending. The constant refrain from principals and district staff, that they understand but have no money, is simply heartbreaking. If time permits, I will share a few of these experiences with you. I won't do it now, but I do have some I will talk to you about if there is time.

           In summary, may I say that schools today are far more complex and demanding of everyone involved than they ever were in the past. An examination of public schools, and any recommendation for change, must keep this reality in clear view. The challenges facing our schools, our students, our teachers and our society cannot be fixed by a standardized test or shrinking budgets. Quality education costs money. Meeting the increasingly complex demands of students cannot be done with good intent alone.

           The job of teaching is getting to the point where it is too stressful and too demanding for many teachers. Veteran teachers are reducing assignments or accessing full or partial sick leave just to cope. That's a huge part of my job as a teacher-president. I spend an enormous amount of my time with teachers who are on the verge

[ Page 558 ]

of collapse or who have collapsed. We're putting out the safety net to catch them as they fall.

           Young people are looking at their lives and leaving teaching in numbers that point to a real problem with teacher attraction and retention. Teachers are being made sick by the stress of their work. Something has to change, but the change that is needed is not the back-to-the-basics bottom-line agenda that we have seen fail the schools in other jurisdictions. I think of Ontario right away. It must be thoughtful change that respects and understands the complexity of the modern classroom and the diverse needs of today's students.

           There is truth in two old adages I'll leave you with: "You get what you pay for," and "Quality costs money." Please don't let the future generations be left to pay the price for short-sighted, quick-fix solutions in the present.

           How am I doing for time? Did I get it done in ten minutes?

[1845]

           W. McMahon (Chair): Right on time, 15.

           M. Hayes: Fifteen. Oh Jeez, there you go. I read as fast as I could. I will answer questions, and I would like the Chair, if you would, to address the issue I raised at the beginning.

           W. McMahon (Chair): To address the issue about our report? Just a sec. I'd better go back to exactly what the question was.

           M. Hayes: I think what I said is that I wanted to know if you were a dog-and-pony show or whether this committee had meat and substance.

           W. McMahon (Chair): I would say that at the end of the day, we would like to see some meat and substance from this committee. It hasn't met since 1976, and there hasn't been a report made to the Legislature. It's a great opportunity for us as a committee to make some observations and recommendations to the Legislature, which we will do before the end of February.

           M. Hayes: How do we address the concern teachers have that the changes for public education are already in fact being made? The decisions have been made, and that would seem to render this committee somewhat superfluous.

           W. McMahon (Chair): The changes that are coming through in the system…. There will be changes made, I'm sure, before our report is presented, but we have an opportunity to look further than what is planned for right now and make some recommendations on where we see public education and policy should be.

           S. Orr: Notwithstanding, we meet with the minister regularly.

           Can I ask you about the enrolment in your district in 1995 as compared to now? You're at 8,000 now, did you say?

           M. Hayes: We've got about 8,000 students.

           S. Orr: What was it in '95?

           M. Hayes: I would suggest that we actually have been either in declining or stable enrolment for about four years now. Every year we face severe budget cutbacks because of either anticipated decline…. Anybody from Victoria here? No. We've actually been pilfering students from Victoria to bolster our declining enrolment, so our enrolment has been stable for about the last four years, while our budgets have been in decline.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Do we have one more question? Richard Lee.

           R. Lee: In other presentations it was mentioned that the success rate for high-incidence students is quite low. Is that your experience?

           M. Hayes: Yes. The problem we face with high-incidence students — in fact, with all of our students with special needs — is we are using a model of service delivery that is inadequate to their needs. There are a large number of students. The group that comes to mind most readily are the kids who don't qualify for additional funding because they're not severely learning disabled, but they also don't qualify because their IQs are not low enough to qualify for trainable mentally handicapped or some other qualification. They sit there at two, three and four years below grade level. We get a little bit of learning assistance if we have it, but generally speaking, their needs have to be met by classroom teachers.

           The complexity of the modern classroom…. I really wish I could take you to some of the classrooms in my district, where in fact we have teachers who are 27, 28 years old — young, exciting, vibrant kids full of optimism — and they are near death. We are burning them out. I have a kid who's a 0.7 teacher — works 7/10 time. She's at school every night till 7 o'clock, 7:30, and when she goes home, she takes marking. She's been offered another block to teach, and she's thinking of not taking it because she doesn't think she can do it on top of her current workload. This is a young person under 30, full of energy and excitement and enthusiasm, and she says that if it doesn't get better, she's leaving.

           We've got a problem, and we've got to wake up and say there really is something wrong. We can't take 26, 27 or 28 kids — particularly in middle school, where they're dealing with emerging adolescence and puberty — and throw these kids with their enormous physical, emotional and medical needs and the behavioral problems on top of that together and then say to an earnest, well-meaning young person: "Do the best you can." We are failing those kids, and we are failing those teachers. I think we're failing their parents, and I've got a feeling we're failing society. It can't be done. It can't be done by going to standardized tests and asking everybody just to buck up and try harder. I don't think people can try harder than they're trying.

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           I am so amazingly and incredibly proud of the work that teachers do. I go from school to school, and I sit in on meetings with teachers talking about their kids, talking about their classes and asking for more help. Honestly, it would make you cry. They are so sincere and want so badly to help, and we can only give them crumbs, band-aids — a little pull-out here, a little TA there. It's extremely difficult.

[1850]

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you, Mike, for your presentation. We appreciate it.

           M. Hayes: Good luck, and I hope you're absolutely right.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you very much.

           Our next presentation is the Sooke Teachers Association, Pam Joyce. While Pam's coming up, we're going to do a shuffle with some of our committee. Reni Masi will be taking over as Chair.

           [R. Masi in the chair.]

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Good evening. We're having a bit of a shift here because of the dinner hour. Two more people on the committee should be here any minute now. We are attempting to stay within our time frame.

           I welcome you to the hearings. Over to you.

           P. Joyce: As my colleague Mr. Hayes has said, we're extremely busy at the moment. I purposely kept my brief short, because I had the opportunity to speak to a trustee in the past day or two. This trustee's name is Rob Gordy, and he's a trustee in Sooke school district. He shares many of the views of teachers I represent. I had hoped to share my time tonight with him. I'm thinking that at any time he may walk through the door, and I would beg your indulgence to have him join me, if time permits. However, I will continue on with my very short presentation.

           I will not be focusing on statistics and numbers. Teachers have asked me to deliver to you their perception of their jobs and what they deal with in a realistic context. It is clear that the education system is to experience the tightening of the accountability screws. As leaders and elected officials you may use documents and standardized tests and use the results to prove to the public that they are getting value for their tax dollars. Have you thought about the problems that will arise as a result of the solution you propose?

           Already, my workplace — a school, a place of learning, growing and development — is sorely underfunded. In Sooke school district more than 500 teachers spend their own time, energy and money to ensure that students get what they need. It is their will to do so. It may not be their will for much longer. Teachers, it is said, are the building blocks of society. Their will alone cannot be the material upon which these blocks stand. Never have teachers felt more pressured, more tired or more beaten.

           As a middle school teacher, on any given day I might arrive at school at 8 o'clock in the morning to be immediately confronted with the necessity of having to alter my lessons for the day due to a paper shortage or a broken photocopier. I will forge ahead and try to obtain a 30-year-old overhead projector in order to deliver the lesson in an alternate but definitely less time-efficient way. Less time will remain to offer the 28 students in my class individual attention. Currently, those class size limits are provided for in the teacher collective agreement, and I'm understanding that those guarantees may not be there for much longer.

[1855]

           Well, 20 minutes is left before class starts. I must find a way to adapt the newly revised lesson for the three students in my class who face considerable challenges with their learning but receive little or no extra support, as they do not meet the criteria for an individualized education plan. Then I must modify the lesson for the four other students who are provided with an IEP.

           On my way to my classroom to accomplish these tasks two students are having an altercation in the hallway. There is an obvious misunderstanding, and I am compelled to step in to help them resolve the matter. I finally arrive in my classroom two minutes before the bell rings. It is abundantly apparent that I as well as the students will be forced to make do. My day already feels like an exercise in futility, and the bell has not yet signalled the official start to the day.

           In Sooke we have never had what is known as class composition language in order to better deliver service to those students that have special needs, those who are not identified and those who we would consider to be regular-stream students. I have to say that historically, when I went to school, students were not exposed to other individuals who had special needs and challenges, therefore we had no point of reference and no context in which to deal with those people. I think I speak for many teachers when I say that integration is an absolutely valuable endeavour. I do not in any way want to demean or belittle it. It's very, very valuable. It builds understanding and bridges between those who can achieve and are fully able and those who are not. It builds tolerance, and I believe in it wholeheartedly.

           However, as I was about to say, we in Sooke have never had class composition language to allow teachers to best meet the needs of all the students in the class. We had hoped that in this current round of bargaining we would obtain some of that language. Teachers in my district can face an unlimited number of students with special needs in their classrooms. I know of one teacher at Belmont high school who has 17 children with IEPs in that particular class. It is an insurmountable task to deal with.

           There is a complete and utter lack of respect for the work teachers do. Students often view the materials, resources and even the buildings as substandard. They see me as a mouse on a wheel, running frantically to keep up. Some of them will attempt to cause the wheel to spin faster. If they're lucky, I won't keep up, and something will go unaddressed. They will have evaded

[ Page 560 ]

being accountable. In the end, though, it is I who will be held to the standard.

           Why did my class of grade 7 students not score as high as the provincial average in numeracy? Parents will ask me why their sons and daughters aren't bringing home the results they'd like to see. Private business owners will bemoan the fact that they can't get workers who can read and write. Who do they turn to for answers? Where are their fingers pointed? At the teacher, at the education system. A teacher's integrity is always questioned. Your competence is always judged, and your ability is analyzed.

           All of that would be fine if teachers were given the time and resources to meet the demands. A standardized test will not enable a teacher to meet the learning needs of students. A larger class size will not enable a teacher to meet the learning needs of students. The removal of specialist colleagues will not enable a teacher to meet the learning needs of students. What will be enabled is the pervasive negativity directed at teachers.

           The public will be validated in its lack of respect for teachers, not just because it is the public's perception that teachers work only ten months of the year from nine to three, with a professional development day every other week. The disrespect will grow because we are being set up for failure. The bar will be raised, and teachers will be left with nothing other than their will and ingenuity to get the students to the ever-looming standard. Where is the logic in that?

[1900]

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for that presentation. Are there questions from the committee?

           J. Kwan: The figure has been given in terms of additional resources that teachers provide out of their own pocket into, I guess, making a classroom work.

           P. Joyce: A rich learning environment.

           J. Kwan: Correct. I think the figure that was given was about $1,200 per teacher. I'm wondering whether or not that is applicable in your district. Is that the right figure, or are we looking at something else altogether?

           P. Joyce: We did some work and found that on average, British Columbia teachers provide $1,095 per teacher. That's what they put into the school system. Some people will put less in, obviously, and others will put more. I know that for the beginning teachers, it can be extremely difficult after they pay bills and their loans and what not to have extra money left over to purchase learning materials for their students. I don't think it is fair to students to have to depend on possibly getting a more experienced teacher who has already collected a bag of tricks over time. The statistics we gathered were validated by Statistics Canada, which had a look at them and said yes, certainly, they were accurate.

           J. Kwan: A follow-up on one more question. In that vein, the Education Committee has been receiving input from members of the public, and each of the sectors talk about the shortage of professionals, if you will, particularly in the schools arena. I think it was suggested that in about ten years' time, a lot of the teaching professionals would actually retire. I guess my question is: as potential retirement looms for teachers, not only do we need to retrain teachers, but how do we retain young teachers particularly, such as yourself and others, in the system? If we have a double impact, then I would imagine that our educational system would come to a collapse.

           P. Joyce: A very good question and very pertinent points. I would challenge the idea that in ten years we'll find ourselves in a crisis. I think it's more in the line of three to five years. Currently, we already have a shortage of special education teachers in Sooke and, in many cases, specialist math-science senior secondary teachers. It takes five years to educate a person to become a teacher, so I think there is a great deal of work that has to be done in a proactive way to meet these time lines. If we start looking at it ten years from now, the crisis is obviously going to push it to the forefront before then.

           I have been teaching for approximately 11 years, and there is not a great number of colleagues of mine of the same vintage. Many of my colleagues who have the same number of years of experience as I do are currently contemplating looking at other work and travelling to other places. I read an ad just two days ago that Hong Kong is offering $120,000 per year to teachers to go to Hong Kong to teach.

[1905]

           Many, many people are going to be looking at their options. I know in many cases, people may rebut that comment and say there are large numbers of layoffs and many sectors flooded with labour and workers. It will not be the case in teaching as a profession, again because of the requirements to have five years of education. That has to be factored into the equation.

           I happen to know that in some places in the United States they've recently hired — I don't know if it's a politically correct word to use — Kelly Girls. They've given them a six-week crash course in how to teach and put them in front of classrooms. I don't know how they fare. That is currently happening in Britain at the moment. I know of classrooms where 60 children are housed because there is no teacher available to break up that group into manageable class sizes.

           I love teaching, and I can't imagine doing anything else, but I cannot have my integrity questioned constantly and be set up for failure and find myself in an untenable situation. I feel, as an educated person, that I would have to be proactive and do something to help myself if I cannot help others. Thank you for the question.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation, Pam. It was very well done. We appreciate your time in coming here.

[ Page 561 ]

           P. Joyce: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's unfortunate that Mr. Gordy could not be here. Like I said, he is one trustee of seven who has expressed complete support for teachers and for what we're endeavouring to accomplish. Thank you again for your time.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much.

           Now we have Kim Howland from the district of Nanaimo parent advisory council. Welcome, Kim. You can start right in.

           K. Howland: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the select standing committee. My name is Kim Howland. I represent the district parent advisory council for Nanaimo-Ladysmith, school district 68. I also have with me tonight my co-partner, Trene MacColl, who is the director of issue management for our district PAC.

           DPAC is a non-profit organization of parent advisory council representatives whose primary purpose is to support, encourage and improve the quality of education and well-being of the children in our district. Our aims and objectives are to provide a link among parents and all education partners to have a voice in development of new and revised educational programs. We also provide leadership for our parent advisory councils.

           The majority of parents believe strongly in the public education system. No matter what transpires within or between governments, the public education system's main focus should always be in the best interests of the child. Also, all children should be entitled to equal opportunity in our public education system. We're very honoured to be able to come here today and be given the chance to share some of our thoughts and ideas on the five areas you've requested feedback on.

           Under choice there are a lot of choices in our district already, but there is a lack of communication to elementary parents on what is available at the secondary level. We'd like to see a booklet produced for elementary parents listing the course choices available in our district. There is also a need to have available a districtwide list of registered tutors, and that should be updated on a regular basis for parents to access.

[1910]

           Communications with parents is still the number one priority. There's not enough of it happening, and parents are not satisfied with the level of communication they have experienced or are continuing to experience.

           Also, we need to improve student direction in our education system. Grade 7 students should be provided with an aptitude test to help assist the students in knowing where their strengths are. We do not want to pigeonhole children, but we are not saying we need to be streaming our children either. What we feel is that it could be helpful in opening up students' options and doors that the students' parents could think about. For parents and students, this could help increase knowledge on what may be an appropriate curriculum for each child to consider when they're choosing their secondary courses.

           Flexibility. There needs to be more flexibility to students who are homebound to ensure they are still receiving the best education possible. By enabling participation in programs outside of the child's designated school, we can also increase choice.

           Access. With flexibility we will need to open up access to available programs outside of the child's regular school, regardless of their geographic location or where the program is located.

           With quality, in order to get the best bang for our buck, we need to put more emphasis on our early detection and intervention programs. There is document upon document to support that this is an effective way of helping our youth, yet we still cut funding. That surrounds this belief.

           We'd like to see standardized academic courses — for example, math and English — to be the same from school to school, district to district, province to province.

           To achieve quality we also need to create higher standards of acceptable levels of safety and health in our schools. The government has funded our Safe School Centre, which is located in Burnaby and is one of a kind and a real jewel for us. In fact, other countries are even using our centres as templates to create their own, yet we don't mandate any of our centre's programs — for example, the focus on bullying program. We need to support these valuable programs by mandating the initiatives and aims.

           We can only improve the environment our children are in for the better part of the day. Integration of ministries needs to be more creative and directed toward the whole child. We can't expect the education system to pick up all the loose ends that the other ministries have created by short-funding our youth. It's a safe and healthy child that will achieve.

           Quality. Evaluation done yearly gives us an opportunity to acknowledge excellence and identify areas in teachers that may be weak or of concern. Once an area has been addressed through evaluation, a plan of action to provide assistance or correction to the employee can be put in place. Follow-up should take place at a designated time later to ensure measures taken are of value to the employee and the employer. This would actually assist teachers.

           Currently, evaluations are done every five years, which has no value, in our opinion, to anyone using it in that time frame. We must remember that highly recognizing those who do achieve excellence needs to be done as well, as then we are creating a bar of achievement for our teachers to reach.

           We also need to mandate transparency in our district budgets so that we can plainly see where our money is being spent. Right now you need to be an accountant to get through most of them, never mind understand them.

           Last but not least in a long list we need to improve transportation systems, which can also be jointly used in creating flexibility and access to programs. This all comes under funding.

[1915]

           Parents would like to see a balance between social and academics in the early years, as both of these are

[ Page 562 ]

very valuable. Along with early detection, we need to make sure there is funding to support the required TAs needed when we designate. It would be very heartwarming to see a focus on education for a change rather than on employee issues. We haven't heard much over the years on our education system. Many of us, I suspect, could tell you more about what is happening in our district regarding labour issues than which programs are being offered at schools or even how they're being taught. It just seems like we've somehow missed something.

           Students should not be passed from grade to grade for peer and social reasons. If a child is truly struggling, we believe there are times when it is more beneficial for a child to repeat a grade than to be pushed forward. Children are individuals and therefore should be looked at on an individual case-to-case basis and not under one standard.

           Increase funding. This has a major influence on all factors under access, choice, flexibility and quality. We need to increase emphasis on the health and safety of our children in schools. We need funding. Funding needs to be focused first on education and then on employee issues. We need to standardize designs for school buildings so that maybe the extra funds spent on having a fancy courtyard in a school could be used directly to support children's basic education.

           In our district we require more funding. DPAC does not believe there was adequate funding in previous years, and this year's budget is equivalent to cuts in education. This government pledged it would not cut education. By not taking into consideration the rising costs of salaries, heating, WCB costs, etc., it does add up to cuts. Various ministries such as MCF, MHR, Health, day care programs, etc., are also being affected. This has a direct bearing on our children. We cannot expect excellence in our district without taking this into consideration.

           Improved communication among parents and all education partners is a number one concern. We need to increase incident reporting with the EBS program. As we said before, we need transparent budgets and awareness of what course choices are available already in our district.

           Conclusions. It is our belief that the education tree grows upward, and our children are the very roots of that tree. Parents need to be part of the growth plan and involved in the direction this tree will grow. We all have a part in the education circle: the community, the government, educators, parents, administrators, trustees and management. When the day comes to a close, we will all be accountable.

           DPACs, PACs and BCCPAC have the luxury of being perhaps the only stakeholders whose primary focus is in the best interests of students and parents. Parents need to be valued as a partner, not as a fundraiser. The majority of parents in our district feel that we need to fund our public education system so that it is suitable. Invest in our children now.

           Let's not reinvent the wheel. Let's provide adequate funding to enhance our public education system and enhance its existing strengths. Although we recognize the importance of standards, we hope all measures put in place include the best interests of every child in our public education system. They should be considered first. The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Kim. We have a couple minutes for questions from the committee.

           R. Lee: My question is about EBS incidents reporting. Can you say a few more words on that? How does it work?

           K. Howland: The effective behavioral system?

           R. Lee: Yes.

           K. Howland: What we're looking for is wanting to have a better tracking system of what is happening with a child or even what is happening with an employee. Right now there's no documentation occurring to keep track of these incidents. We've had a lot of parents who have concerns behind the lack of tracking. It's been reported that in other districts such as Prince George it has really helped to increase parent involvement and increase the safety and overall effectiveness of how the schools are run.

           R. Lee: Those systems are existent programs.

           K. Howland: Yes, they are.

[1920]

           R. Lee: I think the problem is no tracking inside the system.

           K. Howland: Well, there isn't right now. From what we understand, the EBS program would bring that in. Our district is, I believe, about halfway into implementing it. It's a system we've heard very positive things about, and we really think probably needs to be implemented in every district.

           R. Lee: Thank you.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Hearing no further questions, I want to thank you very much for that presentation. It was excellent.

           Next on our program is Lori McElroy, Save our Strings. Please feel free to begin whenever you're ready.

           L. McElroy: Thank you. I'm Lori McElroy, speaking here tonight on behalf of Save our Strings, which is in your program, and also on behalf of Advocates for Music in our Schools. These are what you might call sister organizations. These are parents, students, educators and community members dedicated to retaining and enhancing our music programs.

           I'd like to thank you first for the opportunity to present our views to you tonight. I have a report, which may

[ Page 563 ]

have been handed out to you already, and I will summarize some of the high points of that for you tonight.

           The classical Greek philosopher Plato once wrote: "I would teach children music, physics and philosophy but most importantly music, for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys to learning." It turns out that Plato was right in ways he could not have known 2,500 years ago. Music, instrumental music in particular, is one of the keys to learning. Music does this by enhancing academic performance in reading and math, by changing structures in the brain that underlie spatial reasoning and by improving the self-esteem and confidence of the learner. We have a report describing this research in more detail and the sources of it.

           Research has also shown that music doesn't just benefit the average student. It can benefit students with learning challenges, as well, and it may just be that music has some special role to play in the minds of exceptional people. In speaking about his theory of relativity, Einstein, who studied the violin from childhood, said: "It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception."

           This wide-ranging impact of music education may be the result of the effect music instruction has on the brain. Areas known to be involved in music performance are enlarged in the brains of musicians, compared to those who never played. Dr. Norman Weinberger theorizes that performing music strengthens the connections between brain cells, allowing the brain to function more efficiently.

           Research suggests there may be reasons for starting instrumental instruction early. First, there appear to be critical periods for brain development. If the experience occurs during these periods, the benefits appear to be greater than if the experience is delayed. Second, starting early allows more opportunity for greater experience to accumulate, especially during the critical period. Research has shown that the longer an instrument has been studied, for instance, the greater the academic benefits found.

           There are also social benefits of music instruction that are just as important. Music instruction enhances self-esteem and engages students. For some, it's what keeps them in school. One of the students here with me tonight, Eric Clark, is an example of this. He's now a third-year violin major at UVic and feels that the orchestra program in this district is what kept him in high school.

           Music for music's sake. The positive academic, neurological and social benefits are great. However, we shouldn't need these benefits to justify the inclusion of music in the curriculum. Music and fine arts in general are a fundamentally important part of our cultural heritage. The arts offer ways of thinking not available in other disciplines. This is the true benefit of music and arts in the curriculum. Just as athletic instruction is included for its benefits, so should the arts be, including instrumental music.

[1925]

           Every child can benefit from music instruction in some way, but for some it's preparation for a career as a professional musician. This is where instrumental instruction in our elementary schools is essential. Music is not a profession you pick up after you leave high school. Some of the brain research attests to the reasons for starting early. There are physical reasons as well.

           Strings players, for instance, need to begin in childhood in order to develop the level of finger dexterity required. Lisa Weighton, a grade 12 student here tonight, is considering music as a profession. She says that without exposure to the elementary program in our district, she would not have had the opportunity to study the cello.

           There are also economic benefits of music instruction that we shouldn't ignore. Music in schools begins the process of training the next generation of musicians. Without this skilled workforce, what would happen to the cultural and tourism sectors of our economy? According to Professor Henriksson of the commerce and business admin program at UBC, the arts in B.C. employ more people than do logging, fishing, mining or agriculture, and the industry is growing.

           Music instruction can be good career preparation for all students. The Conference Board of Canada has found that employers want employees with creativity and the ability to work in teams. Employers in major corporations echo this. They are choosing employees in the arts for their creativity.

           For example, Williard Butcher, former chairman of the board of Chase Manhattan, Dave Kearns, former chairman of Xerox, and John Scully, former chairman and CEO of Apple Computer, all talk about the importance of hiring people with an arts background. Butcher of Chase Manhattan says he's looking to bring a creative outlook to the conference room table from these people. Scully of Apple says an education enriched in the creative arts should be considered essential for everyone.

           Given these wide-ranging benefits, you'd expect music to be an integral component of every school's curriculum. It isn't, though. Music, especially instrumental music, is too often considered a frill. When there are budget pressures, instrumental music programs are the first to feel the effects.

           This is a North America–wide phenomenon. British Columbia is no exception. Only a minority of school districts in our province now offer elementary band or orchestra programs. The greater Victoria school district stands out as one of these exceptions, with both band and orchestra programs at both the elementary and secondary levels, but both have received funding reductions in recent years.

           Last year we almost lost the elementary orchestra program for good, except for the tremendous support of the members of the community, students and parents alike. In fact, this was under the leadership of some of the students in the secondary strings program, who weren't affected by the cut. Think about it, if you want. Teenagers gave up some of their spare time to save a program that wasn't going to affect them any longer, a program that in fact focuses on classical music, not rock, so that younger students could have the experience they had had.

[ Page 564 ]

           One problem has been lack of flexibility in the funding formula, which makes it very difficult for districts to offer extra programs of this nature. Because of budget pressures, districts often opt to have band instead of both band and strings. However, we'd like you to be aware that the two aren't interchangeable, any more than would be algebra and calculus or volleyball and basketball. All of these are included, because the differences are important.

           Some of the differences in the orchestra and band programs are that they play different repertoires, for instance. Band focuses on the twentieth-century band and jazz repertoire, while the orchestra brings the classical music tradition into the education system. When these groups play in front of their peers, they bring with them the rich musical tradition that connects the present with the past.

           There are obvious differences, but there are also less obvious ones. It's possible, for instance, to start strings instruction at an earlier age than band instruction. In fact, it's desirable. Violins come in small sizes. In fact, you can get them in quite small sizes, and students, even very small students, are able to physically play a violin.

           In band the instruments are larger and the student needs a bigger physical capability and lung capacity to start to play them. Interestingly enough, strings instruments are generally less expensive for students to rent or to buy. I mention some of these differences to dispel the stereotype that orchestra programs are for the elite. The differences are just that. The differences have no more meaning than the difference between algebra and calculus. Both are needed.

[1930]

           We recognize this government is committed to more flexibility in funding for the K-to-12 system. This is a good thing, but we need to do better. Given its benefits, instrumental music should be entrenched in the curriculum. We're not arguing for more money, although that would be useful. We are arguing for more creativity in education funding and delivery. We have a few ideas in our report. I'll just briefly highlight them.

           We need a provincial curriculum complete with provincial learning outcomes explicitly for instructional music programs, starting at the primary level. From grade 5 on, at least, all children should have options that include orchestra and band taught by music specialists. At the high school level, these programs, including choral music, should be available as electives. Funding formulas should allow for the flexibility needed for districts to deliver this in ways that makes sense for their own demands and not create barriers to delivering the programs, as have been existing in the past formulas.

           We can do things like make more creative use of elementary teacher preparation time, which is entrenched in their contracts, as another way of allowing delivery of these programs. It may be more cost-effective to pull all the students out of the class instead of just some of them, in fact, for some form of fine arts instruction, including instrumental music instruction for those who are interested. At the same time, the classroom teacher uses this for prep time — time that's already being paid for.

           We can also facilitate the development of more career prep programs at the secondary level, which would encourage the career aspirations of our musicians. In conjunction with career prep, we could expand and have a focused approach on music development in schools that contribute to the economic and cultural development plans and activities of the communities throughout B.C.

           The value of music instruction should be recognized in the elementary and secondary curriculum. The education system of B.C. should provide all students with opportunities to achieve academic, personal and artistic excellence through equitable access to high quality music programs. Just imagine our world today if Einstein had never learned to play the violin, then consider the future Einsteins our education system could help create.

           Thank you. Are there any questions?

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much. That was very well done. I would love to hear the music, but I don't think we have time for it tonight.

           L. McElroy: They brought instruments just to make the point that they are instrumental students.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): If you'd like to wait to the end of the session tonight, we'll wait with you.

           L. McElroy: You can invite them back. They're actually quite wonderful. They have played in this building a couple of times now.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I know the whole music world is a beautiful thing, and we certainly appreciate that.

           Any questions? Richard.

           R. Stewart: Music has played an important part in my life as well. I applaud you for coming out here.

           You mentioned the funding formula and how it has to take some things into account. You've actually specified flexibility. Are you suggesting that the funding formula dictate to some degree to school districts, or should it just include flexibility?

           L. McElroy: No, I think the formula should include flexibility. The dictation needs to come from what the curriculum should be. Right now it's my understanding that we have a fine arts curriculum. Instrumental music can just be ignored if that's what the district decides to do, given the constraints of everything else they have to deal with, or it can be done in a way that really doesn't have the benefits of learning to read music and things like that.

           If the curriculum entrenches the instrumental instruction, then on that side, you have learning outcomes and what we want to achieve. On the funding side, we need a formula that will make it possible for

[ Page 565 ]

the curriculum to be delivered. Some of the current problems, for instance, are that when you pull a child out of the elementary classroom, you still have that teacher with the rest of the students who aren't being pulled out.

           You're paying for two people at once. When the teacher has prep time, they could be using that time for prep time, and the students could all be out — some doing instrumental, some doing dance, some doing other forms of fine arts, all of which is really sadly neglected in our current curriculum. Does that answer your question?

           R. Stewart: Yes. Thank you very much.

           R. Lee: I think right now in the high school curriculum, you have band and orchestra already — right? — if the school wants to open a class in that.

           L. McElroy: That's right. Four high schools in this district have it, for instance.

           R. Lee: However, I think that sometimes for orchestra, there's a lack of students. The number of students is low, so they cannot have an orchestra. What do you think? Any way to increase the interest of students, I think, is important.

[1935]

           L. McElroy: Oh, easily. We've been doing it in spades in this district. We had the program reduced in size, so fewer students could be accommodated. We started in grade 4 entry, then that was reduced to grade 5, which reduced the numbers. That made its way, reducing the numbers, all the way through.

           This year we've had this dramatic increase, part of it just simply by raising awareness. I think the fight to save the program made people appreciate what they have. We have slightly over 100 students in the secondary level this year. That's up from 66 last year, so we're keeping students in the program longer. There's a tremendous increase…. I should have brought the stats. What was the increase at the elementary level?

           S. Morgan: A 25 percent increase at the elementary level in the schools where it's available. In this district it's only available in a few schools.

           L. McElroy: Fifteen elementary schools have it.

           S. Morgan: It's 25 percent increase at the elementary school level and 55 percent increase this year at the high school level.

           R. Lee: This is for band?

           L. McElroy: No, that's orchestra.

           R. Lee: Orchestra? Okay, that's a very good result.

           S. Morgan: At the elementary school level in this district….

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Actually, this is on Hansard. If you could come forward and speak on the mike, we'll get your name. Could we have your name, please?

           S. Morgan: My name is Sher Morgan. This district has valued music instruction for a long time. The orchestra program in this district started in 1914. It's the longest-running orchestra program in British Columbia. There are 1,500 children enrolled in band programs in the elementary school in this district, because band is available at every school. At a much reduced number of elementary schools where orchestra is available, there are 500. Those numbers are very comparable when you look at the options that children are given.

           R. Lee: Okay. Thank you.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I want to thank you very much for your presentation. Good luck in the future.

           L. McElroy: Thank you. Again, if you want a performance, invite us back before the end of your session.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): It's tempting.

           Next on our program here is the gifted PSA, Sandra Webster-Worthy.

           S. Webster-Worthy: Thank you very much and good evening. You are probably looking at the only surviving coordinator of a gifted education program that's been in place for more than 20 years. I feel like an endangered species. Unfortunately, I am. I'm here tonight to convince you to change that.

           You can relax. I'm not asking for huge amounts of money. I know you can't make that promise, although I can't actually resist noting that $341 per gifted student isn't quite in the ballpark. Having said that, I'll let it go. I'm asking for something much more than that, which you'll see as we go on.

           I've been involved in gifted education since 1975 as a teacher and as a district coordinator, as a founding member of the provincial gifted association, as a founding member and past president of the provincial TAG association and as someone who has lectured in all but two provinces across this country. In many ways I feel like I've come full circle. I'm not cynical — in fact, quite the contrary. I'm quite excited.

           I sat before a group like this before, 20 years ago, and I saw what happened when support from the Ministry of Education was in place for gifted students. I'd love to say that the support was financial and con you in to putting great amounts of money into the programming, but it really wasn't. It was support, and it was very, very public. It made a huge difference. I'm here to ask you to do that again.

[1940]

           The most elitist thing we can do in a public school system is not provide appropriate programming for gifted students. When we don't meet their academic needs in a public school, those who can afford it go to private schools or are home-schooled. Those who can-

[ Page 566 ]

not then stay at our public schools and hope for the best.

           Gifted and talented students are found in every socioeconomic group in every region of this province. Their learning capacity is greatly underestimated. Did you know that ordinary gifted students, those just in the top 5 percent of the population, can easily cover the prescribed curriculum in all of our IRPs in about one-quarter of the time we allocate? These same kids reach adult memory scanning level by the age of nine.

           I'm not talking about the supergifted ones; I'm talking about the more-or-less gifted kids. In B.C. we pride ourselves on total inclusion. I believe we should, by the way, but please, let's be honest. It is sort of a one-size-fits-all model. In the name of democracy we've made the tremendous mistake of assuming that the term "equal opportunity" is synonymous with "identical experience." They are very different concepts. Equal opportunity for an appropriate education will never, ever be an identical experience for all learners.

           I'd like to relax for a minute and use you in an illustration. Giftedness is defined as asynchronous development. It means out of step, out of time. We could be looking at a child who is seven years old chronologically, intellectually perhaps 12, socially maybe five and physically maybe eight — out of step, out of time. That occurs on a continuum. When we're talking about highly, highly gifted students, we're talking about kids for whom there may be a five- or six-year discrepancy between intellectual and chronological age, but kids who have only a two- or three-year discrepancy have needs as well.

           Let's look at a typical grade 7 classroom. For the moment I'm going to pretend that you're all in it and that I'm the teacher. We'll have to imagine there are 28 of us in all, but I know there aren't. We have Richard Lee and Brenda, who is not here. We'll pretend they're gifted students, statistically. They're pretty capable kids. From Elayne going down to Tom, we've got good, strong, capable learners. Here we have the middle of the road — the curriculum is designed for this group — and at the back of the room we have turtle city.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I'm not Wendy.

           S. Webster-Worthy: You're not Wendy. Well, you are now.

           Let's look at what happens in a grade 7 class. We're going to do about seven classes today, and we're going to spend about 40 minutes on each of those classes. I'm going to present a math lesson first thing in the morning. When this group starts rumbling around, I'll probably move on to something else — maybe spelling. Ten minutes before I finish, Richard is done, and so is Brenda. They're just finding something to do.

           Now, in grade 7, Brenda is probably socially quite acceptable, so Brenda got on with something. She took a book out, or she offered to do an errand for me. Richard didn't; he just had to find something fun to do. Moving down with the next group, they didn't finish quite as quickly — just five minutes ahead of schedule. This group finished about on time, and you guys are still looking for your math book. Then we move on to spelling. Same thing. This group starts rumbling, you've been finished for ten minutes, you've been finished for five, and you've finally found math. We'll go through that, let's say, six times today.

           At the end of the day, Richard, you've had one hour of unengaged time in my classroom. Tom, you've had 30 minutes. At the end of a week, Richard, you've had one full day of unengaged learning in my class, and you've had half a day. At the end of the month, Richard, you've had a week of unengaged learning.

           If that happened to Richard in kindergarten and grades 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, are we surprised that he doesn't know how to focus and learn in grades 9, 10, 11 and 12? What he's learned to do is underachieve, to blend in, to not be challenged. That goes on every single day in every one of our classrooms when we don't provide for students like Richard. Richard can cover it in much less. I wasn't talking about Richard being supergifted. We're not talking off the scale. I'm talking top 2 to 3 percent, with all courtesy.

           What is underachievement for Richard? Underachievement is the discrepancy between what is accomplished and what could have been accomplished. Most of our gifted students here are underachieving. They learn to do it, and it has become a lifestyle. Why are we so surprised when these students aren't achieving in line by our senior grades?

           We've done a good job of convincing teachers and parents that students who face academic, physical and behavioral challenges should be in a regular classroom — by the way, I'm here to say I believe they should — but we have ignored, or been ignorant of, the research that tells us clearly that gifted students should not. Actually, I'll just read this out. I'll summarize it.

           The meta-analysis of the grouping practice research, which I can leave with this group, indicates that 90 percent of the population really do better in a heterogeneously grouped class, which is true, but we have some students who do not. Gifted students fall into that. What I'm going to quote is on something called the effect size. You can translate that into months they would be ahead. An effect size of 4.9 means almost five months ahead. Does that make sense? An effect size of 2.0 is two months ahead, and so it goes.

[1945]

           If we group for specific instruction, low achievers have an effect change of zero — it doesn't make any difference — and average achievers, an effect change of 2; they might be two months ahead. Richard and Tim, however, have an effect size change of 7.9, almost eight months ahead. In our district, where we do this, typically students like Richard, in an accelerated math class, are functioning three to four years ahead in math. If you're in a grade 7 class for everything else, you're probably doing math 10 or 11 — very capably, I might add.

           The grouping research across the board is consistent. Now, should we change our entire system because about 5 percent of the population does better if they're not in a heterogeneously grouped class? I'm a

[ Page 567 ]

district coordinator, and I know that's not going to happen, nor should it, by the way.

           There are some things we can do. One is to look at something called cluster grouping. Cluster grouping costs nothing. What it means is that we can group these students together in a classroom. What we need is a willingness to do so. In fact, we've done such a good job of saying all students should be in a heterogeneously grouped class that we don't acknowledge some students don't do well there. We think it's undemocratic to say that kids are going to be grouped in any way, shape or form.

           One of the things we've done very successfully in our district is to advocate for cluster classes. This means that to meet the needs of those students, we have to group them in a class with five, six or seven in a class. The rest of the group might be grouped across the board in terms of ability, but if we have five, six or seven students of a single ability in a class, it means, first of all, that Richard has the opportunity to learn with other students of his ability. He's still in a heterogeneously grouped class where he's exposed to students with varying challenges, but the teacher might actually have a chance of meeting Richard's needs.

           If there are five gifted kids, there are probably six others who could learn with him. It's now worth my while to teach differently. It's not worth my while when it's only Richard. If it's one-third of my class, I'm going to change the way I do business, so it works. When we talk about individual education plans, can you imagine my challenge if I have to do seven individual education plans? That's approximately an hour and a half each.

           If all seven are in my class, I can do one with that classroom teacher and change the way the classroom teacher offers services. What that means, though, is a willingness. I'm going back to what I asked you at the beginning. I didn't come here to whine, but I did come to offer some challenges and some solutions.

           First of all, please do throw money, if you can. In this province, we all report that it's 2 percent of the students we're servicing, but in my district, I'm servicing closer to 7 to 8 percent of the population. I think 6 percent is pretty standard across the province. Regardless of funding, please know that there are more kids than just 2 percent. We also have talented musicians, talented athletes, kids who are just talented in one subject area, and so on.

           What I am asking you to do is to acknowledge publicly that gifted students need to receive an appropriate education and that this Ministry of Education wants it to happen. Recognize that it cannot be done totally in a heterogeneously grouped classroom and that it's okay and not undemocratic to find solutions where these kids are grouped together.

           Please make us accountable. I think one of the greatest disservices in gifted education is that we have not been accountable. People can do things like taking field trips with the kids to God-knows-where and say they've serviced gifted students, and they have not. Ask for results. If we're accountable, you'll get results.

           When I developed this particular program in our school district…. By the way, I'm not from West Vancouver. I'm from Sooke, a district that has had financial challenges. When we put this program into place, one of our goals was to increase the number of scholarships that students received and improve the results in government exams. In three years of a plan for gifted education, we went from about $10,000 total in the district to an average of $500,000 in entrance scholarships. We went from a very small percentage of our students going on to an enormous percentage of our students going to post-secondary education. It does make a difference.

           I'm going to do a conclusion, but I wondered if there were questions first.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): We have about three minutes. Do you want to conclude now?

[1950]

           S. Webster-Worthy: I was just going to do a very dramatic plea, but I'd rather answer questions.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): All right. That was very well done. That was a good ending.

           Questions, then. Richard Lee.

           R. Lee: I think the barrier for gifted children, sometimes, is that they are restricted to one class.

           S. Webster-Worthy: Yes.

           R. Lee: If the system allowed them to move freely inside the grades — to go to any classroom they like — would that help?

           S. Webster-Worthy: It would help a little bit, but one of the concerns we also have to have is for the social development of the child. It's really important that these kids have an opportunity to work with kids who share their chronological age as well as their intellectual age. It doesn't work if you're in grade 7 to put you in a grade 10 class if you're the only grade 7 child there. Does that make sense? If we can move you as a group, yes, it does.

           J. Kwan: Along the lines of the concept of clustering, in your school district, just as an example — I don't know what the real numbers are, but taking a typical example — let's say seven students per grade division are gifted children or could be classified as gifted children. You're suggesting those seven would be paired up with another, let's say, ten who would be higher-functioning than those who were in the Tom range.

           S. Webster-Worthy: In Tom's range?

           J. Kwan: In the Tom category, therefore making the class size into — I don't know — less than 20, let's say. Are you suggesting, then, that the cluster be one class on its own?

[ Page 568 ]

           S. Webster-Worthy: Actually, no. I'd love us to have single classes for gifted students, but what is realistic is to say that if, at a grade 7 level…. We have two classes of grade 7 in this school, and we probably have four or five gifted children. If there are four or five gifted children in two classes, there are at least ten to 15 other students who could benefit from differentiated education and sufficient challenges. We'd group those students together, putting them in two classes, if you like, and have two groups of eight in each class, but make it worth the teacher's while to do business differently.

           When a gifted child is one of 28 students, the challenges our teachers are facing are tremendous. It's not happening, and the kids who are losing out are the gifted students. If one-third of my class is capable or identified as gifted and I have a resource teacher in the district to work with me, I might do business differently. I might offer accelerated programs. I might offer programs at a more challenging level. I might keep Richard busy, so he's not finished ten minutes ahead of every subject I do. I can't do it if there's only one. I just can't. No matter where the will is, it won't happen.

           J. Kwan: Can I ask one more question?

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): A quick one.

           J. Kwan: I think this was when we were in Kelowna, actually. A parent came up and suggested her child go to almost a camp situation with other gifted children across the province so they would be in the enhanced environment with students with advanced learning. What are your thoughts about that?

           S. Webster-Worthy: I'm not really supportive, I have to say. I'm going to go back to Richard. I'm sorry to single you out, but it's really convenient, because it works. I could send Richard off to camp for a week, and he could have an amazing experience. We could send him to NASA to go to space camp, and he would have a life-altering experience, but he's got to come back and spend the next nine months in my class for six hours a day. I've got to do something different for him for five instructional hours per day on every day he's in this school.

           The camp is great. It's better than nothing, but it's not changing Richard's experience in my class on a day-to-day basis. If he's the only one and he's got primarily unengaged time, he's not learning to learn.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Sandra. We would appreciate, if possible, a written submission from you. It's a very interesting topic.

           [W. McMahon in the chair.]

           W. McMahon (Chair): Our next presentation this evening is from Jane Forin. Jane, welcome.

[1955]

           J. Forin: I'm coming just as a parent. I'm not representing any committee or group. I've written out my talk for you and left a copy of it at the back table, if you want to refer to it later. I didn't know how this format was going to be tonight, so I'll just tell you what I've come here about. The heading I've got on here is: "On Assault and Harassment in our Schools (Commonly Called Bullying)."

           I will begin by going back to the 1992-93 school year, when our son Johnny, who's now 21, was in grade 7. During this year he experienced constant, continual and daily verbal and physical abuse. After several weeks of this, he came home one day, fell on my bed and cried. That was when I first found out about what he was going through at school. Also, during that school year he asked his dad and me to get him out of the school because he couldn't stand it any longer.

           Because this was a new experience for us, my husband and I naïvely thought the school administration would know what to do, so we had our son start his grade 8 year at the same school. The harassment continued and escalated. Finally, my husband and I talked it over once again and made the decision to honour our son's request, as he was a good boy and a good student.

           Up until that time, we were listening to the school's administration, all the time being told this was an isolated situation. They suggested to us we get our son counselling to learn how to deal with the bullies. We felt alone and that there was indeed something wrong with us or our son, or both. After all, the school said no one else was having these problems.

           We did not realize just how much he had suffered emotionally until he left the public school. Within a few days he became his old self again, happy and contented. He would not enter a public school for several months, and for over a year he would not ride his bike past the school, even on the weekends.

           Around this time I met a mother who was new to the school. She came to my home one day to pick up one of her boys. She began to tell me what her son was going through at school and was extremely emotionally upset. She had no idea that our son had had a very similar experience.

           In the interests of time tonight, I have to skip over most of the history around the meetings we had with the school and the letters that were sent to the school officials around both of our situations. With the permission of this mother, I'm going to quote some things from her letter to the school board. The reason I have chosen to do it this way is because the things I am about to read to you right now represent hundreds of other children's experiences both then and today.

    "He has endured two and a half months of constant physical and verbal abuse. He has been roughed up and punched in the face the second day of school. Has had his books purposely thrown off his desk, his bike vandalized in front of him, his first woodwork project stolen, his second project vandalized — it had to be thrown away — has suffered a cracked rib from being punched and has been thrown into his locker, which caused bleeding to his hand.

    "He has lost marks in PE because others didn't like to see him run ahead of them and decided to give him a little beating on their way. He ended up being

[ Page 569 ]

one of the last to come in. I had to bring him to the doctor, due to someone having fired a hard paper bullet into his eye. He lost his vision for a couple of minutes.

    "During his socials class the teacher needed to leave the room on three occasions. On each of these occasions, all but a couple of the boys in the class took potshots at him, slapping him on the back of the head. During science class the teacher left the room. Four boys, for sure — maybe six — attacked him with books over the head and serious blows to the back, after having switched off the lights. Later that same day in computer, a boy punched him in the back whenever the teacher's back was turned. [The mother said] we have gone through every possible avenue to implement change."

           That's the end of some of the quotes from that letter. The abuse I have just told you about does not include the continual profanity, yelling and verbal onslaught that happens throughout the physical abuse.

           There is only one thing worse than the young people who do these things, and that is the adults who let them. I read an article where several bullies were being interviewed. They were asked why they did these things to others. They very simply answered: "Because no one stops us." I would like to repeat that: "Because no one stops us." I want to make it clear tonight that the issue that I and many other parents have now is not directly with the perpetrators. It is not with trying to figure out why people can be so mean and cruel. The real issue for us is that no one stops them.

[2000]

           Some very common reactions from school administrations to parents, when a parent goes to the administrator, are that almost always, they immediately become defensive. Parents are told their situation is an isolated incident. Parents and victims feel that the problem has been put back on their shoulders and that somehow they must have some fault in this.

           Parents feel their concerns are always minimized. Parents are told to get their child counselling so that they can learn to cope or to home-school their child. Or they'll ask you: "Why are you having these problems? No one else in school is. What is your child doing to cause this to happen to him or her?" The victims of the bullying are always the ones that have to be relocated or get the counselling, not the other way around.

           When parents try to get help through the system and appear to be questioning the system in any way, they are labelled difficult, over-reactive, toxic, troublemakers or someone who doesn't have much else to do with their life. In fact, I was told during that time eight years ago that by trying to be involved in my school and forming a parents for safe schools committee, I was going to make the school look bad. I was shocked at this response.

           Some of you may remember the infamous footage of the schoolyard fight taken at Vanier high school in Courtenay last November. It made its way to the media. It was my son Andrew who videotaped that fight. This son is a different son than the one I've just spoken about. The reaction from the school's administration was to tell Andrew, in front of everyone present in the hall and the office, that he had put a big black mark on their school.

           During the meeting we had with two administrators and two police officers present, my son's morals and ethics were questioned. He was made to feel he had done something seriously wrong. One of the first things the principal did was to ban the use of camcorders in the school.

           My feedback over the years, and particularly over the last nine months, from students, teachers and support staff who have called me says they don't often report what they see, because they know no one will do anything about it. Others have told me that although they agree with what I'm trying to do, they consider it a waste of time, saying we will never see any change and will only get lip service.

           I used to believe that. In fact, that was what I experienced, but I and the other parents are not going to give up. We feel renewed hope with our new government. We see you as a government that looks to making positive change in all areas of our province. We want to be a part of that. You will be hearing from a parent from Whistler on December 11 in Vancouver. Her name is Leanne Dufour. Because of her experience, she and a group of parents from Whistler have put together a petition, which I've attached to this talk for you to have a look at.

           One of the petitions is for recommended changes within the school system, and one is for recommended changes within the court system. We need your help and your support in getting this petition out around the province. I am here tonight to ask you for your help and attention to these matters. We want to see more accountability of the perpetrators of these acts in our schools and our communities. We want to see school administrators be accountable for documenting every single incident in detail, along with other changes that we are requesting.

           The message has been coming through loud and clear for many years now, and the message is that the school image is more important than the individual student. With your help we can effectively change these attitudes in our school and make schools a safe place, a place where all students not only are safe but feel safe.

           Thank you very much for your time tonight.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you, Jane. We have a question from Sheila Orr.

           S. Orr: First of all, thank you for the presentation. As a mother of five I feel very sorry for what you had to go through. I don't think any parent ever wants their children to have to go through that sort of bullying. This organization and the petition that's being put together — are you a big organization? What are your goals? What do you hope to achieve in a positive manner?

[2005]

           J. Forin: The first time I spoke publicly on this was in Mission last January at a forum. I joined a group

[ Page 570 ]

called PAVE, Parents Against Violence Everywhere. They have become a registered society. Because of some growing pains there, I'm not really a member of that anymore, but I've spoken with them around the province.

           During that time this mother from Whistler also started coming to the meetings, and that was how I met her. Nasima Nastoh had invited her to the forum in Surrey in March. She came and spoke of her experience. She, along with the parents from Whistler, had put these petitions together as a result of her and others' experiences.

           One of our main goals is to get this petition and get some legislation changed. A lot of what I'm talking about shouldn't need legislation. It should be common sense. I'm a mother of eight children, and I understand that disciplining is really common sense. I shouldn't have to be here tonight. It's hard to legislate common sense, but we're hoping to maybe force the system to somehow deal with this in a way that they're going to be forced to make some changes. They're in point form on the petitions there. Did I answer your question very well?

           W. McMahon (Chair): Yes, you did. Thanks.

           J. Forin: I also want to tell you that I'm with the Hamed Nastoh Foundation. That's Nasima Nastoh from Surrey. Her son committed suicide a couple of years ago in March. Cindy Wesley is from Mission, and her daughter committed suicide a year ago as a result of being harassed and assaulted.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I'd just like some more information on these situations. Were these bullying situations during school hours?

           J. Forin: Oh yes.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): How about the videotaped fight?

           J. Forin: Yes.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): After school or during school?

           J. Forin: The videotaped fight was just after school. There were so many fights.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): It's usually just after school.

           J. Forin: No, it's not always.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): My question, though, is: were these people under teacher supervision?

           J. Forin: Oh, no. That was in the high school. There were no teachers there.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): In the elementary school?

           J. Forin: The one when I was talking about my son?

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Yes.

           J. Forin: That was in his first year in junior high, in grade 7. I don't know all the details of what my son went through because he had a hard…. I learned more from other people. What was your question again? Was there supervision?

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Whether they were under supervision or not.

           J. Forin: I read from that mother's quotes because she represented a lot of us. Sometimes the teachers had left the room. Sometimes the teachers were there, and their backs were turned. I know that during a school break, for instance, Johnny would take his bike through the trails at the school. Obviously, there's no supervision out there. He would come back through, and the gang of boys would be there to beat him up, wreck his bike, and things like that. That was on the school property, but there was absolutely no supervision.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Thank you.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks. Last question from Richard Lee.

           R. Lee: In some communities, they've proposed having a community group form together to resolve that kind of bullying problem. Do you think it's a good model?

           J. Forin: I think it's a real good idea, Richard. The problem is that I tried to work at the community level several years ago — I could talk here all night about some of the things I've tried to do — but it didn't work. We tried to work within the school system, but they didn't want us. I was treated really badly. I was surprised, because I thought I was a pretty nice person trying to help the school, but they didn't want any part of that.

           We tried to start a community group this year, and we have started one. There's a real — what's the word? — between school administrators and parents on this issue and on other issues too. On this one, they just see you as somebody who's causing problems. When I went into the school — with Andrew, for instance — he was just so mad at me and said: "This is not a pervasive problem in our school." If you talk to any kid and any parent, these problems are in all of our schools. We can't deal with them if we don't admit they're a problem. We have to work together, and that's not happening.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you.

           I missed Richard Stewart again with his question. I apologize, Richard.

           R. Stewart: No trouble.

           It was in the school I grew up in as well. Are things getting better? Is there any sign that we're moving in

[ Page 571 ]

the right direction or that the understanding of the issue is growing among educators or administrators?

[2010]

           J. Forin: In all the years I've had kids going through the system, which is almost 30 years now, I know of two administrators that I can say get it. I don't see any improvement, no.

           I know there are a lot of teachers here tonight, and I want to say that my issues are not with the teachers. My kids have had awesome teachers who went the extra mile all the time. I have a wide variety of children that were covered by the last speaker. She covered all of my children right there. They can only do so much. Some teachers are really caring. Other teachers have told me…. I've seen them walk by things. I've heard my kids say they just walk by things in the school, because they don't get support at the administrative level.

           That is common. It's widespread around the province. I've spoken around the province and talked to parents. In fact, it's across the country and North America. I've seen enough documentaries in the past year to know that this is a widespread problem. I don't know where the mentality comes from. I don't understand it.

           Did I answer your question?

           R. Stewart: Yes, you did.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks so much for your presentation tonight.

           Next is the greater Victoria community schools group. We have Patricia Nichol, Marion LaRose and Jim Taylor presenting.

           P. Nichol: Good evening. I'm Pat Nichol, and I'm chairperson of the Spectrum Community School Association. I would like to thank all of you, particularly for all the hours you've put in today, and I thank the standing committee for this opportunity to provide information to you all about the community schools that operate in the greater Victoria school district.

           There are four designated community schools. There's Burnside, James Bay, Shoreline and Spectrum. These community schools have been in operation for over 25 years and have a proven record of providing a range of educational, social and developmental support services. As part of the district's community school designation process, each community school is required to form a non-profit society to sponsor and manage their community's education program.

           Each school has a community education coordinator, who is a school district employee. As a chairperson of such a society, I work closely with our board of directors and our staff to help meet the needs of the school and the wider community. I want to tell you about the excellent work that is being done by our community schools.

           Community schools work at the community levels to do a number of things: to foster strong partnerships through local governance models, to ensure accountability for results, to provide a safe haven for children and youth, to improve educational achievement, to build on community strengths, to embrace diversity and to develop community responses to local issues.

           I have five things that are services that improve the quality of life for our students. We have direct funding for classroom activities, field trips and cultural activities from community school association fundraising. We organize and manage quality licensed child care for our students and organize and fund breakfast programs. We have a mentorship program for students. We're working to develop strategies for student safety and the reduction of youth violence.

           To illustrate the critical importance of our work at Spectrum Community School, I would like to introduce to you Marion LaRose, who is enrolled in the Spectrum youth internship program. This federally funded program helps youth in their transition from school to work.

           M. LaRose: I've lived and gone to school here all my life. I dropped out of school, hoping to find my dream job, but I didn't even find a job. I heard about this program called Spectrum job search, and it's a really good program. I was attracted to its many benefits. This program offers youth, 16 to 29, a chance to learn valuable skills needed to get a job in today's tough job market. Six weeks is classroom training, where you learn things like interview questions, telephone manners, job applications and researching the companies. The last four weeks is an internship at a company you pick, letting you experience working.

[2015]

           This program has made a huge difference in my life already by encouraging me to set goals for my future and to go back to school. I really appreciate this program because of the way it teaches me through classroom experience and through hands-on experience. I've never felt this confident before, and I'm extremely motivated to get on with my life. Without this program I might not be as confident about myself as I am now.

           I really believe this program can make a difference in young people's lives. I think there should be more programs like this one, and I think it's a really great program. I've learned a lot already. I made a résumé, and it looks really nice. I'm going to be looking for a job this week and doing my internship.

           I'm really nervous, so if I sound funny….

           W. McMahon (Chair): You're doing fine.

           M. LaRose: I just believe that it's a really good program. I just wanted to tell you how great it is. It has computers there. It has a fax machine. You can talk one-on-one with a counsellor, and that's it.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Marion, thank you. You did a great job.

           P. Nichol: Thank you, Marion.

           In closing, this committee is aware that the school-based services budget, which included community schools, inner-city school funding, school meals, and

[ Page 572 ]

youth and family counsellor services, is at risk of being cut by the Ministry of Children and Family Development. These moneys are education dollars and must be protected.

           We strongly support the recommendation of the Select Standing Committee on Finance that government proceed cautiously in a manner which protects, as you've heard, the most vulnerable members of our society. School-based services are focused on supporting the most vulnerable members of our society: disadvantaged, at-risk children and youth.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. Do we have any questions?

           E. Brenzinger: Thank you. That was a very good presentation, and I want to thank Marion for coming out and doing what you've done. It's very difficult for adults to get up in front of us. Good for you. Keep going.

           M. LaRose: Thanks.

           S. Orr: That was great, Marion. My son went to Spectrum. It's a good school.

           On the $75,000 funding you get. In a community school, I think you have lots of volunteers, and you do lots of fundraising. Can you tell me how much value you get out of the $75,000 and beyond the $75,000? How much extra money have you raised, and how much extra value?

           J. Taylor: Do you want me to take that one?

           P. Nichol: Can I start and you finish?

           J. Taylor: Sure.

           P. Nichol: Actually, Sheila, might I suggest that we will have a written presentation — and Jim can probably answer that — but my thought would be that we can give you a detailed account, which we couldn't give you in the time frame we have here.

           S. Orr: Great.

           P. Nichol: We'd be delighted to. If you want to carry forward, Jim.

           J. Taylor: Thank you. The province invests $300,000 in the greater Victoria school district's community school program. I would say — conservatively, and I know this from our work — we probably create almost $3 million in services. Our budget alone is almost $2 million at Spectrum, and that's because we've developed a lot of partnerships over the last number of years.

           I would say that if you're looking for bang-for-the-buck and looking for a program to effectively bring services together to help kids and families, this is it. It's the best model. It works all across North America, and it's a great program.

           S. Orr: Thanks.

           J. Kwan: We've had other parents or other educators come forward who are also interested in getting their school designated as a community school. Through your organization or perhaps other organizations, is there a network to providing assistance to others to get their school designated?

           P. Nichol: We have Jim Taylor, who is a vice-principal and also our executive director. He will work with other schools, but I think there's a whole lot more to it than that.

[2020]

           J. Taylor: I think the committee has had a number of community school presentations, and I believe the Association for Community Education appeared before you in Surrey. There are over 100 designated community schools across the province. Our programs probably serve almost half a million people provincially. We know there are about 200 to 300 schools out there that would like to be designated, but the money has been frozen for the past number of years, almost since the new ministry was created four years ago.

           There's a tremendous demand for the program, but the moneys aren't forthcoming. In fact, if you're going to make a recommendation to your colleagues — including the Minister of Education — there should be expansion, not contraction. It's the best investment you can make in communities, because it empowers communities to look at solving their own problems for kids and families.

           J. Kwan: Can you forward us the list of schools that would be interested?

           J. Taylor: That might be tough work, but I certainly will.

           J. Kwan: I would appreciate that for the committee. Thank you.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I'm really interested in Spectrum, because most of the submissions we've had so far have been elementary-based schools. I'm just wondering how close you are to the Flint, Michigan, model. It sounds like you're very close to it in terms of Spectrum.

           I ask this question, generally, though: what about the integration of public service agencies, such as the police, health, public health nurse, whatever, all those things? I was just wondering how far down the trail you are with that.

           J. Taylor: I'll give you just one illustration. It took us two years to get the funding for the program that Marion is part of. The unique feature of the program is that we're going to track every kid that drops out of the greater Victoria school district and follow up with those kids. The steering committee that put the program together had seven government ministries there,

[ Page 573 ]

had the federal government there, the city of Victoria, a number of downtown youth societies, the police. We had probably two dozen people at the table when we put the program design together, and they helped us get the funding. The feds were ultimately the ones that provided the funding.

           To answer your question — and I'll date myself here — I took my training in Flint 25 years ago. Yeah, we're there. That has always been the model, and it's coming back in the United States. I guess the way I put it is this. Community schools are what every school could be if the will was there. There's a public school in every neighbourhood in this province. I would encourage you to pass that on. This is the model that the public school system should take a serious look at.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you all for your presentation tonight. Marion, keep up the good work.

           Our next presenter tonight is Tom Ferris from the greater Victoria school board.

[2025]

           T. Ferris: Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak this evening. I had thought originally, when I planned to come this evening, that I would outline the 200 most common complaints of school trustees. Then I thought you may have heard most of them already, so I decided not to. Instead, I thought I might be a bit more general.

           I was actually thinking as I came over here this evening that in the not too distant future, I may be residing quite close to you over here at the James Bay Lodge. In so doing, I may see some of you there, from the look of things around the table. [Laughter.] I'm hoping when I get there that there will be somebody who's adequately trained to remind me that this is breakfast and not dinner and somebody who will be able to scrape some of the noodle salad off my tweed jacket when I'm finished. Those people will be the people who are in our schools in greater Victoria today.

           In investigating our education system, you people are charged with the most important task that your government will undertake. That is not just my future and your future at James Bay Lodge but all of our futures, so I wish you luck in this endeavour. I know it won't be easy. We do need a skilled workforce and an educated public in the future.

           I wanted to mention that I had the opportunity to hear the deputy minister speaking to trustees about accountability contracts and on some of his ideas for the future of education. I was very, very impressed, and I know that many other people have been as well. I know that administrators have been very excited about some of the ideas that are coming forward.

           On the other hand, some of the other messages that are coming at us have made us a bit anxious. I think that any change, of course, is always viewed with some trepidation. Frankly, I think we're ready for a change, in the sense that for the last five years I've been a trustee, budgets have been sort of picked away at. There hasn't been any real overall look at education to decide what we can actually do with the less money we get every year.

           I think it is important that we have a look at the whole package, and I'm pleased it's happening, but we have to be reminded that the things that keep kids in school are not the tests we're going to give them in order to partially fulfil our accountability contracts. They aren't necessarily the three Rs. They aren't necessarily going to be math or science or English.

           The things that keep kids in school may be things like food. It might be one caring adult in the school, and who is that caring adult going to be? It could be any number of people, not necessarily the people we think it's going to be. In other words, it's not necessarily the teacher — possibly yes, possibly no.

           We need to see a continuation of and improvement in opportunities for mentorship in schools. When you undermine programs such as career preparation programs, which lost $10 million in funding last year, you undermine the opportunity to present mentorship in schools. In our district, we have mentorship programs that are tied in with people like RBC Dominion, tied in with the Royal Bank, tied in with a variety of interested people in our community who want to get into schools and want to be in touch with young people, but it takes more than just desire to get there. There has to be some coordinated organization.

           I have quite a few other things I'd like to say, but I think what I'm going to do is perhaps ask you for some questions.

           We have outlined in here some of the more specific ideas we're most concerned about, and I guess that arises whenever we hear a government say there will be no cuts to education. The first thing that comes to mind is whether that means no recognition of the collective agreements that have been made recently. Does that mean no economic adjustments for operating budgets? Does that mean reduced special education funding, which is what it has meant for the last six years? Those are always concerns, and some of those concerns are outlined in our document.

[2030]

           In closing, I think of a nightmare I used to have when I was young, back in my forties. The nightmare was that I would be in an examination room in university, and I would be writing a paper on some obscure poet of the eighteenth century. I would be writing furiously for an hour, and then suddenly, I'd be looking around to find the question I was asked, because I couldn't remember. The question was lost in the jumble of paper I'd created on the table. Then, fortunately, I'd wake up, and I guess that's the most important thing here: what is the question?

           If the question is how we make the best possible education system in North America, then that's the right question. If it's another question, it's the wrong question. If that's the question, I'm excited, and I feel very positive about what you're doing.

           Thank you for letting me speak today.

           S. Orr: Tom, as a school trustee and as somebody who's always been very up front and vocal…. I've

[ Page 574 ]

known you for a long time. You're right. We have heard a lot of people talk, and we've got a long way to go still. Is there anything you can see that you would specifically like to see us do that you haven't seen us do? Also, I would really like your opinion on community schools, because we've been hearing a lot about community schools.

           T. Ferris: Well, I mean, you've just had excellent spokespersons for community schools. You had a very excellent student speaker, and I think you got a pretty good overview. I think what Jim Taylor said about the connections that they're able to make, the extra add-on dollars that they bring into the system, is a very good point.

           In a sense that's the type of thing that happens with your career preparation programs as well. You fund a certain amount of money for the program. Then on top of that you bring in mentorship opportunities for students. You bring in opportunities for students to go out into workplaces and get work experience, so when they graduate from high school, not only do they have a diploma in one hand, not only did they have a reason for staying in school for two years and graduating, but they actually have a skill they can take out and work with. You get a big bang for your buck with community schools and with other programs that are delivered.

           S. Orr: Thanks.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Any other questions?

           R. Lee: From other presentations, some of the so-called complaints about administration are that it's not flexible enough, and sometimes it's the attitude. How do you respond to that?

           T. Ferris: Let me tell you, my response would be this. When I look at the job that an administrator has today, particularly if he works in an inner-city school, I would say we should be heaping a ton of thanks on this man or woman for the job they do. It is an incredible task, and they are the court of last resort. If there are six problems in the school, and there are only three people that can deal with them at one time, the other three problems are in his office. My experience has been that while administrators don't get it right 100 percent of the time, they face the problems so often and get them right so many times that I feel they do an excellent job.

           J. Kwan: We've had these issues raised all throughout the committee's work around the need for adequate funding for special needs, for gifted children's programs, for a variety of different models, music, cultural development, etc. What I'm trying to get at is: what is deemed to be adequate funding? How do you assess that?

[2035]

           T. Ferris: That's a good question. The reality is that there could never be enough. I always feel we need to be able to offer more than just basic services to our students, but I also feel there's a need to be a bit creative about it. On the one hand, in our district we have gone from 17 percent of our budget going to special education down to closer to 11 percent last year. That's a horrific bite that we've taken out of special education, and that definitely affects the kids. I am very, very skeptical about whether we could take another nickel out of there.

           Music programs. I believe that they're really necessary in schools, because that's the kind of program that keeps kids in schools, but I also believe there are alternative ways of doing it. It's going to take a combination of creativity and willingness to work with what you've got. I think we could expand music programs within the same budget that we have, to be honest.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. The last question is from Reni Masi.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Throughout the hearings — we've gone quite a way already, but there's more to go — there has been a thread, an element, running through relative to the teachers contract. I'm just wondering what your recommendation or opinion would be — whether or not the contract is a barrier to flexibility, to operations or even to the financial situations of the boards.

           T. Ferris: I'm not directly involved in the negotiation, and I'm not prepared to speak today to what's happening with the negotiations.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I'm referring more to the administration of the district, not dollars and cents in terms of salaries and bonuses.

           T. Ferris: Specifically, your question would be in terms of salaries and bonuses?

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): No, it would be in terms of management and operations.

           T. Ferris: I'm not really clear on what your question is, then, to be honest.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Okay. It's a bad question, obviously. What I'm concerned about is this. Are there any barriers to effective management in a school district because of the existing contracts in place in the school districts?

           T. Ferris: Let me say that historically, it has been the view of trustees that it would be better to have some flexibility in the schools — more flexibility than we have right now under the existing contracts. More specifically than that I wouldn't care to speak. Yes, historically, that has been our view.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation tonight.

           T. Ferris: Thank you.

[ Page 575 ]

           W. McMahon (Chair): Our next presentation is from the Comox Valley district parent advisory council. We might not have anybody from there. How about the Northern Vancouver Island Brain Trauma Society? No.

           We have two people, two groups, who are wait-listed tonight. They're back there waving at us. The first one is the Harewood family of community schools, Debbie Lumsden. They've been waiting for quite a while. They've come from up-Island. Patience pays off.

           D. Lumsden: Good evening. Thank you so much for this opportunity. I'd like to introduce a counsellor and community development worker from school district 68 in Nanaimo-Ladysmith, Bill Preston. One of Bill's many jobs is the oversight of our family of community schools.

[2040]

           Harewood is in the unique position of having four schools designated as community schools. Two of them are elementary schools and two of them are high schools. Our total funding is for two community schools, so we have $150,000 that we divide among the four schools. That's enough of an intro. I'll get into my presentation.

           Yesterday Canada offered honorary citizenship to Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa who spent 25 years in prison. The reminder of Africa recalled the words of Stephen Lewis, the keynote speaker at the World Conference on Community Education held in Burnaby this past June. Unknown to us at the time, Mr. Lewis would be appointed the UN special envoy to Africa dealing with AIDS within weeks of his appearance in Burnaby. This added special weight and urgency to the idea he would witness that day.

           He told the story of a young child orphaned by the HIV/AIDS-related death of his parents. Mr. Lewis asked him what he wanted most. This child lived in war and horror zones so desperate as to be unimaginable by our western minds. He saw both his parents waste away, die and leave him alone to face an uncertain and brutal existence. "I want most to go to school, to be with other children and learn," he told Mr. Lewis. Think of the significance of this statement.

           With every part of his world in ruins, the one thing the child knew would ground him and help him survive was to go to school and learn, but the schools were in poor shape. Many were closed because of the many HIV- and AIDS-related deaths. More than one-third of the population of that town was dead or dying. Mr. Lewis helped facilitate a meeting of the surviving community members from 20 counties. With no infrastructure, resources or communications, the community development workers began to put their school system back together using local resources.

           Madam Chair, the parallels with the community school effort in B.C. are striking. It brings new meaning to the often repeated African proverb that says: "It takes an entire village to raise a child." It brings new meaning to the importance of our existing network of over 100 community schools. It highlights the significant role that community schools can play in the revitalization of our education system.

           Today I will offer you some background on my credentials to speak as a witness and share some facts with you on the situation in the community of Harewood, a neighbourhood within the city of Nanaimo. I come from the community of Harewood. We have been operating as community schools for about six years in Harewood. We're one of the few communities in B.C. with a K-to-12 community school context and, within that context, a very strong partnership with our local community college, Malaspina.

           We were the 1999 winners of the B.C. Council for Families distinguished service to families award for our intergenerational work with seniors and at the school level. We are members of the ACE-BC community education group. We operate on long vision, using community development techniques. We will be a flagship site of the B.C. Summer Games in 2002, if there's funding so we can have community school presence.

[2045]

           Our operational mandate includes lifelong learning for all ages, using community education and adult learning — our community use of school facilities and equipment for value-added efficiency. We enhance the kindergarten-to-grade-12 curriculum with community resources. We have an interagency team collaboration, which consists of 35-plus agencies. Our affairs are governed by a community-based community school council.

           Nanaimo is the third-largest city outside the lower mainland, and we have the highest rate of child poverty in B.C. It's at 14.9 percent, based on the 1996 federal census. That's over double the provincial average of 6.9 percent from the B.C. stats. Poverty has been entrenched in our neighbourhood for decades. John Barsby Community School consistently stars on the Fraser Institute report as the lowest-ranking high school in B.C. My son actually attends that school, and there are a few things I'd like to explain to the Fraser Institute.

           The four schools in our family have a combined enrolment of 2,800 students and their families. In the year 2000-01 in our annual report, which we distributed before dinner, we had over 62,400 participants in our community school programming. We have an annual leverage of over 50 percent of the operational budget with outside funding.

           The Harewood family of community schools operates using community development and lifelong learning opportunities applied to the four keys of successful child development. These four keys are a strong commitment to young children from zero to five; support during the key transitions — kindergarten entry, grade 7 to 8 transitioning from elementary school to secondary school and leaving high school; increased economic equality; and safe and caring communities.

           The challenges that face us we've loosely titled the dirty dozen. We have highest rate of child poverty in B.C. The Mid-Island Food Co-op store, which was located in Harewood, shut down last spring, and our community policing station is now gone. The commu-

[ Page 576 ]

nity wading pool, which had been built as a centennial project for the national centennial, was closed by public health. Our school district has recently reorganized its zones.

           There has been frequent bureaucratic restructuring of the Ministry of Children and Family Development. Our residents are very dependent on that ministry. Then the forestry sector layoffs and permanent mill shutdown. The fisheries layoffs, the reductions of licences and the reduction in catch quotas. The uncertain tourism sector. The teacher labour dispute. The core review and deregulation. An aging population. The lack, until recently, of an integrated service delivery model, coupled with the need for residents to leave Harewood in order to access the human services they rely on and a high number of single parent families.

           The community revitalization is coming about because of the model of a full-service school that we have in place in our community schools. Through our community schools our residents at least can find out who they can talk to about whatever today's problem may be. There is someone they know they can talk to in those schools, be it the community school coordinator, someone like Mr. Preston, who's a counsellor in the school, or whatever. We are linking our schools more closely to our community.

[2050]

           What our experience has provided is this interagency collaboration, which avoids the duplication of paperwork and service delivery and results in more efficient and effective service delivery. It provides a strong link between the schools and the interagency collaborators, which provide service not only to the students of our schools but their families. There is a very great enrichment of community by just the valuing of the multicultural and multigenerational diversity within our communities.

           When we presented our annual report to our school's board of trustees, we had a grade 9 student with us who asked if he would be allowed to speak. We were only too happy to accommodate him. This student stood up and explained to our trustees that in the previous year, in grade 8, he had been spending a lot of time in the resource room. He needed significant amounts of help.

           When he joined one of the community school programs, with the experience and the self-confidence he gained from the program, he was on the honour roll by the end of grade 8. He hadn't quite realized that he probably wouldn't be on a November honour roll because he wouldn't have a report card, but he was so excited, so proud of himself and so confident that it was really heartwarming.

           I'd like to move on to a few recommendations. What we've done is to put the recommendations down in the categories of access, flexibility, etc., that I know the committee was looking at.

           First and foremost, for access we need to ensure the money from the school-based services budget is transferred back to the Ministry of Education, so it will not be cut as a result of the 20 to 50 percent cut in the Ministry of Children and Family Development budget allocation, which is about to happen, or whatever. If that money isn't transferred back…. You've heard it several times. The social equity funding is actually absolutely paramount to some of our schools, and it will reduce access to quality education by the students in this province if that equity funding is cut. Equity does not mean equality.

           Encourage higher rates of student volunteerism, especially supporting student government and leadership development. One of the ways this could be accomplished is perhaps by making the deadline for completion of the graduation CAPP requirements be in grade 11 or even earlier, so students who get caught up with jobs after school and weekend jobs don't have that distraction. The earlier they gain knowledge with volunteering, the earlier they understand how important it is, not only to them but to their communities.

           Increase participation in supplementary summer, academic, social, recreation and work experience programs. Promote student-parent learning teams. Increase participation in early literacy and family literacy programs. Increase stay-in-school programs and reduce student drop-out by 10 percent. Establish anti-bullying programs, such as the All Together Now program, for grades 5, 6 and 7 in every elementary school.

           Establish anti-racism and anti-violence initiatives at every secondary school. Institute policies that support community schools. Something like not allowing a rental compensation clawback by school districts would be helpful. Mandate noonhour and after-school recreational, social and remedial programs.

[2055]

           Quality. Reject invasive, multinational, big corporate and franchise involvement in schools. That's the corporate sponsorship that comes with the price tag of advertising and further branding of our students. I personally believe that corporate sponsorship is a social conscience thing, but not at the cost of branding our students further.

           W. McMahon (Chair): We have about two minutes.

           D. Lumsden: Flexibility. Seek out and incorporate unofficial community curriculum enhancements such as Alateens; BEAMs and BEARs, which is be enthusiastic about math and reading; people-in-my-community programs; Girltalk; Mother Goose literacy programs; female mentorship; and programs like Sandbenders.

           Support during the early years from zero to five by opening school-site preschools, perhaps for half days. Support in the transition times: kindergarten entrance, grades 7 and 8 and high school leaving. Community schools have many innovative and successful programs every school should offer to students and parents. Create a safe and caring school environment.

           Greater social and economic equality. Increase scholarships and create basic needs funds. Altrusa Club–type initiatives. School-supply fund for low income families. Support for parents. Parenting courses, information nights, clothing exchanges, community service fairs, Mothers Unite garage sales. Support de-

[ Page 577 ]

velopment of local interagency teams, planning initiatives and meetings that create preventative programs.

           Support families to access school computer labs for on-line learning out of hours. Support book and author festivals. Organize speaker events. We sponsored Barbara Coloroso last year as one of our events. Send the message that the Legislature is doing all it can do to support families in difficult and uncertain times. Open school libraries for use by adults. Buy licences that will allow the use of on-line educational databases by adults.

           Open school career centres for use by parents. Establish before- and after-school care in elementary schools. Establish day care centres at secondary schools for access by teen parents enrolled in the schools. Parents and children tend to do better when they are connected to their community, so use community-building methods like family dances and community gardens, skateboard parks, fitness, walking. These are all community school events. Explore establishing parent mutual-aid programs for child care co-ops.

           Choice. Anecdotal evidence reveals some parents are making an active choice to live within catchment boundaries. Currently, we still have catchment boundaries in our district for the Harewood family of community schools. They explain the desirability and effectiveness of enrolling their son or daughter in a community school program. Paying the bill for education. One of the ways to do it is that as our areas are growing, a fact of life is that new subdivisions need to foot the bill for more costly and larger education and recreation facilities.

           Thank you very much. We will attempt to answer any questions.

           W. McMahon (Chair): We have one more presentation to come, just to let the committee know. Does anybody have a question, or will we move on?

           Thank you so much for your patience, for waiting — it paid off — and for coming tonight.

[2100]

           Our last presentation tonight is Bruce McIldoon, representing Esquimalt Community School.

           B. McIldoon: Well, this is quite an opportunity. Waiting pays off.

           Thank you very much for hearing our presentation. I'm Bruce McIldoon, and I'm representing Esquimalt Community School. The reality is, though, that it's rather ironic. We are a community school in name, but we never got the funding, so it's really Esquimalt senior secondary school, but we go by the community school name.

           Thank you, Chair and committee, for having us. Thank you for the opportunity to make our views known to your committee. As members of the parent advisory council of Esquimalt Community School, we have children in school and can see the impacts of governmental decisions firsthand. We're going to deal with three of the issues that are of greatest concern to us.

           Access and quality of education. Esquimalt Community School is an 8-to-12 high school situated in an inner-city area of Victoria. The region served by the school has a high ratio of students who are disadvantaged by poverty and lack of education. Many families are struggling to function. Many students live independently because of family breakdown, and many are at risk in the neighbourhood. Recent events that have involved gang-type aggressive behaviour serve to prove that we have a very needy community.

           While not in your direct area of responsibility, the current review of funding in the Ministry of Children and Family Development is of great concern. It is important to understand that cutting services to needy students impacts everyone in and around the school. If teachers must spend time coping with troubled, hungry students in the classroom, their ability to teach is greatly impeded, and all the students suffer. If troubled youth cannot get the support they need, the threat of violence, vandalism and other acting out is increased throughout the school and the community, putting all students at risk. These outcomes would surely decrease the quality of education for all students.

           Our school will be greatly affected if any of these areas is cut. The areas are these.

           Youth and family counsellors. We have three, one full-time and two part-time, at Esquimalt. They are invaluable in our school, as they can intervene with students and families in crisis. They meet with students away from school, meet with whole families, pick up students and deliver them to school, do follow-up to suspensions, conduct anger management sessions, take students to referral meetings and much more. They connect with our at-risk students and manage crises that regular staff cannot possibly have time to do.

           In short, they can reach out to the community as no one else can. Without them, we feel that teachers and counsellors would be overwhelmed, and many more students would drop out of school. Losing them would be false economy that would lead to even more disaffected youth in our community and more students unable to access the public education system.

           Inner-city funds. These funds are used in our school to provide a number of programs. No. 1 would be extra resource time. Due to a high number of students who need resource and learning assistance, we use these funds to augment our programs. Another emphasis is our large first nations population, who also require extra counselling and assistance, and our literacy program. These programs help keep kids in school, and they certainly improve the quality and flexibly of education.

           No. 2 would be the school lunch program. For many students, this is their only hot meal of the day, and for some it is the only real meal. About 150 students regularly use this program. Many studies have shown that hungry children don't learn as effectively. Thus, even if kids are in school, their access to learning is impacted.

           No. 3 would be the behaviour management program. An assistant is hired by the school to supervise a room where students having difficulty in class can go to calm down and rethink their actions. This assistant works with counsellors and administrators in keeping

[ Page 578 ]

files and providing an opportunity for at-risk students to avoid further conflict when removed from class. This room has been an essential service in problem-solving for the school. If teachers must cope with these students in the classroom, the quality of education is reduced. If these students cannot be accommodated within the system, their access is surely impacted.

           All of the above are threatened by your service review. A loss of one or any of these services will affect our school deeply and put education at risk. That was the first issue.

[2105]

           The second issue here is the flexibility through the career prep programs. At Esquimalt, we have quite a few career prep programs, and they're also in jeopardy. Esquimalt secondary school has a variety of skill-based career prep programs in place that are threatened by funding cuts. These programs provide alternative education pathways for those who are probably not headed for post-secondary education.

           They give students a reason to stay in school and provide job-ready graduates who are a benefit to society rather than dropouts who become a drain on our resources. These programs obviously provide choice and flexibility for students. The resource is available to the entire school, because these programs add a quality of education for all. This concerns me, because I'm a machinist by trade, so I understand the career prep area thoroughly.

           Our third item, which is probably at no cost to the government — we'll go over it — has to do with volunteers: quality, flexibility and choice through volunteers in schools. In times of fiscal restraint, it is crucial to explore all sources of assistance in the schools. Parents, grandparents and possibly others in the community who are willing to help with school can provide services that improve the quality of education: keeping libraries and book rooms organized, helping with reading, helping with gardening, cleaning lab ware, tutoring, etc. We could offer more choice and flexibility, perhaps providing short sessions on items of interest to students such as the science of chocolate, the geometry of quilting, etc.

           Mechanisms are not generally in place in the public schools, especially beyond elementary school, to welcome parents into the school, to organize their efforts and provide training to help with literacy programs, etc., where it would be of benefit. It seems that the teachers feel threatened, which should never be the case.

           Parents can become part of a school community in many ways that are not threatening to teachers' positions if the appropriate mechanisms are in place. Parents benefit from seeing the children's environment firsthand, and students can receive a little extra help that overtaxed teachers cannot provide. An extra richness can be brought into the classroom.

           Some investment of your committee's time in exploring ways to better utilize this untapped resource might be well rewarded. We appreciate the opportunity to express our views on these matters. If you have any questions, we would gladly field them. Myself and Barb Giuliany, who couldn't be here tonight but who penned this letter, would be willing to take your questions. That's our presentation.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. Are there any questions?

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I was a little confused at the beginning there, I guess. You're an unfunded community school?

           B. McIldoon: Yeah, that's interesting. We go by Esquimalt Community School, but apparently we're not funded as a community school. I don't know why. I'll have to research that myself. We're not in the Spectrum family, and I don't know why we even keep the name, to tell you the truth, if we're not funded as a community school.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Do you have a community school coordinator?

           B. McIldoon: No. We have nothing. We're nothing. We have nothing to do with community schools, just a name on the paper.

           R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Okay.

           B. McIldoon: I hope the committee recognizes that fact, because the community school was a big issue. I hope you realize that maybe we want to be one, but we're not.

           J. Kwan: That's part of my question. I take it that you do want to be a community school.

           B. McIldoon: Well, I would think so, if there's funding. We're an inner-city school, and I suspect that if there's extra funding, we'd want to be a community school too. We have so many career-type programs there. We've got the cooks training. We've got the professional music program. We've got graphic arts. We've got the business ed program. These are all career prep training, and I think they'd build right into the community school model.

           J. Kwan: That really comes to the heart of the question that I wanted to ask, actually, and that is for the schools to have more curriculum that is targeted for trades. It sounds like you already have them. Am I understanding that you have them?

           B. McIldoon: We have them, but we are suffering. They're threatened because of the cutbacks. They cut $12 million out of career prep last year, and I think that at our school, it represented $270,000 or something in our particular area. They struggled. They've cut positions, and I think we were going to totally lose graphic arts. We can't afford to lose career prep programs, because those are the kids who, if the programs aren't there, aren't going to be in school.

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           R. Lee: You mentioned volunteers in this high school, I think, actually more than other secondaries in other districts. What was the secret of involving so many volunteers? Do the teachers complain about it?

           B. McIldoon: Actually, I work during the daytime, so I'm not a daytime volunteer. We do have a few daytime volunteers. They're a great asset. I don't know. The new rules on volunteers are such that they're allowed to enter the schools and volunteer at all levels, but I don't think it's currently being utilized or pushed to its fullest advantage. They're not all parents.

           I'm involved with Macaulay Elementary School too. Volunteers at the elementary level seem to be utilized a lot more than at the high school level, because you need drivers for field trips, etc. I don't know why they don't use them at the high school level.

           R. Lee: You mentioned volunteers cleaning labs and serving in the library and that kind of thing. Is that ongoing?

           B. McIldoon: Yes. At our school, we have a volunteer who does that.

           W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks so much for coming tonight and making your presentation.

           B. McIldoon: Thank you for letting us get in there and be the last.

           W. McMahon (Chair): You're welcome. Goodnight.

           The meeting is adjourned.

           The committee adjourned at 9:12 p.m.

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