Education - Issue No. 15 - Thursday, November 22, 2001

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

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

Unavoidably Absent: Reni Masi, MLA (Deputy Chair); Jenny Kwan, MLA

1. The Chair called the meeting to order at 11:04 a.m.

2. The following witnesses made statements and answered questions:
    1) District of Houston
        Tom Euverman, Mayor
        Bonny Hawley, Councillor
    2) Bulkley Valley Teachers Union
        Warren Kluss

3. The Committee recessed from 11:34 a.m. to 11:56 a.m.

4. The following witnesses made statements and answered questions:
    3) Bob Henderson
    4) Northwest Community College
        Brenda Andersson

5. The Committee recessed from 12:42 p.m. to 1:03 p.m.

6. The following witnesses made statements and answered questions:
    5) Lakes District Secondary School Leadership Class
        Tom Dean
        Joanna Pooley
        Alicia Mettler
        Pam Richard
        Danielle Martens
        Kim Staudt
    6) School District 54, Bulkley Valley
        Bob Haslett
        Sheryl Yaremco
    7) Houston Christian School
        Jack VandenBorn
        Kerry Macleod
    8) Pat Christensen
        Erin Alec

7. The Committee adjourned at 2:28 p.m. until 9 a.m. Friday, November 23, 2001, in Prince George.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE
ON EDUCATION

Chair:	* Wendy McMahon (Columbia River–Revelstoke L)
Deputy Chair:	Reni Masi (Delta North L)
Members:	* Elayne Brenzinger (Surrey-Whalley L) * Tom Christensen (Okanagan-Vernon L) * Richard Lee (Burnaby North L) * Brenda Locke (Surrey–Green Timbers L) * Karn Manhas (Port Coquitlam–Burke Mountain L) * Sheila Orr (Victoria-Hillside L) * Rob Nijjar (Vancouver-Kingsway L) * Richard Stewart (Coquitlam-Maillardville L) Jenny Kwan (Vancouver–Mount Pleasant NDP) * denotes member present

Clerk:	Anne Stokes
Committee Staff:	Dorothy Jones (Administrative Assistant)

Witnesses:	Erin Alec Brenda Andersson (Northwest Community College, Houston) Pat Christensen Tom Dean (Lakes District Secondary School Leadership Class) Tom Euverman (Mayor, District of Houston) Bob Haslett (Chair, Bulkley Valley School District 54) Bonny Hawley (Councillor, District of Houston) Bob Henderson Warren Kluss (Bulkley Valley Teachers Union) Kerry Macleod (Houston Christian School) Danielle Martens (Lakes District Secondary School Leadership Class) Alicia Mettler (Lakes District Secondary School Leadership Class) Joanna Pooley (Lakes District Secondary School Leadership Class) Pam Richard (Lakes District Secondary School Leadership Class) Kim Staudt (Lakes District Secondary School Leadership Class) Jack VandenBorn (Principal, Houston Christian School) Sheryl Yaremco (Vice-Chair, Bulkley Valley School District 54)

W. McMahon (Chair): Good morning. My name is Wendy McMahon. I'm MLA for Columbia River–Revelstoke and Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Education.

Before having the members introduce themselves, I'll make just a few remarks about the committee and the work it has been asked to do by the Legislative Assembly.

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 prior to February 28, 2002.

The members of this committee agree that education is of critical importance to everyone in British Columbia. Education not only contributes to each individual's sense of personal value and well-being, but it also provides our communities with the knowledge and skills that will sustain us, socially and economically, into the future.

The question is this: what kinds of educational systems and policies will best serve British Columbians and British Columbia in this era of increased globalization, competition and technical innovation? The committee wants to hear your recommendations — whether you are an educator, a student, an administrator, an employer or an interested citizen — on improving elementary, secondary and post-secondary education in B.C. to better enable us to meet these challenges. This is why we're here today.

The committee has had a number of meetings in Victoria. We've also travelled throughout the province. We've been in Surrey, Dawson Creek, Cranbrook, Kelowna and in Queen Charlotte City yesterday. We're here today and in Prince George tomorrow, followed by Port Coquitlam and Vancouver in December. We're accepting written submissions until January 4, 2002.

For the information of the presenters, these hearings are being recorded and transcribed by the Hansard staff. They're over here to our right. The transcripts of today's meeting will be available on the committee's Web page. If you're interested in seeing what everybody said and what the day was like, I encourage you to go and have a look. It will take a week or so for them to get them out. Copies of the committee's terms of reference and other information about the legislative committee process are also available at the information table over to my left.

I'll ask the members to introduce themselves. We do have two members who aren't here today: Reni Masi, who's away because of medical reasons, and Jenny Kwan, who wasn't able to attend because of some commitment she had. With it being a legislative committee, we do have representation from both the opposition and government. I'll start down here with Tom Christensen.

T. Christensen: Hi, I'm Tom Christensen. It's nice to be here in Houston. I'm the MLA for Okanagan-Vernon.

K. Manhas: Good morning. It's great to be here in Houston. My name's Karn Manhas. I'm the MLA for Port Coquitlam–Burke Mountain.

R. Stewart: Hello. My name's Richard Stewart. I'm the MLA for Coquitlam-Maillardville.

B. Locke: Good morning. My name is Brenda Locke. I'm the MLA for Surrey–Green Timbers.

S. Orr: Hi. I'm Sheila Orr, the MLA for Victoria-Hillside. Thank you for having us.

W. McMahon (Chair): Yes, it's great to be here. You'll notice that I'm the rural MLA on this committee. That's right. We have a challenge here today. Let's make sure they hear what it's all about.

Welcome. We are delighted to be here in Houston today. Our first presentation this morning is from Bonny Hawley from the district of Houston and Tom Euverman, the mayor of Houston. If you'd like to come up.

T. Euverman: Good morning. Thank you very much for having the select standing committee come to our community. It isn't very often we have committees of this nature come to our community, so we're delighted to see you all here this morning.

My name is Tom Euverman. I'm the mayor of the district of Houston. I just want to take a minute to talk about Houston, if I may. It's a little out of the ordinary, but I think it's in order, seeing as we don't get the opportunity too often.

For the benefit of the members, Houston is a young community. We've been in existence for about 40 years, which is very young compared to many other communities. We are basically a resource-based community of

forestry and mining. We have some agriculture here, as well — ranching and farming.

The forest industry in our community is very healthy, in spite of the problems in all the forestry industry that are going on at the present time with the softwood lumber agreement. We have two large sawmills. One of them is the largest sawmill under one roof in the world. We have a total of about 1,300 people that work directly in the forest industries, so we are very strong.

That's why I'm so delighted to talk to you. When it comes to government services, sometimes we don't have a level playing field — whether it's education, health or many other important government issues. I'm delighted that the district of Houston has an opportunity to make a presentation. At this time I'd like to introduce our councillor, Bonny Hawley. She's our representative on council representing the education portfolio.

B. Hawley: Thank you, Tom. No other glowing remarks to go along with that, I see.

I, too, would like to welcome you to the district of Houston. We're the home of the world's largest fly rod and also the prettiest park on Highway 16 — and a serious contender in the national competition for Winter Lights that's put on through Communities in Bloom. We do wish that you could stay for the weekend, because it's our official light-up. We are actually renowned on the Via Rail as being the community to stop and look at, at night, for our Christmas light-up.

That being said, I will read my presentation to you just to ensure accuracy for the record. Again, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to make a presentation to the Select Standing Committee on Education, which we understand is gathering information and ideas on ways to improve access, choice, flexibility and quality in the K-to-12 public education system, as well as initiatives to strengthen B.C.'s post-secondary education system.

You may have noticed as you arrived in Houston that pickup trucks and logging trucks far outnumber sports cars and luxury automobiles. You may also have noticed that local residents and workers are more likely to be wearing jeans and workboots as opposed to suits and ties. These are the trappings of a resource-based economy — which in our case is based on the forest industry, mining and agriculture.

The people in Houston have long recognized the need for post-secondary education and have lobbied for and supported our educational institutions. We know what we want, but we also know what we need. When we realized that we were experiencing a duplication of service, we merged the Morice Community Skills Centre with the Northwest Community College campus to ensure the sustainability of education in our community.

Our education system must help sustain our economy and resource-based industries by ensuring that relevant education and training opportunities are locally available. One of the problems we experience every year is the exodus of bright, enthusiastic young people who are required to leave Houston to pursue educational opportunities. Many of these young people subsequently find jobs outside our community, often in the areas they moved to for educational purposes. We believe that training people in classrooms or by accessing broadband technology in their local communities — either at home, at school or on the job — is a way to ensure that our communities will grow and flourish in the future. This is your opportunity to invest, not divest, in the future of northern communities.

We realize that there are going to be in-depth presentations from the educational organizations in our community at a later date, so we're giving a broad overview of our concerns. The district of Houston has identified several issues relating to education in Houston and in northern British Columbia.

Preschool and licensed day care programs. In a community with many working or single-parent families, access to quality, licensed preschool and after-school care programs is a very important element to our education system. We recognize it is outside the mandate of this committee. However, we feel that access to these kinds of programs will support students in educational programs. We need to encourage the expansion of preschool and licensed day care programs by providing incentives for them to operate.

This year, in recognition of the need to support education programs in Houston, we established an education fund that is administered by the Bulkley Valley Foundation and is accessible to any education program in the Houston area, including preschool and day care programs. This is in an effort to encourage lifelong learning right from the start.

The Local Government Act does not permit municipalities to grant tax exemptions to preschools and licensed day care facilities, but it does authorize tax exemptions for schools, colleges and other post-secondary institutions and the land they occupy. The district of Houston recommends that the Select Standing Committee on Education look into this issue and sponsor an amendment to the Local Government Act to permit tax exemptions for preschool and licensed day care facilities.

Under trades. As our local population ages, there is a more frequent need to replace workers in skilled trade positions in our heavy and light industrial businesses. We need to ensure that we're able to provide adequate and timely apprenticeship, training and upgrading opportunities for local workers before we find ourselves in the same position as the medical field and have to resort to outsourcing for recruiting these positions.

The University of Northern British Columbia northern medical program. This program will com-

mence enrolment in 2004. An objective of this program is to educate and train medical doctors in the north, in the hope that they will establish practices in northern rural communities. The district of Houston strongly supports this new program, and we hope that someday we'll benefit directly, perhaps by having one of our own local students graduate from UNBC and return to Houston to practise medicine.

One barrier to students is the cost of education, and this is particularly true in the faculty of medicine, where books alone cost $5,500 a year. The provincial government used to have a program to match funds donated to post-secondary institutions like UNBC for bursaries and scholarships, and we understand this program has been discontinued. The district of Houston recommends that the program for matching funds for donations to post-secondary institutions for bursaries and scholarships be reinstated as an encouragement and incentive for donors to support post-secondary education.

This is a pet project of mine. Our administrator is on broadband, high-speed Internet as it relates to e-learning and e-education. Today Houston and other remote communities in British Columbia are on the edge of technological development and expansion that most urban communities take for granted. However, we are poised to benefit directly from this new technology when it has been proven elsewhere and which can and will deliver new educational opportunities to our schools, colleges, businesses and homes.

E-education and e-learning can be delivered via broadband fibre optic networks and, to a lesser degree, ADSL — asymmetric digital subscriber lines. Our community has been working through local and regional committees to access this technology for Houston and the other communities along Highway 16. With limited educational resources and declining enrolments in our school, fibre optic technology will enable students to share teachers and other resources by linking classrooms through the school district and elsewhere.

As well, high school students, college students and others will be able to access on-line training programs and educational courses from their home computers or from the local college, which in many cases means they can live, work and learn in our local community. Many of the educational programs that are locally developed can also be accessed by learners and educational facilities from outside our region.

The district of Houston encourages the Select Standing Committee on Education to support community efforts to gain access to fibre optics technology by lobbying the Premier's Technology Council on our behalf and by funding the development of this technology for schools and school districts in remote and real communities, including Houston. Thank you.

S. Orr: Thanks, Bonny. Two questions, actually. The first one is on the Local Government Act. Has this also been presented to Ted Nebbeling of the community charter group?

B. Hawley: The NCMA put on the forum for the revamping of the Local Government Act, and we brought it up there as well.

S. Orr: Then have you presented anything to the Premier's Technology Council or sent anything to the Premier's office about your ideas?

B. Hawley: Not from council at this point in time, but this is actually a fairly new initiative. We've just gone from a local committee to a regional committee this week, so we felt we should get our ducks in a row before we started.

K. Manhas: Thank you for your presentation. Are there any of the institutions, the schools or the colleges that have fibre optic access or broadband, T1 access?

B. Hawley: Fibre optics I don't think is available. It ties in with our other major need in the community, which is our health care. To actually have workable telehealth you must have fibre optics, because the copper line does not deliver. There's T3 at the college, and I think there's a T3 at one of the mills but not access to the local businesses and local users.

R. Lee: Does the CAPP program in the high school have a connection to the local industry to have the apprenticeship program run more smoothly?

B. Hawley: The apprenticeship program. I'm not really quite sure about all the different programs that are available. Could you please explain to me what the CAPP program is?

R. Lee: The CAPP program, I think, is a high school program. A teacher's there.

W. Kluss: I know that our high school has a forestry program. The aim is to get people working locally

and to move them on in school and in those areas. That is a bit of an apprenticeship program, but besides that, I don't think there are a lot of other programs focusing on that.

W. McMahon (Chair): Do you have, by any chance, a community foundation in your community?

W. McMahon (Chair): Do they deal with bursaries and scholarships? I'm just interested.

B. Hawley: Actually, I don't think the Bulkley Valley Foundation can give to persons. We also created, when we did the merger of the Morice Community Skills Centre and the college, a named endowment with Northwest Community College for the Houston and area students to ensure access.

R. Lee: You mentioned, here, the trades. We need to have timely apprenticeship programs for local workers. I think there are also opportunities for apprenticeships for students. I believe the CAPP program probably should link local needs to what the students need.

B. Hawley: I wholly agree. I also think that's where you're going to find your apprenticeship…. Number one, you have to provide the training, but you also have to provide the hours the apprentice needs before they can become a journeymen further on. Where we maybe could find a solution for that would be by providing an incentive to industry and unions to make sure that those who are getting the training are getting the hours so that they then actually get certification.

B. Hawley: But it's going to be a real issue. All our fellows are aging and thinking about retirement.

Warren Kluss is our next presentation. Could I ask the committee members, because we've come back into cell range, if you've got your phones on, could you turn them off? Thanks.

W. Kluss: Good morning. My name is Warren Kluss. I'm a teacher at Silverthorne Elementary in Houston. It's just across the little bridge over here. I'm here today as a representative of the Bulkley Valley teachers union, and I am supported here in my role by our union executive. I've been teaching since 1996, and all of that has been at the same school at the intermediate level. I'm involved in — it says "many," but — most committees and activities at my school and feel as though I have a firm grasp of our current state of education.

None of us will disagree that many improvements can be made in our education system. It appears as though the disagreement may come when we try to decide what to improve, how to improve it and why we should improve it. I am left with a lot of questions. The stated purpose of this public consultation is to consider ways to improve access, choice, flexibility and quality in our school system by involving educators, students, parents, administrators and industry.

At first glance these statements appear very noble. Who can argue with trying to improve the quality of education? However, if a closer look is taken at those same statements, the approach our government wants to take is very worrisome. Increasing access, choice and flexibility sounds great, but at what cost does it come? As a parent I would love to have the opportunity to choose between schools focusing on different programs. My daughter, based on her drawings of Winnie the Pooh, is going to be a famous artist someday. Would I like to have her in a school focusing on the arts? Yes — until I consider the costs. Our government and the teachers' employer, BCPSEA, have repeated many times over that just in excess of $300 million is available for education in the upcoming years.

One of the primary arguments from BCPSEA is: "This is how much money we have to spend. You decide how it's going to be spent." My question is: where is the money for this new arts program going to come from? Where is the money for a new music specialist going to come from? Where is a new music specialist going to come from? Our problem is that while we can sit here today and talk about how we want to improve education and how we want to increase choice, unfortunately the money has not been made available to do that.

With a teacher shortage that has already arrived and a government likely to legislate a new collective agreement for teachers, what teacher in their right mind would choose to come to B.C.? What reason would any teacher have to stay, especially when more education-oriented provinces and states are making better salary and working-condition offers? How are they going to fill those vacant fine arts positions? My point there is we can talk about how we're going to improve the education system, but when you don't have the teachers and you don't have the money to institute new programs and new ideas — for example, what we just heard in some of these things…. The money isn't there. We've been told that flat out.

If our school district or administration decided that Silverthorne was to focus on the arts, something somewhere would have to be cut. Who will be the ones to decide what is cut? It will not be your child's teacher. The final decisions will rest with school and district administration. Perhaps the grade 4 classroom will now have 34 students instead of the previous maximum of 29. Perhaps they will cut the budget set aside

for buses used for field trips and athletic events. Maybe the teacher-librarian's or the special education teacher's time will just have to be cut. Why not? After all, if we the public give the administration a mandate to focus on a particular program or area and increase their flexibility to decide on these issues, why wouldn't they make those cuts?

I do believe that most administrators have the children's and the school's best interests at heart, but how much will they be able to do with their small piece of the $300 million pie? If you don't believe that cuts to special services and increases to class sizes are a very real possibility, take a careful look at BCPSEA's proposals for our latest contract.

Where will greater flexibility lead education in the next four years? B.C. schools will be left with no other alternative than to look elsewhere for funding. The schools will go to special interest groups and industry for sponsorship. Why do you think industry has been asked to participate in these consultations?

I only have one final question today: are we ready for the Twain Sullivan Bubblicious band and the McDonald's math program at Silverthorne? I strongly urge the government to consider the far-reaching consequences of greater flexibility. If you want to improve education by allowing schools — and therefore, parents — greater choice, then you need to provide the financial support necessary to back it up. Otherwise, this is all just window dressing.

R. Stewart: A question about a number in your report. I wonder what it relates to. It's $300 million. If you could just explain what that number is.

W. Kluss: Absolutely. I'm heavily involved in our union executive and have been given proposals presented to us by our employer. Repeatedly the number $300 million comes up. This is the sum that has been given to our employer for education for our next contract. As we talk about the areas that we're currently negotiating — things like class size, salary, special education teachers' time, those areas — they've told us: "We have $300 million. We can't go above that number. Tell us how you would like to split that up." That's why I refer to it as a pie.

They're saying to us: "Well, if you want a salary increase, where is it going to come from — from this $300 million? We'll have to cut somewhere else." That's where my $300 million has come from. It's a number that has been given to me in numerous publications from our employer.

B. Locke: Warren, I just wanted to respond and then ask you a question. One of the comments you made was: "Why do you think industry has involvement in the committee?" Pretty clearly, it would seem to me that the committee's mandate deals with post-secondary education as well. It would only make sense — and I'm going to ask you — that industry has input on how people are trained to go out and fill jobs. I guess I'm wondering why you find their involvement to be exceptional or extraordinary.

W. Kluss: I agree that, yes, they do have a stake in the post-secondary end of things. I am also concerned that the direction the government is taking education in right now is very similar to models taken in Ontario and the United States, where less funding is provided by the government and more from private industry. What that leads to is things like I've mentioned. I mean, those are extreme cases, of course.

If schools are having to go to industry to fund their programs, industry will always have a reason for wanting to spend the money there. Normally it's sponsorship and self-promotion. I do have a concern that — not right now, not next year, but four or five years down the road — that's where we're going to end up — with an American style of education. Everything we've been presented with this year in our negotiations, in publications, is indicating to me that that is the direction this is heading in.

S. Orr: Thank you for the presentation, Warren. It is frustrating for you, I'm sure. I'm frustrated, as a new MLA, that we've been left to deal with this mess that could have been dealt with by the previous administration quite easily. I'm sure you agree with me on that.

S. Orr: Just two quick things. On the industry part, we talk a lot about industry, to do with apprenticeship. All the industry we've talked about during our tours has linked it with apprenticeship. That's number one.

S. Orr: Oh, that doesn't help me. I'm trying to get a handle on the CAPP program.

W. Kluss: I think, in general, you would find that the teachers in the elementary schools aren't extremely happy with it. At the grade 7 level we do begin some career preparation, but even then it's still pretty early for most of those kids. That's not what they're thinking about.

At the high school level, as well, I don't think the teachers are finding it as effective as it could be. I think a lot of that comes from funding, as well. They don't have the money to do the things they want to do. It's very difficult for me to get into details about the high school teachers.

S. Orr: Yeah. We've been hearing a lot about it. It's good to get opinions. It's a shame Ms. Kwan hasn't heard this.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. Do we have any more questions? Thanks for waiting so patiently.

I'd like to call the meeting back to order and welcome Bob Henderson. Good morning.

B. Henderson: Good morning, Madam Chair. I feel a bit like the Spanish Inquisition.

B. Henderson: It's a pleasure to be here, and as someone who has been involved in all levels of education in this area for a number of years now, I think this type of discourse is long past due. Just so you have a little bit of an idea of why I say the things I'm going to say and from what perspective I come, I'll give you a little bit of my background.

First of all, I told the nice lady in Victoria that I'm here to represent the lunatic fringe, and I'm sure there are many of you who will probably agree with me by the time that I'm finished. I hope you will take the time to think about some of the things I have to say, because they are probably not going to be the same sort of things that you generally will hear throughout your meetings.

I was originally educated — the start of my formal education took place — in Victoria, and I'm old enough that from grades 1 to 9 none of my teachers had a teaching certificate of any kind, and only one of them had a degree. Strangely enough, though, my subject matters covered everything from French to Latin, geography, history, English grammar — as it was known in those days — and English literature, through to a very obscure course called general knowledge, where we actually had real people come in to us once a week and talk about real-life situations. For anyone who has been around Victoria for any length of time, one of the chief presenters was Clifford Carl, who was responsible for the Royal British Columbia Museum and played a very pivotal role in my life.

I then went on to a prep school back east, which I'd just as soon not show as a shining example of where we should be going in the training of our young people today. It has its place but is not one of the highlights of my life. Also, I did attend the University of Victoria.

Since that time I've spent my entire life as what I would classify as a modern-day remittance man — as a guide-outfitter and fishing guide in northern British Columbia, out of Smithers and to the north. I worked as the secretary-treasurer of the Guide-Outfitters Association of B.C. for five years. I then went on to teach with Northwest Community College some private courses in wilderness-related training for those youth from the ages of 19 to 25 whom the school system never seemed to be able to connect with. Primarily, those youth were people who didn't ever manage to get jobs. Most of my students were in the 25-year-old range. I have probably taught close to 400 out of this valley over the last ten years. That in itself, in my view, is a shocking indictment of our system.

I've been a school trustee for the past eight years. I've also raised a family. I have two children in grade 9, at the moment, in the public system and a grandson in the private system in Smithers.

The reason I've asked for the time is that I'm really very concerned that our formal educational programming in British Columbia is becoming more and more insular. I feel strongly that the public sector is becoming dominated by clichés, by political correctness and by what I refer to as educational doublespeak or babble. I have other, more earthy phrases to use for the type of language we are bombarded with these days.

I think the telling moment for me was the other day, when I was at a suspension hearing. Incidentally, I think we have a very good staff, especially at the administrative level. We have, it would seem, a good principal in Smithers. She said: "You know, this particular student is a problem for us. I don't think he'll graduate." I thought to myself: "What does that mean? Here's someone in grade 9 or 10 who's not going to graduate. Graduate to what?"

What she meant to say was that he's not going to get a Dogwood Certificate. Then my question is: what is a Dogwood Certificate? I was going to go on a major rant about the Dogwood Certificate here today, but I've since learned that Christy Clark, in her wisdom, has also asked that question. What is a Dogwood Certificate? It's a collection of requirements put together by an industry that has had no real connection with the rest of society in a productive sense and that has decided, in its wisdom, that this is what an educated person is.

As I've mentioned, I have had some children in the system. I have a 22-year-old daughter who has recently married. Yesterday both she and her husband had to ask me how to spell the word "plain" and how to spell the word "arranged." He got an "A" and she got a "B." I ask again, what is a Dogwood Certificate? Her husband wants to be a welder. His time would be far better spent honing those skills than waiting until he's 21 or 22 years old, married and with a family. Then we have to arrange to teach him those skills. He is not going to be Chaucer. He is not going to be an accountant. It's not because he is not skilled but because he doesn't want to be. It's the same with my daughter.

Here we are. We are driven by the god of the Dogwood Certificate. Fifteen percent of our students — tops — go on to post-secondary education in this valley. They're the only ones who need the Dogwood Certificate, yet we've convinced the mills, the corner grocery and the gas station that to pump a litre of gas, you have to have this certificate.

In my business as a fishing guide, I employ about ten people, and 90 percent of them are fresh out of high school. I couldn't care less if they have a Dogwood Certificate. What I want to know is: can they put in a day's work? Can they take direction? If they get in a bind, can they think their way through the problem, and can they speak intelligently to my clients? That's all they need.

They're not going to talk physics to my clients. They're not going to talk binary calculus or whatever it is. That's not what they need to know. If they're going to university, yes, that's what they need to know. But most of the kids I hire cannot carry on that conversation without me having to train them again. I ask myself: why is that happening?

I left school in grade 9, with a bunch of teachers who obviously weren't teachers by today's standards, because they didn't have the certificate. Most of them hadn't been to university. They were army sergeants or sergeant-majors who had just come back from the war. They were able to teach us how to survive on our own. At the age of 14, I was able to cross Canada by myself and enter into a new school in a boarding situation. I have a 13-year-old son right now, and I think he's doing better than most of his friends, but I think he would have trouble doing that.

We've got to look at our system. We have a system that's run by the College of Teachers, who are, in my view, after being in the industry…. I say the industry of education advisedly. It's a commodity — a consumable commodity. It's not anything sacred. There's nothing sacred about this. It is a commodity, and it's an industry. After being in this industry for 15-plus years, there's a College of Teachers directing the qualifications in this province. I have no idea who they are, except for one gentleman I met once at a BCSTA meeting. He definitely called the shots.

We know they're restrictive. All we have to do is look at the example of Trinity Western College. They want to control the number of teachers that are certificated. Whose advantage is that for? It's certainly not for the students' advantage. It's not for the general public's advantage. Who is overseeing this body? I don't think the ministry is, because the legislation probably has put them at arm's length.

Then we go through the rest of the system. Who sets curriculum? The ministry does. Who are the people in the ministry who set curriculum? The same people who have gone through the process that the College of Teachers has deemed they must. Are MLAs ever asked what should be in the curriculum? I don't think so. Are parents ever asked what should be in the curriculum? I've never been asked. Are trustees asked? Never.

Then we get into the schools themselves. They're run by administrative officers who are ex-teachers, superintendents and then the teachers themselves. They're the ones that are calling the shots.

This is the only industry, ladies and gentlemen, that provides a product that can tell you what you'll buy, when you'll buy it and how much you'll pay for it. If you don't believe that, just keep this strike going for a little bit longer. Who is going to be able to take it?

Trustees fall into that same category, because we are bombarded by professionals. BCSTA, for example, is run by teachers — the same thing for BCPSEA — and there is no way to break into this insular group of people.

We get things like: "Public education is the way to go, because it's wonderful, it's all-inclusive." We would argue the opposite. I would argue public education, by its very nature, is not all-inclusive. We set up the fact that we are going to provide the service for the requirements of 15 percent of the people and forget about the other 85 percent, who have needs as well.

Until you break the monopoly in education in this province, we are just going to shrink and shrink in our ability to produce productive citizens. Everyone needs to operate on a level playing field, especially in a district this small. We have a very good and very competent private sector group here as well. They offer a different service. We should be supporting that service for those kids who thrive in that environment. Instead, we sort of try and compete with them and downgrade their abilities.

We have a college system here that operates, both from the ministry perspective and from the operational perspective, at total arm's length. That's absolute balderdash. We're competing against each other. In a building across the street, two years ago, we had three different groups giving the same service to the same people, with everyone not being able to make it financially.

We talk about seamless education, laddering and all of those edu-speak clichés. Yet our systems do the opposite. We try and keep everything away from each other. In whose interest is that? It's not in the public's interest. It's in the interest of the people involved in those various organizations: the unions, the management groups and the ministry groups.

We need to streamline that. This building across the street is Northwest Community College. Operationally, the functions of maintenance and that kind of thing come out of Terrace, and yet the school district here has the same people working right here. What's so magical about post-secondary education that we have to have a different minister and a totally different staff and that we don't talk to each other? We don't even know what each other's doing programwise, most of the time. Some of the time, especially in a community this small, we're offering the same services. We teach students 19 and older; so do they. Sometimes the students we have that are 16 would be better off in that building. Sometimes the students they have that are 19 would be better off in our buildings. We should at least be talking.

I've just come from a welding program across the street. I heard someone here say her husband was a welder, and it's a great profession to be in, because there's always work. Yet we have been unable to work those two programs for the benefit of our students because of local turf. It was originally in the high school up here. Now, we are not even sending kids there.

We have an apprenticeship program — a wonderful program and the kind of thing we should be doing — but it threatens the unions, and it threatens ITAC. You can't get enough kids into that apprenticeship program, because there are too many people my age and slightly younger that have been waiting their turn for apprenticeship. The rules of the game are such that the kids can't get an apprenticeship. We have to look at different ways. We need maybe to use co-op programming and bring in communities and get them involved.

I can see I'm getting over my time. I just want to finish with the fact that in the last nine years I've learned two things. When government says, "We want you to think outside of the box," and tells you that's the way to get some different programming going, beware of that, because that means they want you out of the present box and into a much smaller one. And when educators say, "We're doing it for the kids," just watch out for your back pocket.

I'm a cynic and I freely admit it, but we've got to open this system up. The only way I can see that we can do it is by removing the barriers and having an open playing field — private. Let parents decide.

W. McMahon (Chair): That's great. Now we'll open it up for questions. We'll start with Brenda Locke.

B. Locke: You had referred to ITAC in your conversation. I wonder if you can just speak to that and what your comment about that would be.

B. Henderson: Speak to what that experience has been? A number of years ago, when Human Resources Canada fell out of the way and ITAC took over that funding, I went to a meeting in Terrace. Alcan representatives and union representatives were there. ITAC was there. The apprenticeship branch were there. They talked for the better part of three hours. At the end of the three hours I got up and said: "No one has yet mentioned kids in this process." They said: "No, and you won't hear it, because there isn't room for them." That's where we're at. I firmly believe that.

We tried to start career technical programming here. It isn't going to happen, because we cannot get ITAC onside. They'll throw in all the right words but all the wrong…. Nothing ever happens. We've already spent $75,000, and I think they finally got a very small computer course going in Terrace.

B. Locke: The second part of the ITAC problem is getting placement for apprenticeships by industry. I wonder if you have found that problem here as well — that there's the one side of the equation but that industry isn't responding either, in terms of picking up the apprenticeships.

B. Henderson: This is true, especially in this valley, where we don't have many industries that require the apprenticeship program. In places where heavy industry is, the reason they aren't is because they can't. The reason they can't is because they have too many people who have seniority on their payroll who want to become apprentices.

The problem here — and this is a very serious one — is people are 45 or 50, and they're going to be apprenticed. They're going to retire very shortly, and we're going to have a very serious shortfall of journeymen in the province. That is why I suggest you go to a co-op system. I've talked to the local mill here, and they're very strong that they want to become involved. I'm talking about the mill in Smithers, incidentally.

S. Orr: I notice that you've been a trustee for eight years, going into your ninth year. You've done that, obviously, under the years of the previous administration. I hope you realize this hasn't sat since 1976. We're here, and hopefully we can take some of your cynicism away.

You talked about the Dogwood, which I found very interesting. We're hearing a lot about the Dogwood. Do you need to finish grade 12, when really in grade 10 or 11 you'd like to become an apprentice? What we're hearing also is a bit of a NIMBY. That was an old municipal council term, but you know what I'm talking about.

S. Orr: It's my child, your child. You know: "Your child doesn't have to graduate, but mine should and will." I think, as a school trustee, my question is: how do you change that shift in thinking so that as much as the students, the parents have to think that the Dogwood isn't the almighty and that a child can graduate at grade 10 and 11 and go into an apprenticeship program? That what we're hearing.

B. Henderson: I'm fully aware of that. I think it's got to stop in the schools. I brought this subject up at a meeting the other day. They said: "Yes, but you have to have…" I think it was physics 11 or physics 12 or something. No, you don't.

All those things you "have to have" are subjective things. The school system isn't the one that should be saying you have to have. The industry or whatever discipline you're going into should be setting those things, but they're not. They're not even involved in that. That's my problem. Who's to say? When I went to school, you had to go 13 years. Now you go 12. In some jurisdictions in Europe you go 10 years. These are all very subjective figures that we're giving.

R. Lee: Thank you for the presentation. I am also interested in the problem with the concept of alternative graduation requirements for high school. There is also another certificate available, besides the Dogwood, by taking a different set of courses. Some students de-

cide early to go into one trade, but later sometimes they will change their mind to go to university. If they make up their minds too soon, they will be channelled to a different set of requirements.

My question is: do you think this is a problem for some students? Otherwise, they will go into that program and spend a lot of time in courses which are non-credit courses for universities. They have to go back to do some retraining, so the time spent will be longer. What's your point of view on that kind of situation?

B. Henderson: My point of view is personal, because actually, the reverse happened to me. I was trained to go to university, and I ended up taking an apprenticeship as an aircraft mechanic. I had absolutely none of the prerequisites for that. Is that a problem? It's not a problem for me. Learning is all part of life. Again, who says that it's 12 years or ten years?

Getting back to your other suggestion, though, about other school certificates, the only other school certificate you can get in this valley is a school leaving certificate. All that says is that you've warmed a seat for 12 years, and that is an abomination, in my view. It's not even right. That, again, is all part of this attempt to control by the people that are in the system.

Madam Chair, if that's the last question, can I just say one more thing? As you are aware, we are in a strike situation. We've just had a ruling by the Labour Relations Board which has made me extremely angry. I just ask you this one thing. One of the chief things that's made me angry is the position of the labour board that any adult is capable of supervising. All I ask you is: would you leave your children with any adult? The sooner this government does something about this labour board, the happier I'm going to be.

We have joining us in the back of the room Edith MacKay, our MLA Dennis MacKay's wife. We'd like to welcome her as well as Dennis's constituency assistant, Patty Peterson. Welcome, and thanks for coming. We appreciate it.

Our next presenter is Brenda Andersson, from Northwest Community College. Welcome, Brenda. Whenever you're ready.

B. Andersson: I want to welcome you to Houston. I understand you've been on the road, and you were in the Charlottes yesterday…

B. Andersson: We always worry, when people go to the Charlottes, about whether they're going to get there and then return. Some people have a way of getting to the Charlottes and never leaving.

W. McMahon (Chair): And never leaving? [Laughter.] We had trouble coming in here today. That's where we had our troubles.

B. Andersson: I want to welcome you to the community and thank you for the opportunity to actually do a presentation on behalf of Northwest Community College. Unfortunately, our president, Stephanie Forsythe, is in provincial meetings for the next several days and isn't able to attend.

You have some presentation notes that we've handed out. There are some critical pieces, I think, around post-secondary education in the north, pieces that I want to touch on.

The geographic area that Northwest Community College specifically services is huge. We cover about a third of the province geographically. Some of the dynamics we face as a small, rural college are quite distinct and quite different, and I think you'll probably hear from other rural colleges throughout the province that they're faced with many of the same challenges.

We function in six communities — actually, eight communities, but we have campuses in six and learning centres in two others. The demands we have on our services are high. Meeting community needs becomes a critical issue for us in how we juggle dollars and services to communities.

For the post-secondary level in the north, I think there are probably some numbers that you really need to be aware of, and following my good friend, Bob Henderson, I think it's critical to point out some areas. In the current education system, I believe we're still training people at the high school level to go to university, but the reality of the situation, especially in the north, is that we lose 30 percent before they graduate. Of those that actually do graduate in the north, on average we're at way less than 20 percent who choose to go on to post-secondary education, and of the 20 percent that leave the north and go on to post-secondary education, 80 percent drop out. We can see, if we have 100 people, what kind of numbers we're talking about if we're training people for university. The numbers dwindle down accordingly.

What we find ourselves faced with on a community college level is that we have a number of people that have a broad range of needs, and the needs are phenomenal. They're huge. They're everything from very basic literacy levels to technical programs to trying to aid and diversify an economy that is in a downswing.

If we're looking at education in the broad sense, I would be much more concerned about what we're doing for the 80 percent of the people that are not at university — not that they have no intention of going to university, but it's not in their plan at this point. Yet we know that everything indicates that people are going to need advanced education or skills of some sort to be viable in the workforce. What are we doing for them? How are we providing them the skills and experience they need to be effective members of the community

and of the labour force? How does that aid our economic development and diversity at a community level? Those are some huge questions.

Of course, a lot of it depends on community needs. The forestry sector in our area, as you're well aware, governs our world. It's huge. It's still very much the backbone of what goes on in northern communities, and it's how we fund ourselves. It's why communities exist. The sustainability of the forestry sector is huge and very important to us.

If we want communities to diversify, if we want those economic structures to spread out, we need a way to create skill sets for the labour force so that when the opportunities for economic diversification come about, we have skilled people able to move into those areas.

Although having UNBC in Prince George is a wonderful asset to northern communities, we still have many people who are unable to leave the community in which they live and work to be able to receive training. The challenge becomes: how do we take that down to a community level to allow communities to grow and to support individuals at a community level? I think e-learning is obviously broadband width. The access to technology is a huge asset at any community level. The more we can do of that the better.

It's interesting because, although a significant portion of people we provide training to are young people, they're not the majority of our clients coming to the college structure. The majority of our clients are people 25-plus who have taken a look at their lives and said: "I need to do some other things to advance where I want to go and what I want to do." At that age they're coming with adult baggage. They have families, mortgages and a whole number of things that accompany them when they're looking at adult education. For them to pack up and go to Prince George, the lower mainland or anywhere else is a real problem. It creates financial hardship, and then you're removing them from their support structures in the environment in which they're familiar. We need to try to support them in different ways. We need to try to take it down to a community level.

That said, on a community level — it's really interesting — we use the analogy that the needs are a mile wide and an inch deep. We need to be able to train in everything, literally from soup to nuts, but we have four or five people in the community who require that. The current funding structures don't allow us that kind of flexibility — not that we should be training a full-time instructor standing in front of four or five students. It's not practical and it's not logical. Financially it's not doable, but then what are the options? What else can we do to meet those needs? How do we link communities and other resources together to be able to meet that need?

Our high-end skilled jobs in the technical area are few, yet the needs are very real. We don't want people taking those skills and leaving the community. For the community to grow and develop, we need to be able to do that at a local level.

Bob touched on an area that's near and dear to my heart, and that's trades. Our industry can't function without trades training.

One of the questions you asked was around apprentices. How can we support apprentices, and what happens? In a unionized environment, it's very difficult for the employer sector. They're governed by union agreements, and the union agreements are such that it's difficult for them to take on apprentices. In discussions with small businesses, when you're having them look at apprenticeships, an employer in the mom-and-pop shops — where the majority of our apprentices actually come from — will tell you they can't afford it. The individual they bring on has to actually generate revenue. They can't afford to pay someone for those first two years of the apprenticeship while they don't make the shop any money. The margins are just too tight in small business.

If we want to see more apprentices being accepted at a local level in small business, we need a way of aiding small business in being able to do that. There's a huge pocket out there, a huge amount of skills that we could be drawing on, but the margins within business today are such that employers can't afford it. They just can't get there from where they are.

Within the paper I've handed you, we talked a bit about funding and how the model for FTE funding doesn't match well with rural colleges, especially small colleges where our class sizes are small. When we're saying that utilization requires that we have a full class of students, a full class to us might be ten people. In a larger facility, you're looking at 36 as where you want it to be. Ultimately, we would like that, but in communities with population bases of under 5,000 people, that's neither logical nor practical. I think linkage — how we do that through technology — is really critical.

How we support trades training at community levels is really critical. I heard a discussion around ITAC. ITAC is interesting, because they will fund programming. Yet in order for new programming to come up and run, you need equipment. Nowhere do they fund equipment. It becomes a catch-22. If an organization or an institution can afford the equipment, they can probably afford the program. Equipment for trades training is hugely expensive. If you have that, then you probably are good to go. Ultimately, there needs to be a balance. Programming money is one thing, but equipment to support that is something else.

I don't know what other colleges have said, but if we're focusing on trades and technology, the money that's available in the infrastructure to upgrade trades and technology is not enough. Industry complains that colleges haven't kept pace with the times, that they don't have current equipment in their trades departments and are operating with equipment that's 30 years old. Well, the reality is they can't afford to replace the pieces that are on the floor, and they still work, so we've got to keep going with them. If we want industry to partner and to look at that kind of thing in a more favourable light, then something else we need to con-

The other thing I think we need to focus clearly on is that students in the north do much better being trained in the north. If we can create that access on the local level, we're going to see a much better success rate. What we're going to see is people who are committed to not only the employment they have in the north but to the communities that are there. We desperately need that, for growth and development.

That's about it. I think there is some additional information. The document talks about funding and programming. That's pretty much it, in a nutshell.

S. Orr: I'm just looking at the program — welding level C. I want sort of a quick, anecdotal story. I'd like it on the record.

So I'm going to the local junior high school here — or the senior high school. I'm in grade 11, and that's it; I want to go no further, but I really want to be a welder. Tell me what happens to that girl or boy if that's where they're at and that's where they want to be, in your college.

B. Andersson: They can apply to the welding program. We do an entry-level assessment, especially around mathematical skills, for welding. As long as they meet the mathematical assessment, they're allowed entry into the program.

A lot of programs are different. I think an area that we could look at is admission requirements to post-secondary. Some programs carry course-specific information, so in order to handle curriculum, you need English 12, biology 11, chemistry 11. You can take the licensed practical nurse program as an example. For welding, it's a much lesser degree.

What you have are institutions not setting program-specific requirements. They're setting a grade 12 requirement. That doesn't necessarily mean the student will have the appropriate skills when they get to the program. We have a much better match when we're looking at course-specific skills in relationship to a program.

S. Orr: But if he or she comes to you at the college and says, "I want to go into welding, and I'm only at grade 11 here," do you go back to the school and say: "Could you help this student get this math level so they can do the assessment?" Is there that link for that kid who is frustrated? You obviously offer a couple of good programs that work up here.

B. Andersson: It depends entirely on the individual. We have many individuals, if they're coming to us at that level, who may refuse to go back into the high school structure, for a variety of reasons. If they needed additional math skills, we would do that. Depending on the level, we provide tutoring support within the program.

We have many people entering the welding program for whom grade 11 is not anything near where they're at, yet they have a lot of life skills behind them. Rather than not have them in the program, we tutor through the math component. It's very individualized as to where the student is at and what they need. I guess that's part of the role of small campuses like ours, on a community level. We have the ability to focus on the individual. We're not dealing with 500 people coming into a program. We're dealing with a small group, and we're able to personalize it to their needs, in a much better sense.

R. Stewart: I want to explore the opportunity of e-learning, as you perceive it. There are some communities that embrace it and some communities that find it too limiting or whatever. I wonder if there are some areas that would prevent you from exploring it fully right now. Where do you want to take it? Where do you see it going, to meet your needs?

B. Andersson: Probably the biggest limitation right now is broadband access. As a community we're part of the provincial learning network, but the access isn't fast enough yet to accommodate some of the other things.

Video conferencing is another venue that would really help, because you could actually have an instructor somewhere else, but it has to be video conferencing in real time. I don't know if any of you have ever been part of a video conference. You're working with lines; people are turning their heads, and you get the wave scenario going on and that kind of thing. That would be really helpful. There are programs that are really well-suited to this, and there are programs that are not. I think that's part of the development.

We're exploring a concept right now for doing some high-end technical training in which we'll use computer-based training. We'll actually have the theory on a CD-ROM, and a student will be able to download that theory. What they will then do is sit in a workshop situation. Maybe we'll bring them together for a time period of a week every two months, when they'll do the hands-on.

I think if we can take curriculum and twist it — not bastardize it — so that we use the components that are necessarily face-to-face for the hands-on, in-front experience, and then draw away from it and use the other technologies to support it, we can broaden what we do on a community level, extensively.

W. McMahon (Chair): I'd like to call the meeting back to order. Our next presentation this afternoon is by the Lakes District Secondary School leadership class, Tom Dean, Joanna Pooley and Alicia Mettler.

T. Dean: My school supplies are inadequate. First of all, there are not enough textbooks in the school. In my social studies class there are roughly 30 geo lab 9 books for 100 grade 9 students. That means we can't bring them home to do homework or take them outside of class hours. Whenever we use them, we're usually using them with two other people. This really cuts into class time and is really degrading for the people who are trying to learn. In many instances the teachers have to read to their students because the novels they want read are too few to give to each student. When there are enough to distribute among the students, people still have to share because the chapters are ripped out and the pages are ripped out and the covers are gone and everything, which is because they're too old. This really needs to be improved on in our school.

It seems that the textbooks we use for keyboarding need replacing, since they are obviously older than the computers. Textbooks in the school are in desperate need of replacing, since most of them are older than the school too. We just can't afford to do that.

For the most part our gym supplies are decent, but again, some of them are in poor condition and in need of replacement. Many teachers express concern because of the condition of our school's resources, but we can't do anything about it because it's too expensive.

Many of our classes are seemingly ignored by the budget. In our school's band program, nearly all our instruments, books, stands and equipment need replacing. Classes like these are viewed as less important, but schools are designed to accommodate the individual's interests, not what other people think is important for them. If people are interested in music, so be it. The class's budget shouldn't be less than anything else because of what other people think is important and what isn't.

Our books, equipment and pretty much everything in our school need either replacing or more funding if we want this school to support the students. What's the use of obsolete computers and 50-year-old books if they no longer apply? Our school basically needs more money if it's going to keep its students. We believe our school can be improved by increasing our budget.

J. Pooley: If you look at this handout, you will see on the first page the grade 11 and 12 courses offered at our school. The following three pages show all of the ministry-approved senior courses. Our school has pulled together with the community to form classes outside of our timetable, such as this leadership class we're in right now, but we still offer less than 10 percent of the ministry-approved courses. You will notice on the second page of the handout that all of these courses are taught in French. Our course selection does not equal even one-third of these French classes.

We northern students face a disadvantage. We are not granted the same opportunities as students living in the south. We are all from B.C., and we all attend the same post-secondary education institutions. Therefore, we must be offered the same course selection, regardless of where in the province we live. How do you expect children from the north to compete at a university level when we have never been trained the same as students living in the south? We need the same chances. Start us all out on the same page.

Students learn more when they're being challenged and having fun. If we wish students to have fun, we must spark their interest, give them some choices and let them experiment. It is a known fact that the student success rate rises the more students are involved. Let's get students involved.

Why can't canoeing be a class? What about students who enjoy interior decorating or graphic arts? If we can make students love learning, then the dropout rate will decrease and the success rate will skyrocket. Feed our minds. Give us many choices. Let us grow into well-rounded adults with virtually endless talents and skills.

Electives offer important life skills. All students, including those from the north, should be offered as many as the mind can fathom. We all deserve the right to conquer the trials and tribulations everyday living throws at us. We in the north are offered four or five life-skill electives, while those in, say, the Surrey district are offered 40 or 50. It's unjust. We feel under-challenged.

If we want the north to grow, prosper and become rich with highly educated individuals, we must start by giving our northern high school students the best possible education. We must prepare them for university. Set us northern students up for success rather than failure, and we won't regret coming from the north. We will probably return with families of our own, proud to educate them in the north. We need to offer more courses, more programs and more opportunities. Pride in the north needs to be nurtured and encouraged, not defeated before it's begun.

Each and every child is funded equally by the government to the school which they attend. This should ensure that all children have equal opportunities. However, that's not happening. My high school doesn't even offer courses like peer counselling, drafting, architecture, journalism, videography or business management. Why are we different from children living in the south? Do we not deserve an equally challenging education?

Every child is unique and needs to feel important and valued. Please do not discriminate against us just because of our locale in the province. I feel a lack of course selection is a major problem. However, I am convinced that adequate funding is the solution. Challenge our minds equally, and we will return and give back with pride tenfold to our northern communities.

S. Orr: I just want to confirm something. You guys are so bright, being able to figure this all out. I'm really impressed. Answer me a question. These are all the courses that the Ministry of Education says to you that you should do, but you don't get these courses. Is that what you're trying to tell me?

J. Pooley: Those are courses that we could have in our school and that other schools around the province do have.

S. Orr: You could have them, but you don't. How many are missing from this collection? Do you know?

A. Mettler: We didn't have time to count. We tried counting some of them. It's getting close to 400.

R. Stewart: The big challenge, of course, is that if there are only a couple of students in this valley that want a course, how do we deliver that? It's a challenge this government has to face, obviously. In greater Vancouver or in greater Victoria or in Kelowna there are a greater number of students to draw from for some of the courses that might not have as many people that want to attend them. Do you see that perhaps distance education or education through the Internet or some other process might work, in that regard, to offer more courses, given the limits of society's funds?

A. Mettler: For sure. A distance course would be an option, even though we don't have as many students. Say we only have five students that want to take a course in our school, but down in Surrey or somewhere there are 30. Five students compared to the population of our town is the same percentage as 30 students compared to the population of their school. We all want the same option. We all have the same goals, and we want the same chances.

K. Manhas: I just was interested in your comment about the number of courses that aren't offered at your school. Are those optional courses? I went to school in the lower mainland, in a very urban area and in quite a big school, at that, and there were nowhere close to 400 courses offered. I'm just wondering: are you guys missing some of the core curriculum courses, or are these optional courses that are offered at some schools in British Columbia?

J. Pooley: Those courses would be the optional ones. We have the very basics, and that's all we have. That's basically all we can offer.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you very much for presenting to us today. We appreciate it. It's great to hear from students. We haven't heard from that many, and you have a real vested interest in the system. We do appreciate you coming out.

Again from the leadership class we have Pam Richard, Dani Martens and Kim Staudt. Good afternoon.

P. Richard: I am proud of my school, and I'm proud to live in Burns Lake, but living in northern B.C. we are isolated and sometimes forgotten about by the rest of the province.

Our sports teams have to travel farther and the variety of activities available to us is somewhat limited. Activities such as leadership conferences are often held in the lower mainland. Because of the distance, northern schools are usually unable to participate in such great opportunities. When we do go on trips, our travel costs include bus drivers, substitutes for teachers, accommodations and fuel. These costs are multiplied for us because of the distance we have to travel. We often have to leave a day early, and it takes us a day longer to get home. It's difficult to find a bus driver, and it's even harder to find a bus. In fact, until this year our school only had one minibus, and we are currently in debt because we purchased a second, greatly needed minibus.

D. Martens: On average, for an extracurricular activity we would take roughly one day travelling to reach our destination and another full day for the trip home. Our travelling distance often requires us to book off a large number of days for substitutes because of our locality and the distance needing to be travelled.

Distance is not only an issue for our school to participate in these extracurricular activities. We also have to look at accommodation for students and chaperones. To book a substitute puts us out $300 per day. We feel that if activities were made more available, it would

K. Staudt: Together we have brainstormed a couple of ideas to be considered as solutions to this problem. The first is to hold these activities or conferences in more central areas or vary the locations where they're held — a more central area being somewhere that all parties travel the same or close to the same distance to. To vary the locations could lead to alternating the places, whether it be per year or per activity.

The second is to distribute funding not per capita but by need. "By need" means that if there are 30 students per class in one school and 15 students per class in another school, the school with 15 per class still gets the same amount of funds to make up for the lack of students in comparison.

P. Richard: Although extracurricular school activities are easily written off, in small towns like Burns Lake they give youth positive involvement, which leads to student spirit and higher student success rates. Let's face it: the north really needs this.

We thank you for your time and appreciate this forum, which allows us to express our opinions.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks to the three of you. Pam, can I ask you what grade you're in?

W. McMahon (Chair): All grade 12. Great. Thanks for the presentation. We'll open it up for questions.

R. Lee: We asked the earlier presenters about the CAPP program from the perspective of the teachers' or the city councillors' side. What was your view on the CAPP programs? Are they useful for you?

K. Staudt: When we started high school, we had the CAPP programs for the first time. They were basically all the same. From grade 8 through to grade 12 they were the same thing, so I didn't find them very useful after the first year, because they were just overrun and the same thing over and over again.

P. Richard: They actually don't give you the option of what you want to take. Some people are very interested in the trades and stuff like that. I wasn't, but I was forced to go through a month of learning all about trades when I had no interest in trades, and I knew what I wanted to do with my life. If I had taken that time and looked for scholarships or looked up different universities and stuff on the Internet, that time could have been more useful for me.

D. Martens: I feel that our CAPP program was a very good idea in trying to help our students broaden their minds about what they want to do, except for the same thing that Kim said. It's pretty broad, and it does not go into the different diverse work that some people might be interested in. I find it really neglecting for me, because I might want to go into criminology or that type of field, and I find it's more put towards the very, very basic things.

The only things I found really beneficial to me were the very small things, such as how to build a proper résumé and certain things like that. The CAPP program we have in our high school doesn't really open up towards apprenticeship, because we have another course that goes into that. I didn't find the CAPP program too beneficial for me.

R. Lee: Okay. A supplemental. There is some suggestion of counting that kind of research on the Internet for the options available after high school graduation. Do you think that kind of research, if it's counted as a part of the credit for the CAPP program, would help you?

P. Richard: That would help me a lot, because I'm spending a lot of time on the Internet at studentawards.com and stuff like that. If I got credit for that, or if I could do that in school, that would help me out a great deal.

D. Martens: I think if they showed us the specific tools for each sort of field they want to roughly go into and possibly gave us a package and said, "Well, if this is what you want to do," it would be totally beneficial. You'd have better attendance rates and such like that.

R. Nijjar: You were speaking about having to travel throughout the province to get to provincial meetings and so forth. Are those meetings usually in the lower mainland? Where have you been going? Where are those meetings usually held, to be in leadership and so forth conferences?

P. Richard: We actually just missed our leadership…. It was in the lower mainland. We had to pull out because we didn't have enough funding, which is truly a shame because it would have been a lot of fun. We could have taken ideas back to our school and really helped out our school.

K. Staudt: I think that one was in Victoria. I'm not too sure. Harrison Hot Springs?

P. Richard: I went to a meeting of the international youth exchange in Victoria this year. Students came from all over Canada. I got funding for that, so I didn't pay. If I'd had to pay, I wouldn't have had that opportunity. I think funding is really important.

E. Brenzinger: I just want to follow up a bit about CAPP. Do you think CAPP gives students who don't

know what they want to do in life a good opportunity to see what welding's about or to see what any of the trades are about?

K. Staudt: I feel it is only for the bare basics. For the rest of it, to find out more about it, and how to get to it, I think they would have to do that more on their own time. I don't feel it's specific enough for each student. I don't know how to explain it.

P. Richard: During one rotation we actually just picked a job out of a hat and had to learn about that, so it's completely random. I mean, if we could have chosen one we were interested in, and then researched it, it would have been a better idea.

W. McMahon (Chair): I'm hearing that you want it to be more specific to what you want to do rather than general.

P. Richards: Yeah. If you want to go to university, those people could come over here, or if you want to go into trades, or if you really don't know, they can have a….

E. Brenzinger: What I'm thinking is that for the students who aren't as focused and don't know about what's out there, doesn't that provide them an opportunity to at least explore areas that they would never explore?

D. Martens: I think we find in our school that the students who are not as focused may not want to be there. If they don't want to be there, period, they're not going to go to CAPP.

R. Stewart: You're saying that CAPP benefits only those who are somewhat focused in what they want to do, and CAPP is there to help them choose something else, I guess — almost. It doesn't help them explore the avenue they want to go to. It helps them choose, even though it's only of interest to those who may have already chosen, to some degree.

P. Richard: Well, exactly. CAPP isn't a highly attended class. If you do the work, you get 50 percent, no matter what. If you show up, you pass, no matter what. It's not a hard course. You find that's the course that people skip. They're like: "Oh, we have an extra 30 minutes in the morning. Let's go for coffee." It's not taken as seriously as I think it was intended to be when it was made.

R. Stewart: A different question. What are your choices now for post-secondary? How do you view your choices in post-secondary education? Is everybody heading down to the coast, or do they view that there's enough choice here available to them that they can explore those options for those who want to go on to post-secondary?

P. Richard: I want to go on to law school, and I don't think I can go to UNBC and be taken as seriously as I would if I went to a better-known university. That's kind of sad. I'm either going to go to the coast or to the east coast. UNBC is not an option for me.

D. Martens: As far as ongoing, I'm planning to attend UNBC only because of the exchange program. I would like to take some French courses — probably major in French — and then I'd like to go on an exchange program, which would open up more doors for me.

K. Staudt: I'm quite undecided. I enjoy performing arts. That's what I would like to get into, but I find that I need to do more workshops rather than go to a school that offers that, because the only schools I can find are the ones farther away and down towards the coast, instead of UNBC or the one in my town.

K. Manhas: Actually, before I ask my question, I'd like to hear what the other three that presented before would answer to that question.

My questions are actually to all seven of you guys. I'm interested in the first presentation, where you mentioned the lack of a wide range of programming. If any of you guys identified some kind of programming you were interested in that you couldn't get access to and that programming was offered on line to all the students or through some kind of a multimedia or multimodal delivery, would that help you?

Then afterwards I'd like to hear how many of you guys find that the programming, even in the post-secondary level…. Which one of you guys has decided what you want to do and has seen that that programming is offered in the north at one of the community colleges or at UNBC? That wasn't very clear.

W. McMahon (Chair): Does anybody have ideas? You don't all have to answer it.

K. Manhas: The first one I'm interested in is: if there were any courses or programs at the high school level that you were interested in that you found weren't offered, could you identify them and let us know if there was some kind of on-line delivery or some kind of support on the side that would help? You've got to come up to the mike.

W. McMahon (Chair): We just need you to identify yourselves. Give us your names, so Hansard will get it, because you're not sitting where you were before.

A. Mettler: I'm Alicia Mettler. In all of my years in high school I've been interested in doing something like this leadership class. However, this is the first year that it has even been available. It's our first year to really get involved and boost school spirit in our school, and it happens to be in my grade 12 year. I just wanted to point out that most of us are in grade 12, and we've been wanting to do this all through high school. This is the first time it's ever been offered.

P. Richard: I wanted to take law 12 this year, but I have to take it through correspondence next semester, because I couldn't take it. I'm mostly taking science courses, so I don't have time for electives. I'm taking biology, chemistry, calculus and stuff like that, so I don't have a lot of extra time.

D. Martens: I had originally hoped to complete physics 11 in the first semester of my grade 12 year and physics 12 in the second semester of my grade 12 year. That's not the way I was able to go. They offered both courses in the exact same semester, and that does not make it able for me to successfully complete both courses before I graduate.

Also, I have problems with conflicts between my calculus course and my French 12 course next semester. They're both in the exact same block. Neither of them are offered in different blocks in both semesters. I'm still not sure what's going to happen with that. I may have to go to the college and get another course there. They really do not like supporting our students going to the college and getting the courses there, but our school does not offer what a lot of people want, so I'm going to have to find it somewhere else.

J. Pooley: I'm Joanna Pooley. I was going to say that if we don't have a course — it's not offered — it's really hard for us to find it any other way. Our school doesn't have the technology to do it over the Internet. It's not fast enough.

If we're going to do a course by correspondence, sometimes it takes up to a month and a half after we have sent away to even get it in. When we have to send that back to get marked and it takes another month and a half to get it back marked, to start the new section is just not a realistic option for us to even go the correspondence route.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. Do you mail or fax your correspondence courses? You mail them; you don't fax them.

T. Dean: I don't really have much experience with this system. It's just that I've been leaning more towards the arts and fine arts. It doesn't seem to be offered very much in our school, so I'm having trouble doing that. You can't do much of that by correspondence, because it doesn't work that way.

P. Richard: I'm in the band, as well, and I can't take it in the timetable. It's just not offered to senior students. I have to get up on Friday and Tuesday mornings and go to school an hour and a half early so I can take band.

W. McMahon (Chair): Great. Well, thank you for presenting to us today. As I said, it's really important that we hear from students, and you've done a great job. We appreciate it.

R. Stewart: I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for making the trip out today, to thank you for coming here to speak to us, because we've got a lot to learn about education in this area of the province. We've got an awful lot of work to do in the next few months, and we really appreciate you folks taking the leadership to come out and be part of the democratic process and part of the job that the government has of improving our education system.

P. Richard: Alicia is actually going to UNBC next spring. She was offered a large scholarship.

A. Mettler: Well, I was planning on going there for four or five years to get my bachelor of science. I was planning on transferring to Calgary or somewhere after, but now with their new medical program….

K. Manhas: How many of you guys are planning on staying in the north afterwards?

W. McMahon (Chair): Taking the medical program, I bet you we have one hand that will go up.

K. Manhas: Just a show of hands. Out of the seven of you guys, how many of you want to come back to the north after you have finished school?

B. Haslett: Madam Chair and members of the committee, I'd like to thank you for coming to Houston and for giving us a chance to prepare our brief.

My name is Bob Haslett. I'm the board chair for school district 54, and I've been a trustee since 1985. With me is our vice-chair, Sheryl Yaremco. Sheryl is a trustee for Houston and has been a trustee since 1990.

I'd like to start our presentation by strongly supporting the remarks that were made by the students with regard to their education and their post-secondary education. Education in small communities in the north is problematic at best. We have a difficult time trying to maintain staff levels, particularly in areas where we need specialists — getting music specialists, getting French immersion teachers, getting math specialists, specialists for physics and calculation; courses that students need, if they're going on to post-secondary education — which causes them a great deal of frustration and causes us a great deal of frustration.

This is compounded by the fact that, as the students pointed out, if they want to get a post-secondary education, particularly for those who are looking at university education, they have to go to the university. I would strongly urge the members of this committee to urge your government to make the universities come to the students. We are seeing the opening of a fibre optics network in the north. We need to expand that network. We need the opportunities to connect it with the major universities throughout British Columbia. We need two-way dialogue going on between our students and university professors. We need mentorship.

With the economic situation being what it is in the north, our communities are in decline, and these young people are our hope for the future. If we can't encourage them to come back and remain in their communities, these communities will continue to decline. They are our hope for the future, and they are absolutely necessary to us. It becomes very, very difficult for people who are losing jobs or are seeing their hours cut back to be able to pay the kind of funds that it takes to send a young person to university.

My daughter went to university approximately seven years ago, and it cost me $40,000 — for one child for four years. That was a kid who won a lot of scholarships and worked part-time at the same time all the way through. As soon as a student leaves their hometown and heads off to a place like Vancouver or Victoria or Burnaby or Calgary or Edmonton, the costs of room and board drive their university costs sky-high. I would ask that you take that into consideration this afternoon.

Rather than reiterate much of what has been said with regard to accountability, autonomy, student achievement and parental choice, our board would like to state their support for the document which was presented to you by Gordon Comeau, the president of the BCSTA. Our board extends its support to the direction the ministry is taking with regard to these efforts.

Let me begin with a brief overview of school district 54. We serve a total of 2,954 students in ten regular schools and two ancillary schools. We draw students from Moricetown in the west and Topley in the east. With approximately 300 employees, we are the biggest single employer in the Bulkley Valley. Wages and benefits consume almost 90 percent of our $19 million annual budget. We provide transportation to and from our schools for over 1,400 students — approximately half of them. Our buses accumulate almost half a million kilometres per year in regular travel and an additional 14,000 kilometres per year in extracurricular trips.

Our board of trustees has seven elected representatives from four zones. One trustee serves the Lake Kathlyn rural area. Three are from Smithers, Driftwood and Glentanna. One serves the town of Telkwa and the rural community of Quick, and two trustees serve the town of Houston and the surrounding regional district. With the exception of one trustee, who is now serving her first term, our trustees' seniority dates range from 16 years to nine years, with one more year remaining in this term of office. Our senior administrative staff consists of a superintendent, an assistant superintendent and a secretary-treasurer. They are ably assisted by an assistant secretary-treasurer, two confidential secretaries and a manager of information technology. That, in a nutshell, is school district 54.

What we would like to present to you this afternoon is a paper, along with 11 propositions that I would like to bring to your attention. Proposition 1. That the College of Teachers be authorized and charged with responsibility to investigate at the outset any complaints related to members, upon reports submitted by employers. The college should bear the responsibility for disciplining members and should be required to conduct its own investigations into complaints, rather than relying upon employer actions to precede any investigative efforts the college takes. In other words, we're asking the college to assume the responsibilities that we feel it should have. That is, to determine whether or not a teacher is the right person you want in a classroom.

Proposition 2. That the School Act be broadened to include the concept of a limited contract teacher. This one would essentially constitute an individual whom the board deems to be unemployable but is not one dismissed through the provision of the collective agreement with teachers. The present collective agreement, as it stands, can take up to two years to remove a teacher from a classroom. This is after the board has taken every reasonable effort to try and bring that teacher up to an area where they can assume the job that they should be assuming, which is to help students with their education. Two years is simply too long to leave an unsatisfactory person in a classroom.

In large school districts they have the opportunity of finding positions for those teachers where they are not dealing directly with students as a teacher. In small districts that is virtually impossible, and it leaves us in a terrible predicament at times. Some individuals could continue to teach under terms of a limited contract with the employer and would be remunerated only on the basis of the equivalent of instructional grant allocations received for the number of students that parents continue to register in the teacher's class.

As the students pointed out to you earlier, one of the problems we have with class size is that the boards are funded per student, not per teacher required. If we have 15 students who want to sign up for a calculus class, we have to fund the teacher on the basis of 15 students, not on the basis of the teacher we hire. Again, that limits the number of courses we can offer to students and hamstrings, in many cases, a student's opportunities for further education.

Proposition 3 is in the area of labour negotiations. We believe that collective agreement negotiations with unions like the BCTF, whose services are largely or exclusively supported through public taxation, should be held in an open forum. This could include the possible televised accounts of discussions but should minimally include an invitation for the public to view proceedings live and on a non-restricted basis. We feel this would take an awful lot of the politics out of bargaining. It could present both sides of the issue to the public at the same time and take the politics out of it.

Proposition 4. Let the labour legislation take precedence over collective agreements, limiting the time taken to resolve grievances, and require that the non-prevailing party only be responsible for all legal costs associated with the settlement — i.e., if arbitration is entered into. At the present time, if the board finds itself in an arbitration situation, it can cost upwards of $10,000 to $15,000. Even if we win that arbitration situation hands down, we still have to pay that money to our lawyers. We feel that the grievance procedures and arbitration procedures would be expedited, and there would be a lot more caution about going into them if in fact the parties that began the grievance knew that they were going to have to pay the full bill for it for both sides of the equation.

We also have a problem when the labour legislation does not take precedence over the Labour Relations Board. We're finding ourselves in a situation now, with the present situation between the teachers and the boards, where the Labour Relations Board is making designations for our administrative officers which in fact overrule the School Act. Where the School Act says what the responsibilities of a teacher are and what the responsibilities of administration are, the Labour Relations Board is saying that no, our administrative officers will travel to the furthermost rural schools and will supervise recesses and lunchtimes and things like that, when in fact these people are fully employed by the board office and have full-time jobs there. For example, our superintendent of schools is supervising recess in Telkwa School today, and he has a full-time job at the board office.

Our secretary-treasurer and our assistant superintendent are out supervising recesses and lunch hours, when they work full-time at the board office. We're also expected to send our two excluded confidential secretaries out to supervise recess, lunch hours, etc., and maintain buses and look after when the kids get on the buses and all the rest of it, when in fact they have full-time jobs at the board office.

The School Act says what teachers should do. The Labour Relations Board is saying they don't have to do it. There's something wrong with a system like that.

Proposition 5 says that the School Act be amended to provide for school districts to set school years based only upon required hours of instruction but with regard to statutory holidays. This would give school boards the flexibility, each within their own district, to determine what is best for the students in their district. I understand that in Whistler, for instance, instead of having a summer vacation, the students take their vacation in the wintertime so they can work in the ski lodges to save their money for university, because there's no employment out there for them in the summer.

There are districts across British Columbia, for instance, that have looked at the flexibility to have a spring break rather than a traditional Easter break. That is done because when spring break comes along, it's flexible. Where you have a lot of people involved in the logging industry and they want to take time off with their families, they need to have that kind of flexibility built into the system.

Proposition 6 says that the School Act be amended to allow for teachers to be independent practitioners rendering service on the basis of preferred selection by either students or parents. Such teachers could be approved for access to school facilities and thus included in the school timetable. These teachers would be given authority to establish a fee-for-service and, if approved by the board, could practise within the mandate and policies of the school board. This would certainly respond to what parents are looking for in parental choice, where you could bring a specialist teacher in for a small group of people. They might be there only for a short period of time, just the necessary time to teach a specific course.

Right now, if we hire a teacher on September 1, that teacher is on contract for the full year. It also means that if our student population declines — and again, we're funded on a per-student basis — our allotment from the government declines but at the same time we have a reduced number of students, so we get a reduced allotment. It creates terrible financial hardship for boards. There are presently 15 boards in the province of British Columbia who are in deficit, and they are in deficit primarily in those areas where student numbers are declining.

Proposition 7 says that the government review the walk limits. The walk limits that are set for Vancouver, where students have adequate support and transportation, or in Victoria, where you have mild weather and,

again, lots of transportation, don't make any sense up here in the north. We've got kids walking within that 4.8 kilometre area who are coming down a logging road. They face moose and bear; they face traffic. They face all sorts of situations, including 40-below weather — you know, two-metre-high snow drifts when the plows come along — that you simply don't see in the lower mainland. We would really like to see those walk limits reviewed so there's more flexibility in the system and we have the opportunity to address the needs of our students.

Proposition 8. First nations funding. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the issue of first nations funding, but at the present time, of course, first nations students who live on reserve are funded by the federal government. Once the nominal role is forwarded to the federal government, they forward it to the provincial government. The provincial government then deletes that amount of money, per capita, per student from our budget.

However, the funding that used to come directly to the school boards now goes to the first nations reserves, and their councils determine whether or not they will pay the school board. This leaves the school boards held hostage to an argument between the federal and provincial governments as to who is responsible for funding first nation students. Again, it leaves boards in a terrible situation. They find themselves underfunded and unable to provide the kind of facilities and educational opportunities for students that they need to provide because of an ongoing argument between the federal government and the provincial government.

School boards should be funded on the needs of the students, not on an issue of politics, and certainly nominal role funding by the federal government is purely an issue of politics. Again, we support the brief that was presented to you by the BCTA in all of the four directions your government is taking with regard to what the minister calls the three As and a C.

We would like to see labour legislation that allows boards to set staff needs during the school year. If you have a declining population, you need the opportunity to adjust your staff levels. If you have parents who come in and you talk about parent choice in the beginning of the year, you find that you need to bring in a specialist, but you only need that specialist for six months. We need the specialist for six months, not for a full year. We need that kind of flexibility within the hiring system so that we can address the needs of our communities and so that when the attendance drops we can address those as well. At the present time we can't do that.

Proposition No. 11. The Ministry of Education reviews the Dogwood Certificate. Right now the only form of high school graduation that is accepted around the province is the Dogwood, and the Dogwood is aimed at those students who have a high academic standard and want to go to university. But for students who want to get into apprenticeship programs a Dogwood is not really necessary. A school certificate is; they need a grade 12 graduation. A Dogwood is not necessarily what they need.

Other students who are entering other areas of work need a different type of certificate. We have a school leaving certificate, which most employers will tell you really doesn't count for much. It simply means that a student was there for 12 years. If we have a student who can graduate and get a job as an electrician, a carpenter, a plumber, a glazier or any other trade like that, they should be able to do so without having to worry about that one step in their lives that can limit what they can do.

We would like to see the ministry adopt different types of graduation certificates. This is not to say that a graduation certificate for a student who's going to become an electrician is less than a graduate student who's heading off with a Dogwood to go to university. We need equivalency, but we need the opportunity for students to do it.

I'm going to present you, in terms of the brief, with the kinds of programs that we offer within our district, the kinds of choices that parents have asked us for and the flexibility that we have shown. Our superintendent will indicate in a letter to you that within that district he has had a meeting with parents with regard to open boundaries. To a large degree, parents in our communities do not want open boundaries in schools. They want the security of knowing that when their child is registered in a school that child can remain registered in the school without having to worry about showing up every September and lining up at 5 o'clock in the morning in the hopes that there will be a place for that child in that school.

We still provide, as I've indicated and you can see within the documentation, flexibility within the system. We have a number of specialist areas in the district. We do not prohibit anyone from coming into those areas. If they want a cross-boundary transfer, they simply notify the board office that they would like to do so. In any case where we can do it, we do.

Our assessment programs began years before PLAP came up. That was the provincial learning assessment program from the previous government. It's now foundation skills assessment. We began that several years before. We administer tests to students in grades 3, 6 and 9 every year to determine how they're doing. We then follow up on those tests to find out what we need to do to improve those rates of advancement.

Kindergarten screening is something that also started a number of years ago in our district, particularly with regard to reading and literacy. We would encourage this government to start looking at early literacy programs prior to school. There is a great discrepancy in the abilities of students coming into the school system, particularly with regard to literacy. Every study I have seen indicates that the more literate the student before they come to school, the greater their chance for success.

We need to see that, particularly in the first nations communities, where reading is not a tradition. They have an oral tradition, not a reading tradition, and one of the important circumstances of them coming into

our society is that we expect them to meet our levels. In many cases they can't do it. Having a different ministry address that situation within the first nations reserves or in some of the more rural communities would be of great assistance to all students.

With regard to parental choice and public involvement, you'll find a sheet in there that outlines the steps our board took this year in October. We had meetings in Smithers and in Houston. We talked about the three As and a C, and we simply allowed the community members to come to us and give us their ideas on what they wanted to see with regard to accountability, achievement, autonomy and choice.

This, I would point out to you, was a brainstorming session. It was not a debate. It was not a discussion. No arguments took place. We simply asked people to put their best ideas forward and tell us what they'd like. When you look at that, and you may see things that seem a little out of kilter, I would like you to also realize that we will be going back to all these parents again, with two more hearings, to discuss with them the information they brought to us and the kind of concerns we have with some of the ideas that we brought forward — the limitations that we may have on us which might inhibit those kinds of directions or, in fact, where we want parents to work with us to provide those.

A simple example, for instance, is a course that's been running in Smithers in French immersion since 1986 but has been unable to get going in Houston because of the lack of student numbers. The parents would still like to see that.

S. Orr: I'm just looking at your propositions. I have to say they're pretty common sense. I think what I really want to ask is: unlike the previous administration…. I'm sure this would never have happened with No. 3. It didn't happen with No. 3. But in the spirit of our government's openness and accountability, I really like No. 3. Has that, in your most recent BCSTA meetings, been discussed, as to whether you'd ever approach the unions on that? Could you ever put this forward?

B. Haslett: BCPSEA, of course, is a separate bargaining group from BCSTA. I understand that BCPSEA has placed the issue on the table, and it has been decided by the two parties that, in fact, they would not. I don't know which side of the negotiating table decided they didn't want that.

B. Locke: Thank you, Bob, for your presentation. I wanted to ask you about community schools. In your communities that you service do you utilize your schools to the maximum? Do you use them on Saturdays, for example?

B. Haslett: We open our schools wide to the community. The community gets use of our schools before school and after school — not during school, but certainly on weekends as well. We have working arrangements with both the community in Houston and the community in Smithers. We have signed documents with them which allow their town councils, for instance, to set up recreational activities within the schools. Yes, we feel that we've got our schools open, probably 18 hours a day, for virtually anything and everything.

S. Yaremco: No, they're not designated schools. That program for the community schools sort of stopped about three years ago. They've continued to fund the ones that were designated up till three years ago, but they have not brought any new ones on line.

B. Haslett: I'm sorry; I think I misconstrued your question with regard to community schools.

S. Yaremco: It wasn't for lack of trying. We've been waging a bit of a campaign to the Ministry of Children and Family Development to get them to start that program up again. There doesn't seem to be any political will at the moment.

S. Yaremco: We've certainly had a shared-use agreement with both communities. They've very well utilized, to the point where there are conflicts.

W. McMahon (Chair): I have just a couple of points for clarification. No. 5 is on the school calendar. You did talk briefly about the different school districts that have a different school calendar. I worked, actually, within a school district that had a two-week spring break because of the spring break up in the East Kootenays. It works well, but that's a bylaw. I believe you could do that under the School Act without actually amending — can't you? — and have a school calendar bylaw.

B. Haslett: We can do it now, provided we have the agreement of both our employee groups and the parents. That can be very restrictive when you're working with the unions.

W. McMahon (Chair): We were getting that every year — going back every year.

B. Haslett: When the government talks about making better use of our schools…. We'd like to have the

opportunity, for instance, to go to year-round schooling so the schools can be open in the summer. But again, you require a change in the terms of the collective agreement to do that. Once that collective agreement is signed at the provincial level, all our flexibility disappears.

W. McMahon (Chair): So that's what you would like regulated into the School Act, that part of it. The local education contract also. When you talk about the first nations funding, and it's between Victoria and Ottawa, that's with the local education agreement — right?

B. Haslett: The local education agreement is an agreement set up between the first nations groups that are within a school district boundaries and the school district board office. Unfortunately, the local education agreement does not necessarily provide for the full funding of the students. That's a negotiable factor.

W. McMahon (Chair): But if you don't have an agreement, then Ottawa doesn't pay the funding.

B. Haslett: Oh, no. Our district, for instance, has accepted students from Moricetown for a number of years without a local education agreement. We've simply signed a separate financial agreement with them. Again, the problem that we run into is that you may not receive the funding that Ottawa forwards. For instance, in Nechako Lakes right now, they're having a terrible time trying to collect from the bands, because the bands are using the School Act that says the school district has a responsibility to provide an educational service to each student within the district. They're saying that as a result of that there's no need for them to forward the money that they receive from Ottawa.

W. McMahon (Chair): That's what I wanted a clarification on. That's great. Thank you.

R. Stewart: Very quickly. Something struck me about the walk limits. Is there a seasonable variable within the walk limits?

R. Stewart: So, you could reduce the walk limit when there's snow on the ground?

S. Yaremco: No. We have, you know, wildlife. For quite a few people, the reason they live in the north is because they can live some distance from a town, so you've got a wildlife component all year round. I don't know if you've ever lived in the north. There's fall, winter and then mud-season, then summer for two weeks and then fall again. If you're not dealing with one kind of environmental hazard, you're dealing with another. We don't have sidewalks. There are huge logging trucks all year round. We are an industry-based valley so we have the big, major….

R. Stewart: I wasn't meaning to try to support the existing walk limits except when there's snow on the ground, but I just wonder if that would help, if there were some other variables — for example, the difference between walking down a rural road in farming country compared to walking down a logging road or those sorts of things. Could we develop a system that took into account some of those things to better reflect the risk that children face and to perhaps reduce that in cases where it really is warranted?

B. Haslett: Well, if you consider that on our rural roads, for instance, when the plows come along to plow the road, they plow them two vehicles wide. Winter is, without a doubt, the most severe problem for our students. Even if a variation were made at that point, I agree with Sheryl that we have different problems all year round. Even if a variation were made on that particular point, it would assist. It would make it better than it is now.

R. Lee: The Ministry of Education is currently going along to have contracts with the schools. What do you think about that process, and what would that mean to the quality of education?

B. Haslett: I think it has the potential to improve the quality of education. It has been a little bit of a confusing issue so far because boards were not brought into the process. The process was simply announced. Then we were told that they were no longer there. They started out as accountability contracts, then they went to performance contracts, then they went to performance agreements. The terms keep getting used, and we're not exactly 100 percent sure what they are, but we have no difficulty with it whatsoever.

We think it's a terrific idea that the government is saying to boards: "You've asked for the autonomy. We're going to give you the autonomy." However, with it comes a level of accountability. It's something we have wanted for a long time.

We were absolutely delighted when the minister said this was the process they were going to follow, but we would have been a little more delighted to have had an opportunity to be involved in the process before that so that we would have a better understanding. It has been confusing for our communities.

Our next presentation is by Jack VandenBorn, principal, Houston Christian School, along with Kerry Macleod.

Just so the committee knows, we need to be packing up at 2:30 p.m. — okay? We'll be careful with our time.

Good afternoon. It's great to have you here. I'll let you start whenever you're ready.

J. VandenBorn: Good afternoon. We haven't prepared anything massive. I just asked Kerry to come along. She just finished writing a biology test, but she's also taking impromptu acting, so she can act on the spot.

J. VandenBorn: Maybe she'll rattle off a little "to be or not to be" from Hamlet for you.

We're one of four schools in Houston — Houston Christian School. We are a small, independent school. We have 174 students from grades K-to-12. The school has existed since 1962, and only about six years ago did it start with grades 11 and 12. We're just right on the highway there. I don't know if you saw us when you drove by. That's us.

J. VandenBorn: Yes, a nice, bright colour. We're very happy with the building. Really, that's the heart of our message — both Kerry's and mine — that we're very content with the way things are. We don't have a list of things where we say: "Boy, if only you did this or if only you did that." We're just a happy group of people. There are 10.5 full-time teachers' equivalent represented in 13 bodies.

Our senior boys volleyball team is in Kelowna as we speak. They're playing volleyball, so that means we can participate in sports around the whole north. Our kids play with Houston Secondary and Smithers Secondary and with other schools in the north. It just means we have to travel a long way for our games.

Financially, we get about $3,200 a student from you folks — for which we're very appreciative. That's the way it all shakes out. Our parents pay about $4,300 per family. It doesn't matter how many children they have in their family; that's the tuition fee. Our budget operation is a little bit under $900,000, and that's what makes the whole thing go.

We're a Christian school, which means we want to remain in the Protestant-Christian tradition. That's important to us. That's why parents are willing to pay that tuition fee. That's why teachers teach here. We want to be faithful to that tradition. We live out of it and live inside of that. We're happy with the whole setup, really.

I suppose the only thing is: if you could make the cheque a little bit larger, though not too much larger. We talked about that at our board meeting once. Right now we get 50 percent of the local, public-school funding. I remember the chairman of our boards said he wasn't so sure. He thought he was pretty content with that. The murmurings around the board would be in support of that. We're quite pleased.

That's kind of the overall situation. I thought maybe Kerry could say something about how she's experiencing life. This is her twelfth year. She's my English student, too, so she could write it out for you, but we didn't do that. Maybe, Kerry, if you don't mind this sort of thing — what school life is like for you.

K. Macleod: We're a very small school, and the class sizes are also very small. We've grown up with a lot of the people whom we go to school with. We know them. It's a very warm atmosphere. I think it's quite a rare situation in that our teachers are very much our friends — so much so, that the students who have graduated come back to the school. We get them hanging around, talking to the teachers, playing in the gym with us. It's a very good environment. Everyone is appreciative of it in our school.

The course choice we have is good for people who want to go on to university, because we can get our basic courses. It doesn't end up being a problem. For the people who are more interested in trades, they have a bit less options. We do have some apprenticeship programs going on at our school, which are working out very well. As a small school, I think we're very satisfied and very happy with what we have.

J. VandenBorn: What our graduating rate is? Do you mean in terms of kids who actually get a diploma?

J. VandenBorn: It will be about 90 percent, I guess. This year we have 20 kids in our graduating class. Other years we've had nine and eight. Usually there are one or two kids who don't quite get it all put together.

S. Orr: So a low dropout. How many go on to university or college? Do you know?

B. Locke: It was nice to hear you speak to us. Just really quickly, I noticed in here that you don't wear school uniforms. I wondered what determined that and how you worked that through, because most separate schools seem to wear them.

J. VandenBorn: We have school uniforms. They're called blue jeans and T-shirts, mostly.

J. VandenBorn: In our tradition — the Christian schools that are closely connected — none of them have uniforms. We're not that style of people. We're just a little looser. It's not even talked about.

R. Nijjar: Can you tell me the approximate number of students you have and if any of them are aboriginal students?

R. Nijjar: I have a question in relation to that. This is not being critical, but it's a critique, which are two different things. Young people growing up in this community have to go to a Christian school, but they live amongst many people from many cultures, and the aboriginal community is a major part of the community here. Is there any education done for your students about the aboriginal community — how to relate to them and understand them?

J. VandenBorn: Oh, sure. We talk about the situation in a variety of courses and a variety of situations. For example, in English we read a book, Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse, which is a story about an aboriginal person and cowboys in the late 1940s. It comes into the discussion there. We talk about it in terms of racism in one of the Bible courses by Mr. Ewald in grades 9 and 10. It's a major part of that course.

K. Macleod: Also, in socials we do a lot of work with the different cultures that have been created to form B.C. as it is now.

J. VandenBorn: Kids aren't excluded because of that, but my sense isn't that there are just lots and lots of aboriginal people in Houston — the proportion of people. The requirement for coming into our school is that one of the parents be a practising Christian.

R. Lee: I can imagine that in your school, because you've got half — 50 percent — of funding from the provincial government, you follow the provincial curriculum quite closely. My question is: how do you integrate the religion part with the curriculum?

J. VandenBorn: Very easily, really. We're really quite happy with the whole learning outcome. The learning outcomes don't tell us what books or texts or stories to use. My experience as an English teacher is that we find books, short stories and poetry that fit our style of thinking. Then that becomes part of our whole discussion. I don't feel that I've got to put some things together or avoid doing things. I talk naturally about the things I believe, and the kids do the same thing. When they write their essays or paragraphs, they don't try to think: "This is Christian or not Christian." It just flows out of our whole being.

K. Macleod: I think there's a Christian atmosphere in all of the different subjects. Science has a lot of different views about evolution and creation, so our view comes out more, but all of the views are definitely debated and looked into.

R. Stewart: I myself am a product of an independent school, and I thank you for coming out today to remind us that there are not just the publicly run schools that we're dealing with. In many communities, the perception is that the independent school is for the rich kids. Is that reflected in your population? It wasn't in the population of kids that I went to school with.

J. VandenBorn: I wouldn't know. We're just one more school. We get along. We play basketball. The clothes we wear are no different from the clothes that other kids wear, and the cars we drive are no different. We don't sense ourselves to be a rich school. In fact, it's more the other way. We're sometimes jealous of the public schools in terms of the equipment they might have. Up the hill they have this neat video projector kind of thing that's worth $6,000, which we don't have.

Our parents are just ordinary people. There are some that are rich and some that are not rich, some that can pay their tuition fee and some that can't. We accept them all.

W. McMahon (Chair): Kerry, can I ask you what you're going on to take in university?

K. Macleod: I'm planning to get my bachelor of science in nursing, and I might go to UNBC.

R. Nijjar: You had said that your requirement was that any child can become a student, so long as one parent is Christian. You're also funded 50 percent by public funds. I have a Christian school in my riding — I visited them, actually, just last week — and there are several in Vancouver. They don't have the requirement. I'm not sure. Can you have a requirement when you're being funded publicly?

J. VandenBorn: Yes. We always have. It's never been an issue. Some schools have what they call open admission of a sort. That's of a different sort. Some Christian schools are that too. Ours and many of the ones that we're closely connected with — that we're more friends with — do not. They have the same condition as we have: that one of the parents be a practising Christian.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks for coming out and making your presentation. Kerry, we wish you all the best. Thank you.

Our last presentation today is by Pat Christensen and Erin Alec. Welcome, and nice to see you up here.

P. Christensen: Erin is in the leadership class as well. I'm doing the talking, because Erin says there are too many of you for her to do that.

P. Christensen: Maybe. If she goes like that, that means I have to answer it.

P. Christensen: The success of first nations students is a great concern in our community, in Burns Lake. We understand it's a concern throughout the entire province. In our school about 30 percent of the students are first nations. We have a high dropout rate between grades 8 and 12. Few native students graduate with the Dogwood, let alone the courses necessary to go on to university.

Why is this true? I can think of two main reasons. One is that the statistics in our town tend to estimate that between 40 and 50 percent of our native children suffer some amount of FAE or FAS. This equals, in our school, between 50 and 75 students. Besides this, many first nations students come from dysfunctional families. They have no support at home for completing schoolwork. In extreme cases, some of these students do not have their basic needs met at all.

How do we deal with them in our school? The same as any other kid. We put them in regular classes. Special needs funding is capped, I believe, at 2 percent — I could be wrong — of the school's population, which in our school is nine kids. Remember, I said we figure we've got 50 to 75 kids that have some amount of learning disabilities due to FAE or FAS. That means those 40 to 65 kids who aren't identified as special needs kids essentially get no extra support, no extra funding compared to anyone else. These students in general, if we're lucky, end up being marginally successful. If we're not lucky, they sit between the fortieth and fiftieth percentile group of kids who fail and end up dropping out.

So what can we do? The method of special needs funding needs to be revamped. Support needs to be given to those students in need who do not currently qualify as special needs. Our school needs increased funding for basic skill development, tutoring and support of those students. With this, our success for first nations students would improve significantly. We also believe we are not the only community in the north that has this issue, and I'm sure you will hear it from many different others.

S. Orr: Erin, we were up in the Charlottes yesterday, and it was very interesting. What grade are you in?

E. Alec: I'm undecided right now. I still have a year to do. I'm still looking.

S. Orr: Can you just tell us what your biggest stumbling block has been in your school? What's been the biggest challenge or the biggest frustration for you?

E. Alec: This year it hasn't. It got better, actually. It's not that bad, compared to last year. This year is going very well.

S. Orr: It is? Are they teaching anything in your school about your heritage?

E. Alec: Yeah, we have first nations class and a Carrier class, too, that's optional — French or Carrier.

S. Orr: Have they found that teaching the heritage of your nation in this last year or two has helped people to understand better?

R. Nijjar: Erin, you spoke of racism as an issue. We spoke with an aboriginal student yesterday, and they said the same thing. A lot of racism is racism between students or through verbal and social interaction that we as legislators on the committee can't do anything about. That's a social thing, per se.

What is it about the school system itself that you feel could be different and that would help aboriginal students feel better about themselves and therefore they would participate more? In the actual school education, what do you think should be different?

R. Nijjar: …that you feel is prejudiced against you or doesn't necessarily recognize what you and your community's needs are?

P. Christensen: I believe our town suffers some amount of racism having to do with the employment situation. We have a mill that's on reserve land, so the whites feel resentment of the fact that the natives that work at the mill do not pay income tax. I think this starts it. We've been in the news as being very racist — you may or may not know that — and as having racist issues in our community.

The initial incident that seemed to spark this in our school seemed to be more of a jealousy issue of a native and a white girl both being attracted by the same young man. It became a racist issue somehow.

W. McMahon (Chair): Are there any courses offered in the school, Erin, on bullying or on racism — through the school system, even through CAPP or anything?

P. Christensen: We do a bullying thing in grade 8. This year we've also started a program in grade 9 that we're calling visions. I think it's funded somewhat by the Attorney General. All grade 9s go through an acceptance, anti-bullying, anti-harassment, more-acceptance-of-others type of program.

W. McMahon (Chair): Has that been beneficial, would you think? Should it be offered maybe all the way through the school system?

P. Christensen: I think if it were offered throughout the school system, you'd get the comments that you've had about CAPP, which is that it got pretty boring after the third time.

W. McMahon (Chair): Is it something that could be targeted to a younger age?

W. McMahon (Chair): Okay. Erin, what do you think about that? Do you think something like that would have helped in grade 1 or grade 3 or grade 4?

E. Alec: Yeah. That just came in this year, so when I got into grade 8, we didn't have anything for us. It would have helped a lot.

P. Christensen: We're hoping it will help. That's part of the rationale of trying to get it there.

R. Lee: In your school do you have school liaison workers between the family and the school, so that problems in school can be understood by the family or vice versa?

E. Alec: Mrs. Tom is one of our aboriginal counsellors and home coordinator. She is the one who is in charge, like, if there are students who drop out. She transfers them on. Because we have a school that's on our reservation, she'd transfer them there. If not, they'd take home school, and she's in charge of bringing school work to them.

R. Lee: Okay. She's the school liaison, the person going in between, so you do have some support here.

B. Locke: I wonder if you can give me some simple demographics — the number of students in your school and the feeder schools and how many elementary and high schools there are in your area.

P. Christensen: Our area has one high school. This year we have about 450 students. Coming into grades 11 and 12 we have some kids coming out of what we call southside, which is the students on the south side of François Lake. The feeder schools are the Francois Lake school — not the one on the south side, which is

called Grassy Plains — and W.K. Elementary, Topley and Decker Lake. They feed our high school.

B. Locke: Of the 450 children about 75 are FAE or FAS. Is that what you said earlier?

W. McMahon (Chair): Just one point of clarification, Erin. You said that when the kids drop out, they go to school on the reserve. Is that just for the kids that have dropped out? Do you do primary school?

P. Christensen: It is relatively new. It's set up, I think, as a second line of defence for those kids who don't want to attend on a regular basis and who don't fit into our alternate programs.

P. Christensen: I would like to say that I think CAPP may perhaps be more successful in the lower mainland than in the north. If the intent of CAPP is to expose students to various careers, up here we can send them to the dentist's office, to the medical office, out in the bush logging or to the mill. That sums it up.

They already knew they had those choices. In terms of CAPP we don't seem to be able to expose them to new things, just because they're not there in terms of being able to get the hours, and we can't export the kid — I don't know, to the lower mainland — to check it out.

W. McMahon (Chair): I know that when CAPP first came out, kids who were already working someplace couldn't use those hours towards the CAPP program. Is that still true?

P. Christensen: In our school they can — or at least a certain number of them. There's CAPP, and there's work experience. They're different. The work experience is the for-credit thing, which hopefully, if you decide you're interested in science, exposes you to various aspects of science jobs. Those things don't work really well for us.

W. McMahon (Chair): Do you have a recommendation? I'm actually from rural B.C, too, so I know the challenges that are there just with what you can offer. Do you have any suggestions for rural B.C. in the CAPP program — get rid of it or…?

P. Christensen: Some parts of it, like the kids said — résumé writing, those sorts of things — I think are good. Personally, I think formally dissecting the forest industry on a piece of paper as to what possible jobs there are, when the kid knows them already, is a waste of time. I think something like a travelling career fair would be a really good idea, but that would take a lot of money. That's new and different. You send 20 professionals around to rural schools to talk about what they do. The Ms. Infinity program, which is for girls and isn't really sponsored by the school, is good for that.

W. McMahon (Chair): Would you have 20 professionals in the north that you could call on? You must have, to a degree.

P. Christensen: Possibly. We don't get to try and expose kids to, say, geology, which to me would be a sensible thing to expose northern kids to.

W. McMahon (Chair): Okay. That's a very good suggestion, actually. Well, now we have lots more questions.

R. Nijjar: Erin, I wanted to ask you another question. I know you don't want to do too much talking. However, it's important. You're doing a good job.

I've personally heard aboriginal students and their parents say, not necessarily to this committee, that they feel this is the "white man's system" of schools — right? — and that it's not part of their culture. It's not their schools. They don't feel ownership of it. We hear that quite a bit, and I've heard it from a lot of parts of British Columbia. Would you say that the statement, that sentiment, generally speaking, for your friends and your family and your parent's family, is true? Is that a pervasive feeling, or do just a few people feel that way? Is that really predominant?

R. Lee: I want to go back to Pat. Do the colleges and the post-secondary institutes send their representatives to your community and to your school to explain what possibilities and options are available for students?

P. Christensen: They pretty much tell them their admission criteria. They have 40 minutes to give their talk. They're not exposing the kids a lot to what possible options they have at that university. No, they're not.

P. Christensen: I'm back to my travelling professional thing. You bring in, for instance, somebody like a geologist to our town, and you expose those kids to what a geologist or an archaeologist does. Archaeology right now in native communities is something that's being used a lot. I think if you asked 95 percent of kids in our school what an archaeologist was, they'd go: "A who?" They don't know.

P. Christensen: Something, yes. But not all things have professional organizations. There's not necessarily a professional organization for archaeologists or anthropologists or whatever.

K. Manhas: Erin, may I ask you what your plans are after you finish high school?

W. McMahon (Chair): That's great. Erin, thank you very much. You did a great job. It wasn't that bad, was it? And Pat, too, thank you. I think you've given us some good food for thought there.



CONTENTS

		Page

Presentations		615
	T. Euverman	615
	B. Hawley	616
	W. Kluss	617
	B. Henderson	620
	B. Andersson	623
	T. Dean	626
	J. Pooley	626
	A. Mettler	627
	P. Richard	627
	D. Martens	627
	K. Staudt	628
	B. Haslett	631
	S. Yaremco	634
	J. VandenBorn	636
	K. Macleod	636
	P. Christensen	638
	E. Alec	638

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE
ON EDUCATION