School begins in less than a week. Families are getting ready to send their children to school. The fortunate can do this with a sense of joy, but too many with a sense of dread.
Imagine your children attend Heritage Elementary and finding out a few days ago that your school has hired a teacher who not only told students that he would like to beat them, but that he didn’t like his job. That he liked teaching Grade 8 because he could give the students worksheets and walk away.
Then imagine that you are one of the families within a few hundred dollars of bankruptcy. Rising inflation has eaten away any reserve you may have had, and now you are faced with being unable to pay for the school fees and clothing that will put your child on more equal footing with his peers.
I grew up in what most of my readers would say was a backwards society. When I left (at the ripe age of 19) I didn’t expect was that the “outside” world had its own version of backwardness.
We all agree that shuffling a teacher from one school to another is a bad idea. Yet we continue to do it. Why? Does no one have the guts to stop this? Does no one have the guts to say “You need to find other work, because children deserve our best?” We look at history and judge (rightly) this practice of moving around teachers, yet we are powerless to stop it today. Why? Apparently because the rights of one teacher outweigh the rights of children to a decent school experience.
The school district cannot comment on this because it is a personnel matter. The school trustees don’t offer comment. No one is accountable. Families are simply supposed to trust the system and throw their children into a system designed to protect the adults. This is backwards. Just as backwards as the backwards community I grew up in.
Backwards also is a public school system that is systemically economically discriminatory, or more simply, is designed to be better for rich kids than poor kids. The current school board has once again approved the schedule of school fees:
- Deposits are required and are refundable upon return:
- Center for Learning Alternatives (CIDES) textbook deposit $50
- Pre-Calculus 11 and 12 graphing calculator Up to $150
- Grad Costs $100
- Yearbook $40
- External Credit Exam Fee
- • Advanced Placement $30 first exam, $20 second exam
- Prince George Canadian Sport School – Engage Sport North, $180 monthly
- Student Services, $10
- Cultural Activities $10
- Postage (generously, only one mailing charge per child in one school)
- Field Trips: In this description, it actually says: “Students who choose not to participate will be assigned a project or activity that will ensure that the prescribed learning outcomes are met.” !!! Their explanation is basically: blah, blah, blah…we charge fees so that only the richer kids can go on field trips. Poor children shouldn’t think they deserve to go on a field trip.” Is no one aware that children self-select out of these enriching activities because kids don’t want to burden their parents, so the hardship policy is ineffective.)
- Valedictory Ceremonies (Finish high school, but if you are poor, you can’t participate in your own graduation ceremonies!)
So who is accountable for these dreadful, backwards policies? It’s the adults in the school board office that have the power to change a school system designed to discriminate against the less well-off families. It’s the adults in administration that have the power to ensure we don’t simply shuffle teachers from one school to the next.
Our children deserve better. They deserve a school system that looks out for their interests first.
Trudy Klassen is a Prince George writer.
