Just how much Richmond will see of last week’s $50 million redress of education funding from the B.C. government remains to be seen.
The Richmond School Board and the Richmond Teachers’ Association (RTA) were in talks this week to see how to prioritize any restorative funding they get in light of last November’s Supreme Court ruling, which ordered the government to restore class-size, class-composition and specialist teacher language that was deleted from teachers’ contracts in 2002.
Education Minister Mike Bernier stumped up a first instalment of $50 million — the BCTF estimates $300 million will be required annually to fully redress the cuts — which translates to the potential hiring of more than 1,000 teachers province-wide.
But, given that it’s smack in the middle of a school year, school board chair Debbie Tablotney said the focus, initially, might be more on support staff.
“Resource teachers would be something we might look at, as it would cause the least disruption,” Tablotney told the News Monday.
Al Klassen, RTA president, agreed, saying hiring support staff would be a more “practical priority” and “it wouldn’t involve disrupting classrooms during the school year.
“But we will also be looking (with the school board) at where the critical needs are and take it from there.
“We haven’t confirmed any numbers yet; both parties (RTA and the school board) are in conversations over what that may look like. It’s still very early.”
Asked what level of funding it would take to restore staffing levels and classrooms to a pre-2002 status, Tablotney said it was “unclear what the figures mean to Richmond.”
“We’re looking for some clarity and hope to have more information next week,” she said.
“However, Richmond is still in a declining enrolment situation; if (the funding is) on a per student basis, we could see a very different formula than we’re used to and that’s obviously a concern.”
Both Tablotney and Klassen expressed their delight at last November’s Supreme Court ruling, given that they’ve both been dealing with funding cuts for more than a decade in their respective roles.
“It’s good news for our kids,” Tablotney added.
After the court ruling, Bernier said neither the government nor the BCTF wanted to wait until a final deal was reached before initiating funding, hence last week’s $50 million instalment.
Over the coming weeks, and months, more talks between the parties will take place to determine what the final figure should be.
In 2002, limits on the numbers of special needs kids that can be in a classroom were removed. Today, there are 16,516 classes with four or more special-needs children and 4,163 with seven or more, the BCTF said.
It says 1,700 specialist teachers have been lost since 2002, including teacher-librarians, school counsellors, special education teachers, English-language specialists, aboriginal educators and others. Class-size limits were also removed from the contracts.
In 2002, kindergarten classes had a maximum 20 students, while Grades 1 to 3 had been capped at 22. Today, those limits are set by the government at 22 and 24.
