Open letter to the Richmond Board of Education;
Re: “16 Schools under closure cloud,” News, April 6.
We are writing to you as parent of our daughter who currently attends Montessori at McKinney ele-mentary. The foundation of our child’s success has been the teachers and program at McKinney, and its location. Twelve years ago we bought into the neighbourhood because of the school, as did many parents whose children attend Mckinney.
Through the years, we have seen the neighbourhood grow, and surroundings expand with real estate development that shall definitely bring in more neighbourhood children. he school itself has beautiful green space and a park, where the children can enjoy their outdoors in a safe zone away from traffic, this is becoming increasingly rare in Richmond because of the exploding development.
This green space would be difficult to obtain for any new school being thought of in the “New Density Area of Richmond.”
As a community, we would definitely oppose closing one school to open another in a more “popular area.” People who bought into the high density areas knew well in advance of the lack of schools there and the possibility of driving their children to school, yet they bought anyway.
So, the raw question is, who is the school board really serving, the taxpayers who have lived in a com-munity, paid long-term property taxes and income taxes in Canada, or those who have chosen to live in these densified neighbourhoods and do not pay any Canadian income tax because they do not de-clare their offshore income?
Here is a quote from the Richmond News paraphrasing the school board chair: “Socio-economic factors will also be considered,” said Debbie Tablotney. If all things are generally considered equal between two schools on the list, the board will likely favour closing a school in a neighbourhood with higher re-ported incomes, she noted.
It is a known and widely reported fact, and currently under investigation, that some of the most affluent neighbourhoods in Richmond have the lowest reported taxable income in Canada.
What does that tell you?
It tells you the school board is actually punishing those who honestly report their income and have a life-long work history in Canada.
The entire face of Richmond as a city is changing by encouraging less community investment in favour of more real estate development for offshore buyers with no vested community spirit.
If, by any chance, the school board and city have any designs of turning the McKinney property and associated park into a townhouse development, as a McKinney community we shall turn out in force to prevent such zoning.
The 95 per cent capacity mandate from the Ministry of Education that the school board is trying to fol-low blindly without question, is simply a numbers game, as we all know well enough that if we achieve that target it would violate class size, as well as result in overcrowding in non classroom areas. I ask, does the rest of our provincial government occupy and function at 95 per cent efficiency?
As a taxpayer it is offensive to listen to this numbers game applied to our children’s education and a gamble with seismic upgrades. What happened to the taxpayer-funded upgrades that were supposed to have been completed over the last 20 years? It sounds like hostage taking rather than education policy.
In conclusion, please pass on the fact to the school board that the genuine taxpayers of the McKinney neighbourhood are not naïve enough to believe the social injustice that is occurring and being masked as re-structing the education needs of Richmond.
Rustom Dubash
Richmond
Editor’s note: The school district has stated it is aware of shortcomings of the voluntary 2011 National Household Survey and will assess other socio-economic factors, as well.
