Dear Editor,
Re: “If trustees won’t, who will?” Letters, March 27.
CUPE 716 president June Kaiser has made an excellent point in her letter. Trustees are elected to lobby the government for public education, but their hands are tied.
The decision makers in Victoria don’t seem to pay any attention to their concerns. It looks like the provincial government doesn’t seem to care much about public education, especially K-12, in this province.
In this context, Vancouver Sun reporter Daphne Bramham expressed her concerns about public education very well in a column dated March 28.
Bramham wrote: “A blunt reading of the B.C. government’s plan for public education is this: impoverish it, neuter critics (including teachers and elected school trustees) and centralize control. Once control is centralized, the blueprint seems to be to move to the American model where public school funding and teachers’ pay are linked more closely to students’ test scores.”
As parents, grandparents and concerned citizens, we need to work with our elected officials to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen.
Balwant Sanghera
Richmond
