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April 2023

Newsletter 6

IPE/BC News

Congratulations in order 

Congratulations to Budd Hall, Professor Emeritus with the School of Public  Administration and Co-Chair of the UNESCO Chair in Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, who was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada at the end of 2022. He was very deservedly acknowledged for his “contributions as a pioneer in the field of community-based research, and for his advancement of knowledge building and research capacity around the world.” We’re very proud to have Budd as an IPE/BC Fellow.

Stretched to the Limit

March 2 IPE/BC Forum 

The presentations were excellent, the discussion enriching and the commitment to a quality, accessible, inclusive public education system inspiring. Thanks very much to our presenters at Stretched to the Limit for ensuring that our recent forum was a success: 
-Annabree Fairweather, Executive Director of CUFA-BC, 
-Andrée Gacoin, Director of Information, Research,and International Solidarity, BCTF, and
-Tracy Humphries, Executive Director of BCEdAccess.

Annabree, Andree and Tracy not only provided us with valuable information and perspectives, they also sparked lively discussions which continued long after adjournment. Thank you also to all the participants who took the time to attend in person and online. A report on the forum is featured in our current Perspectives Blog post. In addition, Andrée has kindly shared the slides that she used in her presentation. They contain a wealth of information which we’re sure you’ll find very interesting.

Annual General Meeting 

The forum was followed by the IPE/BC Annual General Meeting. Chairperson, Dan Laitsch, presented the Annual Report, which is now available online, and acknowledged the continuing and new IPE Board Members and Fellows. We’re very pleased to be welcoming new board member, Bárbara Silva, to a two-year term and to have Larry Kuehn and John Malcolmson reappointed, also to two year terms. The full board is featured on the website along with our network of associates, the IPE/BC Fellows.

BC Budget- What’s really in it for K-12 education next year?

John Malcolmson, researcher and IPE/BC Board member, analyzed the education funding in the provincial budget tabled on February 28th and found that the vast majority of the increase in education dollars is already committed to current cost pressures. Of the $625 million announced as a significant increase, $568 million is already committed. This leaves little to address the serious teacher shortage putting significant pressure on our public schools or the dire need for additional education assistant time to support students with special needs. Please help us share this information. In addition to the link included above, we’ve posted a handout that you can print, forward or share in communications with your own contacts. Please also see John’s interview with Katie Hyslop at The Tyee, “We still face an underfunded system".

Additional resources online 

Speaking of handouts on our website, you’ll also find the following which can be readily shared with others:
-Five Myths about Public School Funding
-Public Funding for Public Schools
-IPE/BC Vision, Mission, and Principles 

Hopes and Dreams 

We’ve recently launched an exciting new community engagement research project and we hope that we can count on your participation. Our question is straight-forward: What are your hopes and dreams for public education in BC? We’re reaching out to people throughout the province and have devised several ways that individuals or groups can respond. The project was inspired by the process used to develop the Charter for Public Education which was based on input from individuals, groups, and communities all around BC. However, given that it’s now twenty years since the Charter was created and much has changed since then, we felt it was time to initiate a new consultation. At the conclusion of the project, we’ll be publishing a report to help inform education policy and practice. 

We’d love to hear from you. Please take a few minutes to send us your thoughts and alert others to this opportunity as well. 

Pressures in our public schools

Lizanne Foster, IPE/BC Fellow and First Vice-President of the Surrey Teachers’  Association, has shared a special issue of her local association’s magazine, The Advocate. This issue is devoted to learning and teaching conditions and, through teachers’ voices, provides insight into the impact of the teacher shortage which is currently putting a great deal of pressure on BC public schools.

IPE/BC Outreach

IPE/BC has been out meeting people and having great conversations about public education in BC. We were very grateful to have had an outreach table at both the BCTF AGM and the Columbia Institute High Ground conference in March. In May we’ll be at the BCTF Public Education Advocacy Conference and the Surrey Teachers’ Association convention. We’d be delighted to attend other organizations’ meetings, conferences, and conventions as well. Please get in touch if you’d like to recommend other opportunities for IPE/BC outreach.

The Public Good 

“Shannon D. Moore (University of Manitoba) and Stephen Hurley explore how we can protect the idea that public education is, in fact, a public good. Great guests, multiple perspectives and tools that will help us mobilize the conversation in our own communities.” The Public Good, voicEd Radio 

VoicEd Radio is a great resource for podcasts on education issues. In particular, The Public Good series features interviews related to the role that a strong public education system plays in a democratic society. Episode 2, Making a success of oneself has little value in an existential crisis, features IPE/BC Fellows, Gerald Fallon, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Studies, UBC, and Wendy Poole, Associate Professor Emeritus, also in the Department of Educational Studies. Episode 8, Accessibility is a far greater parameter than choice in the quest for freedom, features Bárbara Silva, IPE/BC Fellow and incoming Board Member, and previously advocating for public schools with Support Our Students Alberta, an organization she co-founded. 

Coming Soon- Out of Our Pockets

Unfortunately, we know that BC’s public education system is subsidized by the regular, and we suspect, considerable, amounts that teachers themselves spend from their own pockets. As previously reported in IPE/BC news, we’ve created a project that will help educators keep an annual record of the money they spend on their classrooms, 
students, and schools, often to meet very basic needs. It will also help IPE/BC gain insights into this additional facet of the underfunding of public education. We’ve tackled some initial glitches that we ran into and hope to have the project ready to go live soon. We’re confident that OOOP will be a very useful tool. We’ll be promoting it widely and hope that you’ll join us in sharing the information with teachers and administrators throughout the province.

Having another look at Finland 

In case you missed it, here’s a link to a very interesting article by Crawford Killian, The Shine’s off Finnish Education. Pay Attention, Canada. Crawford is a contributing editor for The Tyee, a former instructor at Vancouver City College and Capilano College, author, and IPE/BC Fellow. In this article, he examines the factors currently having an impact on school performance in Finland and interviews Fulbright scholar, William Doyle, who has studied the Finnish system extensively and who shares a five point prescription for change. It’s a prescription that Crawford suggests would work well here in BC also.

Board budget setting

It’s that time again, when boards of education are setting their budgets for the coming year and we see some considering cuts to our strained school system once again. Board must submit their 2023-24 school district budget to the Minister by June 30th. Here are just a few reports on the budget deliberations underway: 
Government can’t continue to ignore the needs of Surrey
No cuts to music programs in Greater Victoria school district. The Board will take other steps to make up the $3.8 million shortfall.
Central Okanagan Public Schools face challenges to balance ’23-24 budget. Fiscal “pressure” amounts to $2,055 million shortfall.
VSB rally to protest budget cuts. VSB looking at ways to make up a $5.9 million shortfall
Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows School Board expects future funding shortfalls

School food programs 

It was heartening to see the province investing $214 million over three years to help school districts create or expand local food programs in schools. These funds are earmarked to purchase food and hire dedicated staff for the programs. In our 2022 submission to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, IPE/BC stressed the importance of students being more ready to learn when they’re not trying to cope with hunger. We believe that the school food programs should be guaranteed through provincial initiatives rather than be a patchwork of philanthropic programs. 

The federal government has also been consulting on developing a nation-wide school food program and, while committed to developing a plan, has not yet acted on it. The Coalition for Healthy School Food has been advocating for years for a universal food program. In February, the federal Economic and Social Development Council reported that, while school food programs exist in one form or another in all provinces and territories, they are currently reaching only about 21% of school aged children and youth.

Connecting with you 

Are you following IPE/BC on Facebook and Twitter (@publicedBC ? If not, we hope you will. We’re in the process of determining whether Mastodon and Tribel would also be good social media tools for our institute and will keep you posted. If you have any social media suggestions for us, please send them along.  

Please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@PROTECTED. We’d be happy to hear from you and would welcome your suggestions and feedback. If you’re interested in writing a blog post for IPE, don’t hold back. We’re always looking for new contributers to share their perspectives. Also, we’d love to hear from you regarding articles, books, research reports, etc. written by you or others, that we can add to the IPE/BC Commons. 

Feel free to share our newsletter with your friends and contacts and encourage them to subscribe as well.