Patti Bacchus (former VSB Chair) writes in the Vancouver Observer to list candidates and outline issues in the upcoming vote. She promises a candidate review next week.
Candidates:
- Vision: Mike Lombardi, Allan Wong, Joy Alexander, Ken Clement, Theodora Lamb.
- NPA: t.b.a. Sept 6.
- Vancouver Green Party: Janet Fraser, Estrellita Gonzalez and Judy Zaichkowsky.
- COPE: Diana Day
- One City Vancouver: Carrie Bercec and Erica Jaaf.
- Unaffiliated: Jamie Lee Hamilton.
Issues:
- Hiring teachers, settling timetables
- School closures, school building
- Seismic upgrades
- Band & string program
- French Immersion — restore cut space, add more
- Special learning resources
- Support for poorer students
- VSB relationships
Three topics are missing in this list of issues:
A) Salaries & Benefits of Teachers
With well over 30% of all taxes going into education, and of that 90%+ going to salaries & benefits one needs to ask: Are salaries & benefits appropriately set? Where’s the policy to grade teachers A-F, like the kids? That means some awesome teachers will get significant raises, some a pay cut and some fired.
Where is the merit based teachers’ salary debate? We cannot merely state it is based on “seniority” as that system based on socialism failed a long time ago. Why not start teachers on a lower scale but ramp up higher for truly excellent teachers ?
B) Grade 12 really required for all ?
Where the debate to have a certificate after grade 10 for some less academically inclined kids ? Many a truck driver, hair dresser, plumber or electrician doe snot need 12 years of education, and should rather be routed into trades at age 16. Where’s this debate ?
C) Monetizing valuable land
Where’s the debate on monetizing the very valuable land base most VSB schools sit on ? Both UBC and SFU decided to lease off some of their land for commercial or residential condos to inject millions into their endowment funds. Why is this not debate in Vancouver, and that cash used to hire more teachers or aides, reduce class sizes and pay sizable rewards for truly excellent teachers ?
A) Grading teachers, whose “output” is educated students, not widgets or units of sales is pretty challenging given the variety of socio economic backgrounds of the students. Fraser Institute rankings of schools are junk science. As for starting teachers on a lower scale, my information may be out of date but last I heard it was a 12 year progression from starting salary to the top rate for teachers. Sounds like a good deal for taxpayers since I’m sure they learn the gig in a few years.
B) Agreed that updating in this area is long overdue. The world has changed, the education system has not. This is a management and leadership issue far more than a teacher issue.
C) The government getting involved in land decisions terrifies me, when I think of False Creek North sold for 80 million less environmental cleanup and taxpayer financing subsidies, a billion plus dollar development, and False Creek South’s Olympic Village losing substantial taxpayer money in a prime location in one of the hottest real estate markets on the planet. There’s no debate because most taxpayers don’t even consider selling the land.
No city, province or school board should sell land ever. They should lease it. Selling False Creek for a pittance was indeed a grave mistake. But we can learn from it and decide what is best going forward.
VSB land is worth BILLIONS. It is a high priority in my opinion that VSB trustees look at how to monetize this land. Leasing it for 99 years like SFU or UBC is a good model to study. Schools could be on the bottom 2-3 floors of a 28 story tower on some locations could they not ? Or on a 6-8 story building or one of 4 mid-rises. Many options to consider rather than letting land sit foul, or schools empty over 50% of the time ( counting weekends, days off and evenings).
At 4% of say $2B land value that is $80M a year that could be injected into the school system for more teachers, seismic upgrades, small classroom sizes etc
LOL, are we to expect an unbiased review?