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To Clark, Fassbender, Iker, Bacchus and those in your employ.

• When you increase the MSP rates and cause budget shortfalls, you attack my children.
• When you deny a French Immersion spot at my local school for my son, you attack my child.
• When you call a strike, you attack my children.
• When you slow down the rate of seismic upgrading to schools, especially my child’s school, you attack my child.
• When your toxic negotiations rub off on my children leaving them cynical, you attack my children.
• When you attack my children in these ways, you attack me.

And I am not alone in this feeling. You attack us all.

Stop it.

I just emailed the text below to the Premier, Minister of Education, the head of the BCTF and the BCSPEA.

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There’s a straightforward way to solve the dispute between teachers and government. This solution has the benefit of actually helping children, meeting basic goals of both the government and the union.

I suspect that the government is being so weird about pay because paying the teachers more does not guarantee better results in the classroom. If a teacher receives an x% raise, it does not improve the classroom outcomes (e.g. numeracy and literacy) without other support.

No one who’s paid attention to an elementary school’s student population has missed the fact that there’s a problem with special needs and behaviour issues. Solving the special needs problem and general behaviour issues would benefit all students. When I asked my own child why she was having trouble with percentages, she blamed herself for not asking enough questions and then cited classroom distractions. Logically, fewer distractions lead to better learning with the same teachers.

Contract Solution

Enshrine funding to handle Special Needs (i.e. double the staff asap and then study how to assess true resource requirements needs based on case loads). Do not let the Boards of Education use the money for anything else.

Give the teachers a raise that’s a slight tick above what the best deal to other unions was. (No employer is going to bump one unionized group higher without serious justification.)

Goals Met

• Teachers’ work lives improve
• All kids’ learning improves
• Special Needs kids receive more help and are less disruptive
• The government looks like they care about all the kids and holds the raises to something defensible.

What are you waiting for?

I always knew I’d learn a lot being a parent, but this is ridiculous.

At time of writing there’s a labour dispute between the BCTF (teacher’s union) and the BC Provincial government (employer). Representatives from each side of the dispute have said their actions are “for the children.” I’m not sure to which children they are referring, but it sure can’t be the ones currently attending school. Maybe it’s some theoretical bunch of children they expect to serve in the future.

So, stop saying you’re doing it for the children.

Field trips, particularly those at the end of the year, are of serious interest to the students. The rotating strikes, work to rule and a partial lockout is a cluster-f that has left these field trips in serious jeopardy of happening.

It would be reasonable for parents to step in to handle supervision of field trips (assuming enough of us could get time off and juggle schedules). This would help keep the dreck of this labour dispute from the kids. Due to impact on our work life, it keeps the parents inconvenienced, raising awareness of the dispute to voters and taxpayers.

However, once you dive into the world of liability and regulations and union rules and so forth, there are only a couple of conclusions one can make.

1. Parents are irresponsible, criminal-minded, cannibalistic baby-eating creatures from 9 AM to 3 PM. No board of education will entrust students to parents during school hours without a school board employee present. Of course after 3 PM we parents are back to our normal selves.

2. None of the regulations allow for the normalization of child experiences at school during a labour dispute. If the Ministry of Ed and the BCTF were really interested in the kids, they’d force the parents to cover curriculum at home, but retain the experiences we can’t replicate. I can teach my daughter fractions, but I can’t simulate the shared learning experience of a field trip with her class.

If the government and union can make up rules regarding lockouts and strikes on the fly, could they please let parents take the kids on field trips?

This is a labour dispute. Plain and simple. The provincial government has an obligation to educate children. They need teachers to do it. Teachers have a union. It is entrusted by its members to obtain the best benefits and salaries possible for its members. The government wants to obtain the required services of teachers for the lowest overall cost possible. See Unifor for auto workers, CUPW for the posties and BCTF for the teachers. Same problem, different alphabet soup.

However, the product is the development and education of children. This is not a negatively impacted EBT (Earnings Before Taxes) or ROI (Return on Investment) situation.

Some of these children will be managing and operating the health care system of the future — a system we’ll all need.

I just sent this in email to Clark, Fassbender, Iker and Marchbank. I’d rather be working on real work.

Hi,

I’m a parent, a PAC Chair and a citizen. I think the whole lot of you are out of your heads. (This is the polite version of what I think.)

If you want an agreement that isn’t the result of more legislation, please hire a good mediator and go to binding arbitration right away.

You lot ARE harming the children and ARE hurting the parents. And guess what? We can’t do a damn thing. (Unless of course you invite me to help bridge the gap, but a real mediator would do a better job.)

I look forward to hearing on Tuesday morning that you’ve agreed on a mediator and binding arbitration.

– Rob.

It’s a sad day when parents can’t cook food for their own children.

Last night at Henry Hudson Elementary, I presided over the death of a hot lunch program provided by the parents of Hudson since the end of World War II.

The meeting was our regular monthly PAC (Parent Advisory Council) meeting and the week before the PAC Executive had been made aware of the new improved regulations. See http://www.hudsonpac.ca/lunch-fundraiser-issues-and-concerns/ for details.

I won’t bore you with the details, but the kitchen facilities (which are good for the day care that operates in the school starting at 3:01 PM) are not good enough for a Food Safe certified group of parents to prepare and serve food (which met nutritional guidelines) at lunch. Were the upgrades to the facilities to be done, the cost would render the program non-viable.

So there’s the potential to kiss about $25,000 per annum of fundraising goodbye. No other fundraising activity had the features of being widely used, revenue positive, popular with the children and community building.

So, we will soon send the children off to a seismically unsafe building, with bathrooms that are horrible (Next year the plan is to have 80 kindergarten kids and 2 stalls; I hope they buy more mops.)

But, thank God, they’ll be no chance for them to be poisoned at lunch time by their own parents.

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Robert Ford is PAC Chair at Hudson Elementary. This blog post represents his own views and is not to be mistaken for anything but his own expression.

Dear Ms Clark and Mr Fassbender,

I think I’m becoming a frequent writer. Just the other day I talked about school board budgets. Now I write to you about the Teachers’ Job Action.

Can you please, please, please get a grip on this? I suggest going immediately to arbitration because there’s not a mouse’s chance at Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) Convention that you’ll be able to come to a deal with the court cases against the Province. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-teachers-federation-wins-2m-in-damages-from-province-1.2513211) Despite the appeal, these judgments are the 800-pound pink gorilla at the negotiating table that can’t be ignored.

Just to be clear, I’m a parent and PAC Chair and we’re not finished Day 1 and we’re feeling the effects of the issues with the teachers not willing to be at an event with an Administrator present.

Please. Make this stop.

– Rob.

I emailed this to these folks on Easter Sunday 2014.

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To Ms Clark, Mr. Fassender and Mr de Jong,

I am writing to you three regarding funding for Education. I am, honestly, spitting mad and I am working hard to stay focused, logical and professional. I am currently the PAC Chair at Hudson Elementary in Vancouver and I’ve had 5 years in this role and have some experience with the school system beyond just being a dopey parent.

I also have met you, Christy, at a child’s birthday at a bowling alley before you returned to politics. I think of you first as a Mom.

Anyway, enough personal background. It seems every school board is struggling.
http://www.canada.com/mobile/iphone/story.html?id=92495136-000d-4f35-a2a2-29048afe1a8e

You three are part of the problem. Finance Minister: how does it make sense to raise MSP rates, negotiate/legislate a contract with teachers and others, then not cover the increase? You are the funding source. If you raise a cost, you must cover the cost. My employer covered the MSP cost and either raised prices or found savings or took a hit on profit. In the case of a public servant like a teacher, there’s no business model underneath where school boards can raise taxes or reduce costs without impacting the children.

How do you three not see this?

My theory is that you think the school boards have hidden pet projects like studying the effects of gamma rays on children’s minds during recess. I think after all the budget cuts that have happened in the past few years, all the pet projects are gone. If you come to my daughter’s school you’ll find nothing much left except the classroom teachers. (I won’t even tell you how bad the bathrooms are.) Worse, there’s insufficient support for kids with special needs. (I know of one family leaving due to lack of capacity to support a common learning disability.)

I urge the three of you to spot politicking. Don’t balance the budget on the backs of children. If the school boards are mis-managing the money, as your behaviour indicates, then dive into the school boards’ books, find the problem and fix it.

I suspect however, you will find an education system that’s starved for funds to cover the basics.

If you don’t invest in education, you better invest more in law enforcement and prisons.

Please, don’t write me back, cover the cost increases you are trying to pass to the School Boards.

– Rob.

Dear Mr Fassbender,

The recent 8.2 quake in Chile has inspired me to follow up my email from March 30, 2014 with some further suggestions on how to cost-effectively accelerate the seismic upgrading process of BC Schools.

I totally understand your hesitation due to the fact a project like this could get out of control on costs very easily. Also, since there’s no way to know when the project has to be done (i.e. when does a big earthquake next occur?) there’s a normal human tendency to defer.

I am a project manager and controlling the scope of the project is the key way to keep costs under control. There are three types of projects.

1. Something new that will generate new revenue (e.g. LNG plants)
2. Something new that will reduce costs (e.g. replacing aging computer systems)
3. Regulatory or Safety projects (This is how I classify seismic upgrading)

Type 3 projects are the least fun because there’s no real ROI. In the case of replacing schools you might see some reduction in maintenance and heating costs over time, but it’s not a big win.

The other problem is that you are faced with is the adding on of extras. For example, rescuing heritage buildings, adding capacity in tight neighbourhoods or adding community centre types of facilities are but three potential areas for scope creep.

But, here’s your solution. Find the money to replace the buildings that are unsafe (unless remediation of a building is cheaper). Tell each district that is your plan. For all schools that can be replaced, without expanding capacity beyond about 15%, and without special requirements, move them to the top of the list in order of danger. Start these replacements right away. For schools with “special requirements” you can advise districts that they have to justify and fund the extras.

Wouldn’t this meet the need for speed on this project and keep the scope from expanding?

I look forward to your response.

Dear Mr. Fassbender,

It is with shock and dismay I read in that you are thinking that school districts now have to pay half of the costs for seismic upgrades.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/school-districts-to-pay-half-the-costs-of-seismic-upgrades-1.2590704

This flies in the face of past commitments by both Premier Campbell and Premier Clark.

http://bc.ctvnews.ca/parents-skeptical-about-584m-promise-to-seismically-upgrade-schools-1.1229728

Plus, this doesn’t make sense. The school boards receive virtually all funding from the provincial government. Therefore to say they have to pay for half of something is like me giving a $5 allowance to my son and then saying he has to pay for half the next plumbing repair bill in the house.

Also, by changing the tone on this you just made a major delay in getting the work done.

Also, I’m still stunned by the fact that this entire seismic upgrade problem is not being tackled as one big project like a bridge or an event like the Olympics. I say this because once you get this done, it won’t recur for 100 years. Also, the funding for this should not be part of general revenue as it’s a special event.

So, here’s what you need to do.

1. Realize that we’re at risk of having a lot of kids killed by old buildings that won’t last in an earthquake. Frankly I expect you to be in the front lines pulling children’s corpses from a pile of brick along with me. Did you not see what’s happened in LA just recently?

2. Make a list of all buildings that need work. Ask each school district to deposit their current capital surpluses (if any) into a central account. Start putting money in the account from your budget. Get the Lottery Corporation to start a special lotto to raise money directly for that account.

3. Negotiate a crazy good deal with builders and repair people. Insist on bulk discounts.

It’s this simple. Seriously. It’s just work.

Stop the us-and-the-rubbish with the school boards. If you stand up and say “we fix it now and this is how” you will win.

Robert Ford
Parent of child at Henry Hudson Elementary in Vancouver. Built 1911-12.