Re: B.C. Liberal leader goes on remote control with tech sector campaign stop in Nanaimo, May 4.
Here is one reason why I am not voting for the provincial Liberals. Like, ever.
As you may know our school, Rutherford Elementary, is being closed. When our community tried to get support from the Ministry of Education to help us fight to keep our vital, well-attended school open, officials would tell us ‘local boards make local decisions.’ Well this is how our local board had to operate: 10 years of deferred maintenance under the Liberals means that routine maintenance of schools was offered as a grant, lottery-style. So yes, our school is in disrepair. The cost to upgrade Rutherford Elementary was deemed to be more expensive than building an addition to a school four kilometres away, so our local board decided to close our school in 2018 and we will now have to drive our children to the built-on school, or to the other two schools that will need to take our kids. These schools are all currently running over capacity and will need five portables to accommodate our kids and because of the space necessary since the Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate teachers that were illegally stripped out of classrooms by Christy Clark 15 years ago.
The ministry could have chosen to upgrade Rutherford, but instead they gave our district $1.2 million for the addition to Frank J Ney Elementary.
I am very frustrated about this situation since my two younger children will need me to drive them to and from school and I will be tied to my kids’ school schedules. In a year and a half, when Hammond Bay Road is even more clogged with congestion, you can thank the Liberals. Every time you hear Clark talk about balanced books think about how she did that – it was through cuts and closures and downloading of costs to parents and everyone else in this province.
K’reen Kerr, Nanaimo