To the Editor,
Re: B.C. Liberals drive province into ground, Letters, Feb. 16.
It’s negotiation time again, as evidenced by B.C. Teachers’ Federation advertising and the overtly political letters from activist teachers.
Daniel Companion identifies himself almost immediately as a “long time teacher yet again mired in conflict”.
He reinforces his activist credentials by revealing he began poisoning the workplace atmosphere against the newly elected B.C. Liberal government 10 years previously.
Companion then launches a largely fact-free diatribe regarding the conditions in schools using emotive words such as “crumbling”, “bursting”, “overcrowding” and referring to technology 20 years out of date.
Most scurrilously, he trots out the old socialist lie regarding private schools, by which he means those not completely controlled by his union. Separate or religion-based schools do not divert funding from state schools, in fact they subsidize state schools by providing an often superior quality of education, while receiving just half the funding of their state school counterpart.
Parents choose to pay the entirety of ‘public school property taxes’ while receiving only half of it back for their own children’s education.
While shooting the FSA messenger, Companion admits separate schools “perform better” and then declares himself “ashamed”. And well he should be.
Per student funding has doubled since 2001 and last October it was announced that $300 million would be provided to build or upgrade 19 major schools.
Yet despite declining enrolments and expanding funding, our students are leaving school less literate and less prepared for the workplace. As always, the BCTF wants more while continuing to offer us less in return.
Randy O’Donnell
Nanaimo