Education - Issue No. 17 - Monday, December 10, 2001

2001 Legislative Session: 2nd Session, 37th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
MINUTES AND HANSARD

Present: Wendy McMahon, MLA (Chair); Reni Masi, MLA (Deputy Chair); Elayne Brenzinger, MLA; Brenda Locke, MLA; Richard Lee, MLA; Tom Christensen, MLA; Karn Manhas, MLA; Richard Stewart, MLA; Jenny Kwan, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: Sheila Orr, MLA; Rob Nijjar, MLA

1. The Chair called the meeting to order at 1:06 p.m.

2. The following witnesses made statements and answered questions:
    1) Katherine Wagner
    2) Franklin Covey Canada Ltd.
        Peter Johnston, Susan Chambers, Mike Suto
    3) Burnaby District Community School Advisory and Coordinating Committee
        Gary Begin, Tracie Buzza, Melody Marbach
    4) British Columbia School District Continuing Education Directors Association
        Louise Thorburn
    5) Burnaby Teachers Association
        Karen Williams
    6) Coquitlam Teachers Association
        Kathleen Thomson
    7) Suzanne Psota
    8) Association for Community Education in British Columbia; John Maclure Community School Parent Advisory Council
        Terry Stobbart
    9) Technical University of B.C.
        Kevin Shong
    10) School District 33, Chilliwack
          Silvia Dyck, Susan Boisvert
    11) Western Society for Children with Birth Disorders
          Sanda Turner
    12) Judy Shirra
    13) Coquitlam School District
          David Oborne
    14) Understanding the Early Years Project
          Eileen Grant
    15) Langley Teacher-Librarian Association
          Jade Graber
    16) Nurse Educators Council of British Columbia
          Maxine C. Mott
    17) B.C. Teachers of English Language Arts
          Yvonne Price, June James
    18) Murray Martin

3. The Committee recessed from 5:33 p.m. until 6:14 p.m.

4. The following witnesses made statements and answered questions:
    19) Helen Ho, Vicky Taylor, Caleb Taylor, Jason Ho
    20) Art Uhl
    21) Carolyn Shiau
    22) Burnaby Primary Teachers Association
          Megan Hardie
    23) Susan Bartleman, Bill Bartleman
    24) Richard Stock
    25) Computer-Using Educators of B.C.
          Ben Vriend
    26) Board of School Trustees, School District 43, Coquitlam
          Barb Hobson, Laureen Doerksen
    27) Harold Daykin
    28) Burnaby Multicultural Society
          Ray Power
    29) Sprott-Shaw Community College
          Dr. Cyril Okoye, Cal Purcell
    30) Maureen Dockendorf

5. The Committee considered the report writing process.

6. Resolved, That the Committee hire a consultant to assist the Committee in the report-writing process (Brenda Locke).

7. Ms. Kwan moved — That public hearings for the Committee be extended by one extra day in Vancouver.

The motion was defeated on division.

8. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 10:07 p.m.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE
ON EDUCATION

Clerk:	Anne Stokes
Committee Staff:	Dorothy Jones (Administrative Assistant)

Witnesses:	Susan Bartleman Bill Bartleman Gary Begin (Burnaby District Community School Advisory and Coordinating Committee) Susan Boisvert (President, District Parent Advisory Council, Chilliwack School District 53) Tracie Buzza (Burnaby District Community School Advisory and Coordinating Committee) Susan Chambers (Franklin Covey Canada Ltd.) Harold Daykin Maureen Dockendorf (Principal, Blakeburn Elementary School) Laureen Doerksen (Superintendent, Coquitlam School District 43) Silvia Dyck (Chair, Chilliwack School District 33) Jade Graber (Langley Teacher-Librarian Association) Eileen Grant (Understanding the Early Years Project) Megan Hardie (Burnaby Primary Teachers Association) Helen Ho Jason Ho Barb Hobson (Chair, Coquitlam School District 43) June James (B.C. Teachers of English Language Arts) Peter Johnston (Franklin Covey Canada Ltd.) Melody Marbach (Burnaby District Community School Advisory and Coordinating Committee) Murray Martin Dr. Maxine Mott (Nursing Educators Council of B.C.) Dr. David Oborne (Assistant Superintendent, Coquitlam School District 43) Dr. Cyril Okoye (Sprott-Shaw Community College) Ray Power (Burnaby Multicultural Society) Yvonne Price (B.C. Teachers of English Language Arts) Suzanne Psota Cal Purcell (Sprott-Shaw Community College) Carolyn Shiau Judy Shirra Kevin Shong (Technical University of British Columbia) Terry Stobbart (President, John Maclure Community School Parent Advisory Council; Association for Community Education in B.C.) Richard Stock Mike Suto (Franklin Covey Canada Ltd.) Caleb Taylor Vicky Taylor Kathleen Thomson (President, Coquitlam Teachers Association) Louise Thorburn (B.C. School District Continuing Education Directors Association) Sanda Turner (Western Society for Children with Birth Disorders) Art Uhl Ben Vriend (President, Computer-Using Educators of B.C.) Katherine Wagner (Trustee, Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows School District 42) Karen Williams (President, Burnaby Teachers Association)

W. McMahon (Chair): Good afternoon. My name is Wendy McMahon. I'm the MLA for Columbia River–Revelstoke and the Chair of this committee, the Select Standing Committee on Education. Before having the members introduce themselves, I'll just make a few remarks about the committee and the work that we have been asked to do by the Legislative Assembly.

On August 27, the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia asked the Select Standing Committee on Education to consider ways to improve access, choice, flexibility and quality in the kindergarten-to-grade 12 public education system and to consider initiatives to strengthen the universities, colleges, institutes and on-line learning agencies that make up B.C.'s post-secondary education system. The committee was also instructed to prepare a report of its observations and recommendations for tabling in the Legislature prior to February 28, 2002.

The members of this committee agree that education is of critical importance to everyone in British Columbia. Education not only contributes to each individual's sense of personal value and well-being, but it also provides our communities with the knowledge and skills that will sustain us socially and economically into the future.

The question is this: what kind of education systems and policies will best serve British Columbians and British Columbia in this era of increased globalization, competition and technical innovation? Whether you are an educator, a student, a parent, an administrator, an employer or an interested citizen, the committee wants to hear your recommendations on improving elementary, secondary and post-secondary education in B.C. to better enable us to meet these challenges. This is why we're here today.

We've had a number of committees throughout the province. We've been in Surrey, Dawson Creek, Cranbrook, Kelowna, Victoria, Queen Charlotte City, Houston, Prince George, today Port Coquitlam and tomorrow Vancouver. We started in November, and we are accepting written submissions until January 4, 2002.

For the information of presenters, these hearings are being recorded and transcribed by the Hansard staff who are sitting to my right. The transcripts of today's meetings will be available on the committee's webpage. Copies of the committee's terms of reference and other information about the Legislative Committee process are also available at the information table behind you there or beside you.

I'll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves, and we'll start down at my far right with Elayne.

R. Stewart: Good afternoon. Richard Stewart, the MLA for Coquitlam-Maillardville.

K. Manhas: Good afternoon. My name is Karn Manhas. I'm the MLA for Port Coquitlam–Burke Mountain. It's great to be here — home — in the tri-cities, especially here in Port Coquitlam.

B. Locke: My name is Brenda Locke, and I'm the MLA for Surrey–Green Timbers. Good afternoon.

W. McMahon (Chair): We'll start our presentations. Our first presentation today is from Katherine Wagner. We've allotted 15 minutes. If you finish earlier, we'll be happy to ask some questions. If you speak right to your 15-minute time limit, then we'll go on to the next presenters.

K. Wagner: Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the select standing committee. My name is Katherine Wagner. I have two children in public school. I have also been an elected trustee for the last five years in Maple Ridge. Previous to that, I was chair of Parents for Schools of Choice, a local group representing several hundred families. I am also a founding director of a public education policy research society, the Society for the Advancement of Excellence in Education.

Is the primary goal of public education socialization, equity of opportunity, shaping good citizens, academic skills, employability skills or a combination of the above? At random ask a member of the public or a parent what the goals of public education are and you are likely to get a different answer to the one that many educators will provide. These differences underscore so many issues. Therefore, our first challenge in reforming public education is stating clearly what we expect students to gain in the course of 13 years of publicly funded education.

I believe very strongly that first and foremost we must agree that virtually every child should be educated in the "basics" — that he is able to read, write, use technology and problem-solve effectively. I include in this group almost all children with special learning needs. Research shows that we should be able to achieve this basic level of education for 98 percent of our children. This is the necessary foundation for all the other goals of education. A literate child has the

essential tools to access the world around him. A literate child can make choices about his learning. A literate child reads. A literate child has the passport to a productive life and becomes a more effective citizen.

Socioeconomic status and special learning needs are challenges to be met but are not necessarily predictors of outcomes. A child that struggles with reading, writing and/or problem-solving knows that they are not keeping up. These children drop out mentally long before they drop out physically. In a global economy there are fewer and fewer opportunities for those who do not complete high school.

You have been told by other presenters not to lose sight of equity goals when confronted with witnesses who are asking for more of a focus on academics. I believe very strongly that individual achievement and equity goals are not mutually exclusive goals.

We need to focus on core goals for our education system. There are many examples of excellence in our system. However, we are asking our schools and classrooms to do more and more, and in the end, something has to give. Everyone has an idea about what the schools can or should be doing, but they forget that in any given year a child only spends approximately 10 percent of their time in school. I must stress that it is the system itself, not the individuals working hard within it, that is the barrier to improvement.

I believe that the biggest threat we currently face to the existence of public education is the exodus of students and families. The number of home and privately schooled students in this province is increasing dramatically, while the overall population of school-aged children is declining. We need to determine why families are leaving and find ways to meet their needs and attract them back to our public schools.

There is much that we can learn from other jurisdictions where they are successfully meeting this challenge. There is a documented body of evidence that we must consider while at the same time ensuring that we build our own research capacity. Sound policy research must be supported and the results communicated clearly to our policy-makers.

We do not have adequate systems in place to replicate success. For example, there are schools and programs that serve at-risk students successfully. We must more widely and consistently share these practices, and this is an area where the Ministry of Education can and should expand its role.

Accountability. Accountability is one of those overused words that is subject to widely differing interpretations and definitions. Everyone agrees that we need more accountability, but few involved with the education system agree on what that means. I believe that accountability is the gathering, dissemination and use of information and data in a goal-setting and evaluation cycle. It is critical that we gauge the impact on student achievement of dollars spent so that we can allocate finite resources effectively. It isn't enough that we share information and data. That knowledge must be put into context, shared and acted upon to be meaningful. I support accountability contracts, or performance plans, as many refer to them, as a good move in this direction. However, a commitment to effective accountability will require fundamental changes to our system of delivering public education.

First, put responsibility and accountability in the same place. Accountability for student learning must be in place at every level of the education system, from the classroom teacher all the way up to the superintendent and board. We need more clearly defined roles and responsibilities and the tools to show the public, parents, students and other stakeholders that what we say is being done is in fact being done.

Second, ensure that those who have responsibility also have the ability to make related decisions.

Third, spread responsibility out. Include parents and, where appropriate, students in decision-making at the school level. In the interest of student achievement, I believe it is time to consider devolving some governance control to the school level through elected, accountable school councils that are composed of parents, staff and community members. School-based decision-making can be on an opt in–opt out basis, recognizing that different schools and communities are at different levels of readiness for this responsibility. Rather than replacing or removing school boards and district staff, this would change much of the focus at the district level from administrative to instructional support.

Fourth, while evaluation is currently top down, professional staff should be able to evaluate the services and support that they receive. Parents and students, as clients of the system, should also be given opportunities for evaluation.

Fifth, offer more choices and options for learners, educators and families. I could actually speak about this all afternoon. I'd just like to say a community is not arbitrary lines drawn on a catchment-area map. It is the school itself and the people who work, learn and volunteer there. With choice and school-based decision-making, there can be a greater sense of ownership.

Teacher quality. Teachers and students are the heart of our education system. Skilled instruction is proven by research to be the single most important factor in the success of our students. We must put more resources into pre-service teacher education programs and ensure quality, focused professional development, especially in the areas of instructional strategies, classroom management and assessment literacy.

Public policy. In order to reflect community values, elected trustees must be able to freely discuss important public policy issues — for example, class size and supports available to students. Trustees currently have difficulty discussing or dealing with many issues publicly because of the blurring of the lines between public policy and employee bargaining. We must ensure that our elected representatives have the ability to manage the system on behalf of the public, our constituency; and parents and students, our clients.

Advocacy. I believe the key to ensuring that every child is successful is in ensuring that every child has an adult to look out for his or her needs ahead of all other considerations. A child with an adult looking out for

his or her interests above all else is a critical goal that contributes to both excellence and equity outcomes. This is a much longer topic than I have time to discuss here, so I invite you to visit my webpage, www.schooltrustee.com, where I have posted two articles which I've written on the topic of parent advocacy and special needs students.

Community schools. Our schools are public assets and should be available to our communities outside of school hours.

In conclusion, discussion of a need for change in public education is not criticism. It is the recognition of an ongoing reality. Without change, there is no growth. Change must also be continual. It is not something you do once. Our education system does not do change well. We need to build into the system the capacity for change through cycles of assessment, goal-setting for continuous improvement, measurable targets and data collection and evaluation.

Responding positively and productively to change is about learning. In effect, we must ensure that our system adopts and integrates the values of lifelong learning that we promote.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you, Kathy. Do we have any questions? No questions. Thanks so much.

Our next presentation is by Franklin Covey Canada. We have Mike Suto, Peter Johnston and Susan Chambers presenting.

P. Johnston: Thank you, Madam Chair and hon. committee members, for giving us the opportunity to present to you today. I'm Peter Johnston from Premier–Franklin Covey, which was formerly a Franklin Covey company. We'll talk about that in a minute. Mike Suto is from Premier, and Susan Chambers is from the Franklin Covey corporate division.

A brief history of our company. Up to about a month ago we were Premier, a Franklin Covey company, working in the educational firm, with Premier having access to about three million students throughout Canada.

I've been on board since September. I've left my high school, Fraser Heights Secondary. Mr. Masi was my first principal. Actually, he was just on the way out of Earl Marriott when he hired me as a first-year teacher.

I come from an educational background. I've been an administrator for the last seven years. I opened up Fraser Heights in North Surrey with one of my colleagues. I've been part of Premier, a Franklin Covey company since September.

What I've discovered, though, since the difference between Premier educational and Premier–Franklin Covey — the two different aspects of the company…. We've taken what has been a successful corporate model of implementation and brought it to the educational realm.

There are four key aspects that the Hon. Christy Clark has been talking about in terms of accountability: maximum local autonomy; more choices for parents, students and teachers; and, above all, and what is our focus and passion, first and foremost, student achievement, which we translate into student success. You can see that our Premier mission statement talks about the learning environment. It talks about and implements how every student can achieve.

Some of the things that we know — quickly, just to run through. We know that students are changing. Being in the educational realm, a company that deals exclusively with education and schools, we know that students have changed. Parents are more demanding. There's a greater sense of accountability throughout the whole system. As an administrator over the last seven years, I certainly have realized that.

Kids are thinking in different areas, in different aspects. They are also looking at things like new technologies that help them, on-line learning and different aspects of receiving their education. They are also more demanding on the teachers and the whole system. If they don't like a teacher, they tend to let you know real quick. The parents will let you know real quick if there's a problem with the instructional process within the classroom.

Having to deal with that is one of the things that I think, as a school that is considered a learning community…. If you look at the top educational experts across North America and the top corporate experts — Senge and Tom Peters and Drucker — you can see some of the quotes that they're talking about. A corporate model bringing into the educational model has to change a little bit because the language is different, but we're all talking about the same thing: we want to build learning communities, learning organizations.

To talk about change, you have to build in that capacity within the school system in order to be able to implement that change. Schools change rapidly. They're always under fire. We've changed dramatically. People think it's a slow process. It's maybe not always as fast as we'd like, but there is a constant change force that's always happening.

Now, if you look at the higher-level school leadership capacities, research shows that principals and teachers, as well as parents and students, have to be skilful leaders. Here's the change: we're including parents and students as skilful leaders. Shared vision results in program coherence. That means everybody is working together within that school-based community. Inquiry-based roles and actions reflect broad involvement. That's one of Dr. Linda Lambert's.

What happens is that with all these different educational experts, we go off to the superintendent's conferences. The Hon. Christy Clark was there in Victoria a couple of weeks ago. I was in P.E.I. I talked to CASA, ERDI and all the top superintendents across Canada. They all hear these wonderful experts, whether it's Lambert, Fullan, DeFour or whoever it happens to be at the time. They talk about collaborative cultures, bringing all the partners in education together.

What happens is that they leave those events and they don't have anything to attach it to. There is no implementation process. Who's going to implement all these wonderful ideas? The schools are left with one-hit wonders. There's one great Pro-D, and the teachers go back to their classrooms and teach the same way they've been teaching. The principals and vice-principals go back to their daily grind. The superintendents are dealing with and are overwhelmed with all the things, and they go back to their daily occupations. Nothing changes — or it appears that nothing changes. Things happen very slowly.

There are various models out there that you can attach a framework of change to. Fullan would talk about it. If you look here at Franklin Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, it's a model that you can attach a lot of this change to. What we've discovered right across Canada is that many districts have incorporated the seven habits within their framework of change, have used it as their template to overlay their strategic plan to change and have used those seven habits as their corporate model to start implementing that change. I can name you many, many school districts across Canada that have successfully done that.

Now, the assumptions are clear. If schools are going to improve, staffs must develop the capacity to function as what we would call a principle-centred learning community. In here are a lot of different assumptions. One of the assumptions is the vision that focuses on results, things that you're talking about as a ministry. We want accountability; we want results. We want actions. What is our vision of a school, and what do we hope for to become a school?

You can see the various seven-habits training models — four roles, strategic planning model — which attach that to the framework. We want to be able to build collaborative cultures, because we know that in order to implement change, it has to happen within the teaching and learning process. It happens in the classroom environment. Any form of change in education has to happen in the teaching-learning process within that classroom environment, so you need to build that expertise within that classroom. You have to be able to pool resources.

It's more critical that these training programs come on board throughout school districts, because now we're running into a drastic shortage of administrators and a drastic shortage of teachers. If you talk to the superintendents across Canada, they're saying that nobody wants to be a superintendent either. There's a drastic shortage throughout the whole system, and there's a desperate need for a training model for all those to be able to build that leadership capacity within the schools and the school district.

The other thing that we touched upon quickly is data-rich but information-poor. We have a lot of data. We have a lot of data from FSAs — all the different district data, all the different data that comes to the school and to the school administrator. It comes to our desks. Here it is. What do we do with it? How do we interpret it? How do we translate that into a growth or school improvement plan? Again, some of the training models that we can take from the corporate…. Of course, corporate areas take data all the time and are improving on data and looking at their numbers all the time. Educators are not accustomed to doing that. We're looking at our data and we can put it in an educational context, but we have to be able to translate it into a growth plan and translate it into improvement.

How do we do that? We want to build a successful school improvement plan. We talk about professional communities enhancing student achievement. You can see the correlation between what happens. A quality teacher and quality teaching translate into student achievement. Program coherence is districtwide, schoolwide. Technical resources and, of course, leadership — particularly principal leadership, which a lot of our programs focus on…. We look at how that translates. This is all based on data. This is all based on the gurus of education out there. You can pull up the research that will allow you to see how that translates into what the ministry's end result is: student achievement.

I'd like to pass on to Susan now to talk about how the corporate side of things works with increasing student learning or student achievement.

S. Chambers: I did want to make the linkage with what happens in the classroom and lifelong opportunities. Students versed in leadership, organizational and interpersonal communications skills do gain a competitive edge on several fronts when entering the job market for the first time and with continued career success and continued opportunities.

Employers value leadership skills to the extent that they do offer Franklin Covey training and development programs to their employees on an ongoing basis. A sampling of some of those organizations includes B.C. Hydro, Electronic Arts Ltd., Simon Fraser health region and Telus. Those are only a few of the many corporate clients that we work with across Canada.

Educational institutions across Canada are certified to deliver Franklin Covey leadership and communications training to their faculties and staff. A sampling includes Queens University, Royal Roads University, SFU, SAIT — Southern Alberta Institute of Technology — and the University of Calgary.

I wanted to leave you with this thought: people, business and opportunities are drawn to leaders, because they have learned the flexibility and interpersonal skills to compete in today's very competitive business environment.

P. Johnston: Thank you, Susan. We talked about the adult leadership and how we can build the educational leadership capacity within superintendents and principals. We also have a large component that Premier does with their student leadership component. That's been extremely popular, and Mike Suto would like to speak to that.

M. Suto: Thanks, Peter. [The presenter spoke Japanese.] I just wanted to throw a wrench into things.

W. McMahon (Chair): This is all being recorded by Hansard, so I'm sure they had a problem with that one. [Laughter.]

Actually, my name is Mike Suto, and I do the student achievement workshop based on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. The reason why I start my presentation out like this — I also start my student presentations like this — is because I explain to kids about the habits. It's not so much what you say but what you do. What you do becomes a habit, and that habit becomes your character.

It's kind of tough for me to talk about this in such a short time, because this has been my passion. We started the student program about two years ago. I was doing some volunteer work in my own community with youth leadership, and Premier–Franklin Covey approached me and said: "Look, we need to get this to kids. How are we going to do that?" We came up with a couple of delivery models. One is a one-day workshop. In front of you, you should have a light-blue workbook, a thin workbook.

With the light-blue workbook and the contents of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens I've had the good fortune to work with a few thousand students over the last two years. It was a full range of students, the high-achieving students, the ones that are going to go on to university, etc., all the way down to the other end — to the students at risk, as well — and everyone in between. That's what I feel is really the power of this material. It has relevance for everyone, regardless of your personal goals or your personal place in life. It just resonates with kids.

When we first started out with this, that was one of the big questions adults had for me: "Sure, that's fine. You've done it in companies and things like that, but are kids going to get this?" Kids get it. They understand this material really, really well. Actually, when I come to schools, I look into kids' eyes, and they're hungry for something to hold on to, something that's consistent. Peter was talking about the consistent changes, but what stays stable? That's what I love about this program. It does stay stable.

That's the one-day program, but there are also two other books, the teen book and the darker-blue workbook. That was material developed for teachers to be able to follow up with their students in the class. We also have training programs for teachers to become trained to deliver this material as well.

P. Johnston: I want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to bring this to you in such a short, really condensed, really fast-speaking time. I know your mandate is to make recommendations by consulting with educators, students, parents, administrators and others, on B.C. matters and measures to improve access, choice, flexibility and quality. If I could leave you with a couple of recommendations, I would like to leave you with two.

One is to allow a mechanism for the ministry to give a stamp of approval to various educational-based programs that you see here. The ministry in Ontario has just implemented a program where there is mandatory professional development for teachers and administrators. They have accepted, from private and public organizations, materials such as you see in front of you, as a possibility. They are going through a rigor of recommendations and coming through a process of allowing this to become part of a ministry-authorized professional development.

We have applied for that, and we've been successful in that application. In most of the provinces most of this material has been ministry authorized. Our product development team are all educators. Mike was a teacher-administrator, and I worked for the ministry in terms of writing. I was a project manager for the pre-E curriculum.

I consider this material outstanding in terms of material getting to the students and meeting the students' needs. If you could build up a mechanism where there was a way of stamping approval for materials such as this and allowing professional development to be stamped by the ministry, it would just give a little bit of extra emphasis for those teachers and professionals who are looking for educational professional development.

Lastly, if you could recognize the hurdles to implementation and think of people and systems — in other words, Covey and Senge — and think of how you're making these recommendations to the ministry and to the school districts…. I talk to my colleagues in the educational realm and in the corporate realm, and I ask: "How is this going to be implemented? How do you envision this?" It's nice to say, "Let's throw it back onto the school district," but I want to have you think about some sort of help. Maybe organizations outside the educational arena could help with that implementation process.

Thank you once again for giving us this opportunity, and good luck with your committee.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks so much for your presentation. Having been through the seven habits, I know it is a lot of information. You did a great job of condensing it for us in a short time frame.

Our next presentation this afternoon is Burnaby district community school advisory and coordinating committee — Gary Begin, Melody Marbach and Tracie Buzza.

G. Begin: My name's Gary Begin, and I am part of the Burnaby community school movement. With us today we have all of our seven community schools. One of the things that we do in our community, before we do anything at all, is to give each other a great big hug. They've come to give you a hug, so get ready. Enjoy. Go for it.

On behalf of the Burnaby school community, I'd just like to thank you for this opportunity to be able to come and share with you some of the things that we've been feeling about community schools. It was some 25 years ago that Burnaby embarked on the community school movement, and it was the marriage of the school district and the city council. It was a unique thing, because we've been together for 25 long years. We're not a fly-by-night operation. We're there to serve the children in our community, the adults and the businesses that make up Burnaby. We have seven different community schools located throughout the city of Burnaby.

We recognize that the Ministry of Education is looking at a new focus as to where it wants to go in the whole matter of student achievement, accountability, autonomy, flexibility and choice. As the government goes through the process of the provincial core services review and re-examines its role in providing direction and resources to programs within the Education ministry, we feel that we would like you to consider that community schools are an important part of the delivery of education throughout British Columbia.

We would encourage you to look at the kinds of things that we have done in our community, through the community school movement, that make it a strong, powerful place to deliver services to children in the classroom as well as in the community. The Burnaby school district and the city of Burnaby pioneered the community school model in response to a variety of issues in the years that have passed. The involvement of the Ministry of Children and Family Development has been part of the community school movement, of late.

It is our feeling that within the funding of community schools we would like to see the moneys that have been funnelled to us through the Ministry of Children and Family Development come directly to the community school movement through the Ministry of Education. It is also our belief that community schools are an important enough program that they deserve to have a line-item budget within the total budget of the Ministry of Education. Knowing we have just one ministry to deal with would make it so much easier in terms of trying to deliver the services to children.

From our community schools I have with me today different people that are going to share in the presentation. I have Tracie Buzza from Stride Avenue Community School, and she's going to talk about some of the programs.

What will the Liberal legacy be? What will the legacy from this government be? Let the legacy be that you overwhelmingly supported the efforts of community to be responsive to its needs within the community school model of partnerships.

The process of partnerships shares the cost and provides local solutions for local concerns. No one government can afford what we as a community and volunteers can contribute: time. Protect the partnership framework of the community school model that supports volunteers, parents and staff in their efforts to provide solutions for the basics — food, clothing, child care, affordable housing and lifelong learning for all — a child at a time, a family at a time and a community at a time.

As we transition from assistance to independence to leadership, let your legacy be that communities can build the capacity and develop assets that change lives. We are responsive. Our parents needed more child care to attend school and work, and we started a local day care registry. It's run by volunteers. As space allows, we will pursue grants for before- and after-school care, as we much need day care in order to support our parents.

Recent testing shows that our primary students are 30 percent more likely to require additional literacy support. We have parents, corporate sponsors, students and staff assisting with our literacy goals to ensure that we can provide these much-needed resources. We defined the need for a support group for women. With minimal staff facilitation and the help of parks and recreation, this group now meets regularly to support their needs and share their skills and talents. They have also now included some fundraising activities for the school. As you can see, the list goes on. This is only one list from our community schools. We have seven others. Each school is unique in its blueprint.

Personally, my family has benefited greatly from being involved with community schools. I have been home for 12 years raising our kids, and after setbacks with a car accident, struggles with my health and my children with special needs and learning needs and health concerns, I am ready to transition from home to work. I am lucky to have had an extended family who are here and who can help, but my transition was definitely aided by the support from my community school — a place to learn and connect.

Community schools provide connections for those families who may not otherwise have these resources, families and children who most likely would fall through the cracks. Each of our community schools count. For every dollar the government contributes, we generate three more. We're a good bargain. We are the best bang for the taxpayers' bucks, and more importantly, we are a good choice. We're a good choice for lifelong learning for our students and their achievements.

G. Begin: Also with me today is Melody from Maywood Community School. She's going to share with you some of the things that have happened to some of her people at her school.

M. Marbach: Good afternoon. Our community schools have played an essential part in enhancing educational programs, addressing social needs and improving the overall well-being of our children, families and communities. First we built. Then we maintained healthier, stronger and more resilient people,

families and communities. When these goals are met, children and families are happier. They're healthier, they're warm, they're clean, they're fed and they're clothed. Without these essential basics, the children in our communities would not be able to achieve their best while at school.

A friend I met in school a few years ago was struggling very hard to survive. She was struggling very hard to raise her two children alone. With the help and support of our coordinator and parents in the school who have since become her friends, she has been able to learn English and gain the self-esteem, confidence and skills needed to find work. She's employed full-time right now and doing great. Although she regrets not being able to be here today in person, she has asked me to share her story. Without the assistance and support that she received early on, she knows she wouldn't have been able to reach this wonderful point in her life.

In the words of another parent from our school, our community school is like a beaded necklace. If the string breaks, we would fall apart. We'd like your help to ensure that our string doesn't break. By working together, we can all make a difference.

G. Begin: You've heard about some of the programs that we offer in our schools, and you've also heard some of the personal testimony as to how they've affected individuals. Burnaby's community school model is based on the principles of community education. Our elementary schools function as neighbourhood centres for a network of community residents, government services, agencies and organizations committed to meeting community needs and expanding learning opportunities for all members of our community. Using schools as a neighbourhood community service centre is a practical, cost-effective way to take advantage of one of Burnaby's most significant capital investments, its school buildings, for its largest human investment, the residents of Burnaby.

Community schools have been instrumental in creating a sense of whole community in these seven neighbourhoods. They educate the children in the daytime, and they share knowledge. They are guided by the belief that successful programs and services respond to the child as part of a family, to the family as part of a neighbourhood and to that neighbourhood as part of the larger community of Burnaby. Our schools truly reflect what's going on, on the streets, in the apartments, in the shopping malls, throughout our community. They have become a lifeline for many, many people.

In our paper just issued on Saturday, Maywood Community School, where Melody comes from, was awarded one of ten special projects by the national school boards association of Canada. They've been asked to do a project on opening their doors to help new Canadians come into the school and feel at home and responsive to their community. This is special project that they're undertaking under the community school umbrella.

Our school are wonderful places, and as I've said earlier, we're not going to go away. We would just hope that your committee would see fit to include community schools as a line item within the ministry's budget so that we will not be left out there dangling from year to year, wondering where that extra set of funding comes from. We have a commitment in our community from the city council and the school board. There's equal, shared funding. Nobody backs out of it. It's been that way for 25 years. When we do something, each party agrees to that amount of money. The remainder of our resources comes to us from the Ministry, right now, of Children and Family Development and also from the community schools raising funds through the business community and other agencies.

We can do it better for you, far more cost-effectively. I just challenge you people to go outside the box and dream a little, as we did in our community in helping to make a more unified community, reaching out and touching the needs of our people. Thank you for this opportunity. We'd be happy to take any questions.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. Because of our time constraints, I'm sorry we're not going to be able to ask any questions today. You had the 15 minutes. I apologize for that.

Our next presentation is by the B.C. School District Continuing Education Directors Association, Louise Thorburn. It is a change from the agenda you have before you. We have a ten-minute presentation. Welcome, Louise.

L. Thorburn: Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to the group today.

One of the statistics that we frequently hear is the 25 to 30 percent of our young people who start school in kindergarten and after 13 years do not complete graduation. What happens to that 25 to 30 percent? Would you believe that 7,000 of them graduated last year through adult education, and the majority of those 7,000 graduated with the full 52-credit or, in some cases, the old 13-course graduation? For some, that meant acceptance into college or university. For others, it meant technical school or apprenticeship programs. Still others were able to enter the workforce, many of whom came back because they left school 20 years ago to take what was then a fairly high-paying but unskilled labour job in our forest industry. For many of those, their jobs disappeared, and they find themselves, at 45 and 50, unemployed and needing high school credentials in order to gain employment that will help them to sustain themselves and their families.

For others still, it meant being able to move from social assistance to self-sufficiency and to have pride in

their achievements and accomplishments. For others, it was a matter of being able to help their own children learn to read and write, to help them with their homework and to not have a feeling of low self-esteem because they were unable to assist their own children. Think about that. Every adult graduate is an improvement to our dropout rate.

One of the reasons that school district adult education is able to meet the needs of our learners is that we offer flexibility, a variety of pathways and a number of different venues. We're very, very aware of the different learning styles that students have, particularly our adults.

Our adult students come to us with more than their share of life challenges. Many of them come from a history of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Others have a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Many are trying to balance education with a low-paying job. They have other family responsibilities. Many of them have spouses; many of them have children. Many of them are single parents. For those individuals, flexibility is extremely important.

If you travel the province, you will find that continuing education in school districts has as many faces as there are communities, because every community is different. If you look at Vancouver Island, particularly up in the Duncan and Chemainus area, where they have been very, very dependent on the forest industry, you will find they have many, many full-time students. They're unemployed, and they're trying to transition into the workforce again. If you look at a community like Coquitlam, which is where I work, although we have many of those types of students, we also have many students that come back as adults because they left school at maybe grade 11 or partway through grade 12. Now they want to get back into going to college or university, and they come to upgrade marks. They maybe have math 11, but their mark was not sufficient to allow them entry into university or college.

One of the things that we are very familiar with is equivalency and prior learning assessment. When adults come, they come with life experience. We can take a look at someone who has been an electrician for a number of years and find the equivalencies with some of our appropriate grades 11 and 12 courses so we can give them credit for this past experience and past training.

We run programs in prisons, and we have many partnerships with employers in a variety of communities — employers who recognize that their employees need to upgrade their skills. In our age of technology many of the adults we deal with went to school before there was a computer in every classroom. For these adults, it's important to come back and gain those skills.

I have been part of a core review, which was a joint Ministry of Advanced Education and Ministry of Education committee. The core review started meeting four years ago. Our goals were to come up with common credentials so students could make an easy transition from college to school district. If they didn't need to graduate at the school district to get into a program in the college, they could take what they needed in the school district, go to the college, get credit for all of those things, take one college course and end up with their high school graduation.

The core review came up with four major tasks. Three of them have been accomplished, the Dogwood being one of them. Then the Ministry of Education chose to go further than that, and we decided that what was important was an accountability framework. We have been working on an accountability framework. A year and a half ago we went out and did educational audits, because it's very important to us that the money the ministry gives us is there, providing services for the adults that need these services.

We've had to be fairly innovative. A lot of areas in our province were in storefront schools. In those storefront schools it helps students. They have a greater sense of comfort. For some of them it's very intimidating to go back into a high school environment. It also means that we run daytime, evening, self-paced, structured, Saturday and, in some places, Sunday courses, so people who do have employment and who are on shift work are able to have the opportunity.

One of the things we are able to do in many of our areas is find innovative ways to help support the programs that we run — storefronts, for example. We have to lease the space. We have to find ways that are creative, through partnerships. In some instances we are able to offer other programs that in fact do make money and, through those revenues, help support many of the counselling programs that we run.

One of the things we're hoping to convince the Ministry of Education of is to look at the funding for apprenticeships. The way it works right now, once they're 19, they are no longer eligible for the under-19 funding, yet employers tell us that they have the most success with apprentices that are between 25 and 28. It would make good sense.

We try to make sure that we provide the opportunity for laddering and transitioning and tailor the programs to meet the needs of the adults we are trying to serve.

L. Thorburn: I didn't find out until this morning that I was able to be here, so I didn't have a written presentation.

One of the other problems we have is that almost all of us offer full-time vocational programming. However, because of rules that were set down some time ago, it was decided that while we are a public body and there is recognition of that, maybe we should have to go through PPSEC, which is the private post-secondary program, in order to be able to allow our students to get student loans to take these full-time programs leading to employment. What happens is that these students can't come to their local school dis-

trict, where they can take full vocational training through student loan, nor can they use the credits that the Ministry of Education gives in terms of the stamps they can achieve for post-secondary training, without going through a very expensive credentialing process through PPSEC. That's another of the things that we would like removed. It makes no sense, since we are a publicly funded and certainly well-scrutinized part of the school system.

In our storefronts, obviously, we do not have labs. We don't have equipment. We've had to be innovative. Again, that's where partnerships come in. We try and make arrangements for cooking labs and access to the auto shops either through partnership in the community or through a partnership with our high schools, where we are allowed to bring our students in at times when day-school students are not needing the facilities.

We are all very anxious to see that the funds that come to the school districts for adult education get spent on adult education. That is one of the reasons why we still have an accountability committee with two members from the Ministry of Education staff in Victoria. We have drafted a proposal, which we hope will be tested this year, to go out and make sure that we are in fact meeting the needs of those learners whom we all are dedicated to assist.

I would just like to thank you very, very much for the opportunity to speak to you today.

Our next presentation is the Burnaby Teachers Association, Karen Williams. Good afternoon.

Public school teachers say yes to accepting all children who come to public schools. We say yes to the ones who can read and the ones who can't. We say yes to students who come to school speaking a language other than English. We say yes to students who arrive without breakfast, and we say yes to those who have no lunch. We say yes to the ones whose clothes aren't suitable for the weather. We say yes to the students who are polite and to those whose behaviour doesn't meet normally acceptable standards. We say yes to the learning disabled, the developmentally challenged, the physically handicapped, the capable, the dependent, the rich, the poor, the traumatized, the well-adjusted, the hard to work with and the easy to like.

We are concerned that the Minister of Education either does not understand or does not completely comprehend the complexity to which we say yes. Otherwise, she could not possibly demand that public schools compete with private schools, as she was quoted as saying in the Vancouver Sun in mid-November. Public schools and private schools are completely different entities — apples and oranges, if you will.

Private schools say no to many children. They can say no to students with learning disabilities. They can say no to students who follow the wrong religion. They can say no to the ones whose families don't have enough money for tuition fees. They can say no to students whose behaviour is outside the norm. They can say no to students whose attendance records are poor. They can say no to the ones who don't conform. They can say no to those students who are not smart enough to achieve high grades. They can say no, and they do say no in many cases.

The public schools are for everyone, and we are proud to be public school teachers. We are not selective in our student enrolment. We take all comers. That's the way it is, and that's the way it should be.

Let us look back at our history. Before Canada became a democracy, there were private schools. Those children to whom society said no — children of the poor, children of religious minorities, children who were physically and mentally different from others — were unable to obtain an education, because private schools said no to them as well.

It was only with the advent of public education that democratic ideals and processes became embedded in our country and in the day-to-day lives of the people who live here. In fact, the fight for public education for all children was one of the original struggles of the democratic reformers of Upper and Lower Canada. This is no coincidence. They understood what Egerton Ryerson, the great Canadian educational reformer of the nineteenth century, understood: the only way to create a true democracy is to create a fully funded, fully supported public education system.

The nineteenth- and twentieth-century reformers were successful in their actions. We have in Canada and in British Columbia a public education system that ranks among the very best in the world. We hear a great deal of school and teacher bashing, but I believe that most of it is without substance. I suspect that over the last month and in your future hearings you have been and will be presented with plenty of evidence of what is being done right in the public education system.

I represent the teachers of Burnaby, and in Burnaby teachers are proud to work in the public school system. I am here on their behalf to share with you some of our concerns about the future of our system if present trends are unaltered, and we will suggest some ways it could be improved to meet the needs of both the students and the public.

First, we must say yes to ensure that all students' needs are met in our classrooms. For that to occur, teachers must be able to get to know and fully understand all of the learning needs of the children in their care. They must have the time to be able to work with each of those students in ways that are meaningful to the individual child. This can only happen if class sizes are regulated — at most at the current level for kindergarten to grade 3 and certainly smaller than the current class sizes for grades 4 to 12.

Imagine a class of 30 students. I choose 30 because in Burnaby that is the maximum number of students in a regular classroom for grades 4 to 7 and only one less than the maximum for grades 8 to 12.

In Burnaby many classes are at these maximum sizes. The children have one hour to learn a concept before they move on, to the next class in the case of a secondary school, or to the next topic in an intermediate class. At the most the teacher can spend only two minutes with each child, and that is only if the time is divided equitably and if the teacher doesn't have to give any direct instruction at the front of the class to the whole group.

Now imagine that one of the students is having difficulty with the topic and needs five minutes of the teacher's time. The question is: which of the other students will lose his or her precious two minutes with the teacher in order to accommodate that child?

Class size is one of the key ingredients to student success. Many studies have been done over the years which prove this. In one recent study in the United States, the student-teacher achievement ratio, or STAR, project followed groups of students from kindergarten to grade 12 and beyond. It found that students who were in small classes did significantly better than their peers who were not. This was not just in terms of better achievement but of better behaviour, discipline, citizenship and participation.

The benefits of smaller classes did not end there. This study found smaller class sizes also cut the gap between whites and Afro-Americans — a factor we might find significant with our aboriginal students — as well as lessening the proportion of students who went on to be charged with a criminal offence or to apply for welfare benefits. This study and many others like it show clearly the impact that class size has on student learning. If this is a government committed to student success, then this has to be a government committed to smaller class sizes.

Second, we must say yes to a school system that provides the human and learning resources that will enable our special needs students to achieve success as fully as they can. The number and types of special needs students in our schools is burgeoning. The current 4 percent cap on the number of special needs children that the ministry will recognize and pay for in no way represents the reality of our schools.

Due to advancements in medical science, children with life-threatening illnesses or birth defects are living past ages where in the past they would have succumbed. These children are now in our schools. For whatever reason, there is a marked increase in the number of students in our schools with autism or Asperger's syndrome, a type of autism. Attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are endemic in our school population. The children with mild cases of these disorders are not counted by the ministry as special needs. Try telling that to the classroom teachers who have these children in their rooms. Try telling that to the students who are struggling to understand a math concept when the teacher is too busy to help because she is trying to keep an ADD child in his or her seat.

The issue of class composition, what types of children are in each classroom, looms large in public schools. It is not an issue in the private schools, because if the child doesn't fit, the child can be removed from the school. Public school teachers don't want that to happen to our special needs children. We need the government to say yes, we will help keep these children in our schools, and we will do what is necessary to provide the resources to enable them to be successful.

We also want the government to say yes to teachers. We need to have our work supported and validated by those who set our salaries and working conditions. We know that British Columbia schools are among the finest in the world. We heard reports last week of a recent international study done for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development by the program for international student assessment. In that study, in which 32 countries participated, in reading, Canadian students 15 years of age came second only to students from Finland, another country with a strong commitment to public education. Canadian students also ranked fifth in science and sixth in math. British Columbia students did particularly well, exceeding the Canadian average in all three areas of study — math, science and reading.

This type of success does not happen by accident. It is a result of the joint effort of everyone involved in the education process, from parents, teachers and administrators right on up to the Ministry of Education, which sets curriculum standards. Of that list, the classroom teachers, along with the parents, are the ones who are primarily responsible for that success. We certainly understand that if we had scored low, we would bear the brunt of the blame. But we know that we are good at what we do. Parents know we are good. The local community in general knows we are good. We want to hear from this government that they know we are good at what we do, and we want to be treated accordingly.

I make this presentation on behalf of the Burnaby Teachers Association. I would also like to add that we fully support the comments and suggestions made by our provincial organization, the British Columbia Teachers Federation, and by our colleagues in locals from around the province. We hope that you have heard us all.

We now turn it over to you. In your report and recommendations to the Legislature, we urge you to join us in saying yes to children and their school communities by supporting the work being done every day by teachers, administrators, students and parents. We need the Select Standing Committee on Education to say yes to public education. Thank you.

Our next presentation is by the Coquitlam Teachers Association, Kathleen Thomson.

K. Thomson: Hello. My name is Kathleen Thomson, and I'm the president of the Coquitlam Teachers Association. I represent 2,500 Coquitlam teachers in our district. We teachers in Coquitlam have four central messages that we are asking you, the select committee, to take back to the government.

They are these. You need to enhance educational funding. You need to value teachers, their knowledge and their contributions to the system. You need to view the education system as part of a cultural whole. You need to value children for whom education serves as a profoundly important vehicle to improve their current and future academic, social and cultural well-being.

First of all, I'm going to address the issue of enhancing educational funding. I think that your most critical mandate as a committee must be to advise the government to maintain and enhance educational funding for public schooling across this province. The government decision to freeze educational funding for three years must be rescinded. A funding freeze does not recognize inflationary or extraordinary costs experienced on a continual basis by all school districts.

Inevitably, a funding freeze represents significant cuts to educational programs and services, and with an irony that all teachers recognize, a funding freeze will indeed freeze trustees' already limited ability to apply equitable financial assistance to a vast array of schooling programs. Insufficient funding for education is, no doubt, not a new problem, but this government's announced freeze will exacerbate the insufficiencies within the system. For example, last year's very minimal 4.2 percent increase in per-pupil funding led to well-documented cuts to ESL, music, art and drama programs across the province.

I want to speak to you for a moment about Coquitlam's particular situation. Along with an increasing number of school districts operating in deficit financing, Coquitlam school district 43 is close to $4 million in deficit. In Coquitlam there's nothing left to cut. Last June, when trustees struggled with what they thought to be a $3 million deficit, there were significant cuts to supplies and equipment, reductions in program offerings and some losses of teacher and support worker positions. The CTA fully expects even greater budgetary cuts this year as the board attempts to grapple with past underfunding and ever-increasing cost overruns. The only solution to this problem, experienced both here in Coquitlam and elsewhere throughout the province, is to open up the government coffers and provide for a sound and decent public education system across B.C.

I'm going to start to talk next in terms of funding with regard to the Liberal plan to eliminate all targeted funding except for funding associated with aboriginal education. Teachers are uniformly opposed to the elimination of targeted funds that serve to protect an array of educational programs such as gifted education, career prep and special education. This is because teachers understand clearly that negotiated collective agreements are the instruments that guarantee program and service funding. These are tools which, together with the per-pupil funding grants, essentially establish the levels of funding within a district's operating budget.

Currently, the trust moneys negotiated in the last round of collective bargaining in 1998 — which are a form of targeted funding but go under a different name — provide for reduced class sizes in grades K to 3 and a guaranteed ratio of specialist teachers and non-enrolment teachers in every school district across B.C. Recent history proves that when targeted funding for specific schooling programs and services does not exist, these programs fall victim to diminishment or disappearance. Witness the decision of Victoria trustees in the years prior to 1998 to eradicate all elementary library programs in their district. Examine the severe reductions in fine arts programs that can be documented everywhere across B.C.

Why have these and other programs been compromised? In the absence of any dictate to provide them, trustees, desperate to balance the books, will make decisions, however reluctantly, to trim what they regard as programs of lesser importance. They will eradicate what they deem to be expendable. To prevent this certainty of program diminishment for students, the government must rescind its decision to untarget all funds except aboriginal.

The most shocking consequence of the government's decision to eliminate targeted funding is a loss of any guarantee that special education students will be properly and adequately serviced. Currently, and in a similar vein to every lower mainland school district, Coquitlam provides special education funding that exceeds by 18 percent the targeted moneys provided by the government for this specific purpose, and still there is not enough money to meet students' and teachers' needs. There are measurable deficiencies in special needs programming, the numbers of teachers and support workers and assistance to students. There are large numbers of children whose disabilities are not even recognized as identified special needs and so receive no funding whatsoever.

While teachers generally support integration, they have never, ever received sufficient training or assistance for this noble but overwhelmingly difficult task. Therefore, we at the CTA are in complete disagreement with the Deputy Minister of Education, Emery Dosdall, who, in response to questioning by a parent concerned about diminished special ed funding said: "This is not the time to whine and complain; this is the time to roll up our sleeves and get the job done." To him we say that there is no amount of sleeve-rolling that will get any job done if there are no guaranteed resources in the form of cold, hard, targeted cash.

I'm going to go on now and talk briefly about valuing teachers. Education minister Christy Clark acknowledges that teachers, along with students, are the centre pins of educational enterprise and that their accomplishments and skills must be honoured in order for education to flourish in the way that it should and must. We, as teachers, put that sentiment in another way. We say you cannot put children first if you constantly put teachers last. That's what we believe this government is doing. Neither the government nor our employer, BCPSEA, acknowledges that there is a well-documented and disturbing global shortage of teachers and that B.C. school districts such as Coquitlam are not

At present there are insufficient numbers of math, science and tech ed teachers. Barely a school day goes by where we don't witness a shortage in the teacher on-call system. This district advertises nationally for some of its specialist teachers in the Globe and Mail. It asks teachers to return from retirement in order to substitute teach. There are insufficient training positions in our universities for would-be teachers.

Teachers are no longer reimbursed at what would be regarded as a competitive rate. It takes teachers a disturbingly long time to go through the apprenticeship scale in order to reach maximum salary scale. These are alarming statistics. They should tell the government that it must provide teachers with a fair and reasonable salary increase, it must shorten that period of apprenticeship and it must increase training opportunities for teachers new to the profession.

Also — and this is very, very important to teachers in Coquitlam and throughout the province — the government needs to stop what we believe is its plan to discredit the education system and its teachers. We are competent. We are well trained. We are among the best in the world. Our students here in B.C. and Coquitlam do admirably well with regard to government exams and very, very well in terms of international testing, as we witnessed last week in the media. Yet the government speaks increasingly and consistently of the failings of the system and of teachers.

As an example, it points to collective student scores from one seriously flawed education achievement measurement. That is the FSA exam. Now you know, if any teacher were to claim that she could take a child and test that child once, quantitatively, during the course of a year and claim that that evaluation made sense and was reasonable and valid, she would face parents' scorn and wrath — and rightfully so. Yet that's exactly what the messages are which are coming from both the Fraser Institute and separately from the government with regard to the progress and the success of education in this province.

That is nonsense. That is not an appropriate way in which to evaluate the success of a school system. Partly as a result of this bad press that we're getting, we as teachers currently feel angry and demoralized. We ask you to encourage the government to begin to acknowledge the fine work of teachers in this province and to seek improvement within the system — certainly, because we're always looking to do that — but not by dismantling what works and what has worked. We ask that you place teachers right beside students — that is, number one in terms of the importance of the B.C. public education system.

I want to say a couple of words, too, about the value of viewing education as a cultural whole. You cannot value education apart from what's happening in the larger culture, aside from schooling. Public education embodies a very precious and noble ideal. That ideal is embodied in the universalism of public education. Every child, no matter what his or her ability or socioeconomic background, has a right to public schooling. As I said before, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, separate from culture in the whole or from government directives for what is going to happen in terms of that cultural fabric.

Because teachers understand that education is part of that cultural whole, we need to express, as professionals and as people that care about and love and try to nurture children, our deepest dismay at government plans to cut one-third or more from ministries other than Education that directly affect the present and future care of so many, many disadvantaged students across the province and impinge upon the quality of life for families and communities.

To be perfectly blunt, teachers believe that the following announced or implied cuts affecting children and young adults in our care to be the cruellest cuts of all: forcing mothers on social assistance to return to work when their children are only a year old but cutting any possibility of adequate day care service or not having any plans to provide universality of day care; cutting $4.6 million from the Ministry of Children and Family Development; eliminating foster care for 17- and 18-year-old youths at most risk; eliminating hot-lunch programs for needy children; eliminating funding for the 100 community schools across the province, including the four operating in Coquitlam; cutting or eliminating funding for inner-city schools; and vastly reducing accessibility to Pharmacare and medical benefits for citizens and thus children. The children on social assistance who can't be provided for in quality daycare, the at-risk children whose contact with their social workers is diminished, the children who are removed from foster care at too tender an age, the children who will no longer have access to even one substantial meal in a day, the children whose inner-city schools will no longer benefit from minimal additional funding, the children whose health and drug care needs are not adequately met — all these children come to B.C. schools and will continue to come to B.C. schools and be further disadvantaged.

This government was elected to assist all of its citizens, especially the young and the most vulnerable. It was not elected to disadvantage children, their health and ultimately their ability to learn and be successful. In the name of education, teachers implore the committee to insist that the government not proceed with these disgraceful cuts to children's services, both in and out of schools.

To conclude, I will say this. The Coquitlam Teachers Association echoes the sentiments of teachers everywhere across the province when it asks the government to fund the educational system adequately, to protect the high quality of its professionals and to support community and public services for children in and outside of schools. It is only in these ways that public education can be enhanced and that B.C. students can succeed in realizing the possibilities and potential that a sound education offers.

W. McMahon (Chair): Our next presenter is Suzanne Psota. Good afternoon, Suzanne.

S. Psota: Good afternoon. My name is Suzanne Psota, and I am the parent of two students currently in the school system in Maple Ridge. I have been very involved in the school system for the past 12 years. I have served as the fundraising coordinator and PAC president and secretary at the elementary level, and for the last three years I have been the PAC president at a high school of 1,200 students. At the same time, I've also been president of the district parents group of a district of 15,000 students. Today I am speaking to you as a parent.

Back in the days when our public school system started, a group of parents got together and hired a teacher to teach their children. Back then, a one-room schoolhouse was enough for the community's children to grow and learn. Tell me: when did the parents lose control of the school system? The basics are still the same, as I see it, even though we no longer have a one-room school. The school system now consists of the Ministry of Education, BCTF, CUPE, B.C. Principals and Vice-Principals Association and BCPSEA, all of these groups providing a service. Parents are the purchasers of these services, and the children are the recipients, just like it was in the beginning. Without the parents purchasing these services and the children to receive the services, doesn't it mean that all of the above would be without jobs? Why do parents have to fight so hard to have a say, when parents and students are the reason for the whole system?

The needs of the students and their learning must be put first and should always be put in front of any decisions that are being made. Whenever a decision is made, to a parent, it appears to be looked at from what looks good on paper and not what is best for the children. The system has become big, out of touch and unmanageable, and it seems to be more about the needs of the adults in the system rather than the needs of the children. Not only does the education system consist of the above-mentioned professionals, it also consists of the parents and children. This fact appears to have been overlooked time and time again over the years that I've been involved in the system.

Here are a few examples of what I feel show that the bureaucracy is out of touch with what the system is supposed to be about. We have a high school built for 850 students, but it currently has over 1,200, with a major projected growth over the next three years. This obviously means that there are ten portables in use there right now and more on the way. We are told that it could be up to three years before there is any relief from this overcrowding. Why? This appears to be a case of the people in the front lines not being listened to by the bureaucrats in Victoria.

We had an elementary school in our district that was so overcrowded, and it was scheduled for renovations. While it was to go through the renovations, it was decided that to help relieve some of the construction congestion, they would send all the grade 6s and 7s to another school. This school had extra space and could handle the extra students. Parents weren't asked at first for their opinion. They were told this would be a good idea. You can't make these kinds of decisions without parental input. It's not only out of touch but disrespectful and upsetting to students.

Over the years I have seen crossing guards cut; buses cut because the ministry will not fund busing for safety issues; gifted children bored because the funding wasn't there for them either; children with learning disabilities made to wait for the help and the testing that they need; and special education assistants assigned to a child because of their seniority, not because they have the knowledge to help this child. Is that what is best for the student? No. What is best for the student is an SEA which is best equipped for the job, with the proper training. It appears to me that the dollar and the union rules come first in all of these decisions, not the needs of or what's best for the students or the safety of the children.

You hear about all the different issues arising in the school system, and it's hard to know what to believe. For instance, the BCTF is saying that small class sizes are more important. Well, when I look at it as a parent, yes, it does sound like it makes sense, but I can't help but feel that it does also benefit the BCTF, creating more union members paying more union dues as well. As a parent, I think about when I was in school, and I did okay in larger class sizes. Is this the best way of spending money? Are there other ideas which might cost less and be just as beneficial or more so for the students?

Our district has worked hard at offering choice to parents and students. Some of the choices are early and late French immersion, Montessori programs, altered calendar, career preparation, extended days, self-paced secondary school, junior and senior alternate programs and fine arts. They have also included special needs students at whichever school they choose. All these choices were offered and accepted with appreciation. We all learn in different ways and with different needs. These choices reflect that fact.

Our district puts $3.2 million more into special education than what they are funded for. If this district is offering choice, as this ministry has asked them to, then shouldn't these choices be funded in a way that covers the actual costs of offering them? I think most parents think so. Our district has a high percentage of special needs. Therefore, the cap on special needs, based on provincial averages, is not fair or equitable. Parents are concerned. With our district facing a deficit, what will they have to cut as they try to make up the deficit? We may lose some of our choices, counsellors, librarians, special education assistants and programs.

Can you tell me why our district is one of the lowest-funded districts? This needs to be looked at before we are forced to make cuts that will not benefit our children.

If you were to come across a situation where an individual was telling someone that if they didn't do what he was telling them to, they would be in big trouble, would you let the situation continue or would you step in? This is exactly what I see happening between our teachers and their union. Most teachers I have

come in contact with just want to do their jobs and do what is best for the students.

As I said before, I've been very involved, even at the high-school level. My two daughters, one in grade 12 and the other in grade 9, have both had great school experiences. Their teachers and counsellors have worked with them and myself to ensure that their needs have been met. My daughter in grade 12 has worked over the last few years with her counsellor to ensure that whichever direction she chooses to go after graduation, she would be able to accomplish this with the courses she has taken with their direction. The principals and the teachers have made their time in the high school a very positive experience in spite of a system that makes it really difficult for these people, who really care, to do their job.

From a parent's eye, this is the way I see the education system. The BCTF looks at the system with the children in mind but also the strength of their union and the well-being of their members. Most individual teachers I have come to know genuinely care about the children and want to do a good job. They also have to take care of their jobs — and rightly so. CUPE also looks at the system with the children in mind, but they also look for the strength of their union and the well-being of their members as well. The individual CUPE members that I have come to know also genuinely care about the children and also want to do a good job. They also have to take care of their jobs. That, again, is rightly so. The same could be said of the Principals and Vice-Principals Association and the same with the individual members, and so on and so on. To each and every one of them, the school system is not only about the children but also about their jobs.

When a parent looks at the education system, they have a very clear and unobstructed view. They look at it with no agenda other than the education of their children. What other education partner can say the same?

Schools need to be able to respond to the needs of parents and students, or you will find in the future that you just might not have any students showing up for the public school system. For the sake of students, please give parents more say or control.

We also need to allow individual teachers more say. If they work with the parents and children closely, they have a pretty good idea what the needs are. They are professionals, and they should be able to speak out individually on issues that affect their clients, the students. If they are being forced to do or say what the union says they should, even though they know it isn't what is best for the students, does that not add up to bullying? Would this not hinder them from doing what is best for the students?

As I said before, please, for the sake of the students, give parents more say or control. By giving these people more say, with more accountability and less say for big government, big unions and big bureaucracies, I feel this will benefit students and their learning, just like it did back in the beginning.

I'd like to end with a letter that you also have from Jacquie Jordon. In her first paragraph here she's got:

W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks, Suzanne. We have a couple of minutes. Do we have any questions? Richard Stewart and then Richard Lee.

R. Lee: You mentioned giving parents more say or control. What kind? Can you elaborate on the control part?

S. Psota: Being more involved in the process. Being asked. For instance: "What do you think? Should we move the kids?" These decisions are made in Victoria because of what looks good on paper not because of what's beneficial to students or their parents. Like I said, parents are the ones that are paying all these wages. Why do we not have more input? It's always dictated to us from Victoria or the board office. I think parents should be included more in decisions.

J. Kwan: In your brief you mentioned concerns with respect to funding, whether it be capital funding for portables or funding for special needs and supports in the classroom and so on and so forth. Do you sup-

S. Psota: Not if it's not going to allow those things to happen, no. I don't agree with it.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you, and thanks very much for your presentation today.

T. Stobbart: Hello. My name is Terry Stobbart. I'm here from Abbotsford, representing John Maclure Community School as PAC president, as well as the Association for Community Education in British Columbia. John Maclure Community School is located in the centre of Abbotsford, a few blocks northeast of city hall, in the school district administration building. It's close to the public library, recreation centre, sports fields, shopping and buses.

In John Maclure's catchment area the population is approximately 6,000 people. This community school has long been recognized as a community with a higher-than-average need. It is well documented, in the 1996 census, that one-third of the school's population are single-parent families, and they have the lowest average family income in the Abbotsford district.

School district 34 designated John Maclure Community School as a community school in 1996. The community school supports the concept of community education, which advocates the development of opportunities to involve the community to meet local needs and provide lifelong learning opportunities.

When you enter John Maclure Community School, you always experience a welcoming environment, with teachers, support staff, community school staff and volunteers all working together to provide a nurturing, caring and supportive environment for children and their families. The community education component is managed by a non-profit charitable society that sets policy and oversees the operation and service delivery of all the programs and services over and above the kindergarten-to-grade-5 school program.

The Association for Community Education in British Columbia is another non-profit organization that I belong to that supports community education and community schools in British Columbia. In brief, this is a board comprised of individuals from all over B.C. that come together with a common passion — community education. It has been existence for over 26 years.

Gordon Hogg, Minister of Children and Family Development, recently stated that he was looking for some answers to the following two questions. Are the current organizational and service-delivery models the most efficient ways to manage and deliver the program, activity or business unit? Are the current measures and reporting mechanisms the most effective way to account for program, activity or business unit performance, relevancy, effectiveness and service?

Efficient delivery of dollars and the best way to reach a maximum population. Too often, the obvious solution lies right beneath our noses. Community schools have long adopted the policy that community schools provide a cost-effective, efficient and personal way for delivery of programs to the society that needs them the most.

You have doubtless heard many documented presentations of why they are a cost-effective and efficient delivery system of programs. Today, I'd like to put a face on community education. I want you to understand my perspective as a person who would be affected greatly should cutbacks occur to community school and inner-city school funding. I want you to remember, when you go back with all of these papers, with all of these words and statistics, why you should keep community school and inner-city funding a priority in your mandate and that there are people behind these statistics and words — people. These are the reason community schools exist today. I am one of those people.

Today you see a woman in front of you making a presentation on something that matters so much to her that she's willing to face all kinds of challenges just to be here. I am a single parent from Abbotsford, and my oldest child attends John Maclure Community School. In addition to being PAC president, I am involved with the community school as a literacy practitioner.

Ten years ago I was very ill for a really long time, and this changed my life as I know it. I had to make a lot of life-changing decisions. When my daughter entered kindergarten in the fall of 1996, our lives took a turn for the better. John Maclure Community School became a focal point for us. We felt right away as if we belonged. We joined the family literacy program for kindergarten children and parents, and I was hooked. Right away, I volunteered to get involved.

Since then, I've been involved with John Maclure Community School in many ways for six years. I have volunteered many hours in many different areas, thus opening doors I never imagined possible for myself. I worked in the office for a time. I have learned, taught and learned again. I am still connected to the school today, delivering the very family literacy program at John Maclure that first got me hooked on literacy and community schools.

My daughter has benefited in so many ways from programs offered at John Maclure, from dance, kids club, mad science, reading rascals, summer day camps each summer, intergenerational programs, pre-teen extreme and many other programs that the community school has offered to our community over the last five years. I do not have the financial resources to offer my children extracurricular activities, and this community school has filled a real need here in Abbotsford, not only for my family but for all families.

I, too, have benefited from parenting classes, computer courses and many other links to lifelong learning. As a result, I've gone back to school, taking upgrading and doing two years of university. I've been given the opportunity to increase my experience as an artist. I'm an active citizen involved in community education. I belong to the Association for Community Education of British Columbia, thus furthering my involvement on

another level of community education. I have become a literacy practitioner, offering family literacy programs. I'm also sitting on the Abbotsford Literacy Association as secretary-treasurer.

I have taken on all of these roles as a direct result of John Maclure Community School, and I'm only one person. Imagine this statistic multiplied all through British Columbia — community education at its best, reaching those who might not otherwise have taken that step to get back to lifelong learning.

Many of the families that live near John Maclure are lower-income families, working and non-working. We all face the same struggles in trying to make a better life for our families. John Maclure Community School has become a hub of our community, with many events going on and different things for all ages, family, children, teens, adults and seniors. We are growing each year as we become more known and with the obvious good that is happening in the community.

Research has been documented at John Maclure Community School that there is less movement of families within the area. People are staying — and not only staying but becoming involved in the community. When analyzing retention statistics, we have data showing that in the past six years, since becoming a community school, there has been a gradual decrease in transients in the John Maclure catchment area.

From '94 to '96, before the community school was implemented, the ratio of children coming in compared to the ratio of children going out was 1.6 to 1. In the 2000-01 year, that ratio rose favourably to 2.4 coming in and one going out. During the first few months of the 2001-02 school year, the ratio is 4.0 coming in and one leaving. These ratios are quite significant and tell us that the community school's programs and services are making a difference in providing a safe, healthy and connected community.

With this new government mandating volunteer involvement in schools, the community school model is the ideal vehicle for this in a meaningful and cost-effective way. It is truly community building. Community schools are an investment in our future, a preventative measure that results in a reduction of negative consequences and costly interventions later. This school is a focus point for many adults that otherwise would not have a place to gather.

Many of the problems that communities face arise from differences in thinking and understanding. It is plain that people cannot work together until they first learn to think together and to develop common understanding and consensus about their problem. This is why education is the best way to have people come together and think together and work together for the common good. When you have a community school in place, it provides a place for those people to come together.

Education is not just for our children. We all need to adopt the policy of lifelong learning. It is for children, families, adults and communities. Chief Constable Ian Mackenzie of the Abbotsford police department has added his support for our community school in the form of a letter. He clearly states that programs offered through John Maclure Community School are "vital to the long-term health of the children and families, and ultimately the general public, that the government serves." I enclose a copy of this letter in my package for your perusal.

As PAC president at John Maclure, I come into contact with many families on a day-to-day basis. It provides an interesting view into a wonderful facility, knowing I'm part of this community. Everyone has a choice and a say here. Parents are very happy with the school as a community school. Our teachers have embraced the whole community school concept and are very good at supporting programs run by the community school association.

There is a schoolwide emphasis on literacy, with staff commitment to professional development in literacy. The community school literacy program initiatives, reading rascals and Mother Goose, are free for our families and are volunteer-run. Research supports that parents strongly influence the literacy development of their children. Children who are read to from an early age have an advantage in learning to read and write. Consequently, they are more successful in school and in life after school.

Furthermore, our school's reading recovery, guided reading and volunteer peer reading programs are receiving early readers from the reading rascals program, which greatly increases reading levels at an early age. Our school is recognized within the district as being a leader in early literacy strategies.

Another advantage of the reading masters program is the encouragement of lifelong learning. There are links to other literacy programs within the school for adults. We have partnerships with other organizations to provide adult programs that are based on community needs. One of those needs, identified in the John Maclure catchment area, is adult upgrading and computer education. John Maclure has provided for that community need in the form of an adult learning drop-in centre for English and math as well as the university-level computer courses with the CAP program, the computer access program, as well.

We also offer mini-courses and one-day workshops for a wide range of interests to our community members. Please see our annual report, which is also included in your package, for more information about the programs that we offer. The time just doesn't allow me to touch on everything.

John Maclure Community School and the surrounding families would suffer greatly should you cut funding to community and inner-city schools. It makes no sense to cut funding to a community-based and community-run society that provides such a wide range of services to such a large variety of people. For the money invested in community schools by the Ministry of Children and Family Development, it is more than doubled. Dollar for dollar, we are increasing the money coming in to the community schools by building partnerships with our community businesses and organizations. To lose the facility and vehicle of delivery for these programs will be devastating and non-

productive, totally contrary to what they are seeking: cost-effective delivery of education for everyone.

I urge you to strongly consider where you cut funding for these programs. By assuming that families are resilient and will be able to handle such cuts, you take out the heart of our community and you sabotage the very thing that you wish to promote: cost-effective, efficient, accountable and community-based delivery of services and programs to the vulnerable citizens of our society.

In answer to Gordon Hogg's two questions, yes, I believe we are achieving what he is looking for already. The community school model is the most efficient way to manage and deliver the programs and services that benefit local families and citizens. It would be more prudent to increase funding to community schools and have that delivery system set up as a model, because the long-term effectiveness has been proven not only with John Maclure Community School but with all of our community schools within Canada.

Gordon Hogg also stated the following: "I believe we will find that not every problem that affects children and families will require a service delivery response from this ministry." I believe we will find that the resiliency and strength of families is our greatest resource in safeguarding the well-being of vulnerable children and adults.

As a person who is very involved in my community, I have grave concerns that many people will end up falling through the cracks in the system should these cuts occur. If we don't take steps to protect those vulnerable citizens now, what will happen to them down the road? Common sense needs to prevail here. We need to practise prevention as opposed to reaction. School-based services need to be protected, and caution is urged when considering moving the funds or cutting them.

I urge you now to consider the people that will be affected. I am but one person, but you can see how community schools have assisted my family and me. I would be greatly saddened that other citizens would not have the opportunities that I've had to better my life.

There's been a change to the witness list. Our next presenter is Kevin Shong, Technical University of British Columbia. Good afternoon, Kevin.

K. Shong: Good afternoon. Thank you for allowing me to speak with you this afternoon. The original person that was supposed to show up today was unable to make it, so, like I said, I'm filling in at the last minute. If I'm a little unclear, I'll try clarifying anything at the end.

My name is Kevin Shong, and I'm a learner from the Technical University of British Columbia. I currently sit on the university board of governors, and I'm studying information technology, specializing in telecommunications hardware engineering.

I'm here today to talk to you about the potential Liberal cutbacks that may sacrifice the existence of the only high-tech university located in the Fraser Valley and, as well, located in B.C.

University access for the Fraser Valley and what we offer to the development of the Fraser Valley professional community. Access to education is only the first step of the evolution of this province. The courses, research and culture of Tech B.C. are developing an environment of entrepreneurship, creativity and vision.

Tech B.C. has already undertaken the cost of planning, designing and developing over 400 modules, ten academic programs, an on-line infrastructure and learning models required to support Tech B.C.'s academic programs. This requires higher front-end costs. However, this means that unlike other traditional universities, Tech B.C. retains a valuable academic asset. Once the modules have been developed, they can be delivered to many students at a low marginal cost.

Among the factors that make Tech B.C. unique are the three core disciplines: interactive arts, information technology and management technology. Our commitment to interdisciplinary studies, integration and collaboration in all university activities includes administration as well as academia.

Each course is developed by a team of faculty and on-line pedagogy experts. This enables Tech B.C. to rely on multiple perspectives and a broader knowledge base than courses created by a single faculty member at other institutions. Seventy percent of our graduates work from the university developing content for various program areas, thus allowing Tech B.C. to stay on the cutting edge of research and industry by utilizing current graduate research and knowledge.

The result for the learners is more comprehensive content, challenging and progressive courses and unlimited access to engage in academic discussions with faculty members. The university utilizes the opportunity to integrate the desire, needs and expectations of the business community through the delivery of our programs.

The outcome of the learning at Tech B.C. is really about the industries supporting technological solutions in business — for example, databasing; software development; new-era management; expanding B.C.'s economy sector; and developing new products in high-tech, including medical and surgical appliances, wireless communications and whatever the world-renowned V-chip inventor comes up with next.

Our vision is about creating thinkers for a new era. As learners and professionals we practice the following key skills in all academic and entrepreneurial activities. Interdisciplinary skills, meaning learners receive a broad skill-base that offers them the ability to see raw possibilities or communicate and relate to individuals across multiple fields. Combined theoretical and applied study. For instance, learners are able to acquire both critical thinking skills and technical skills, stimulating them through assignments that require them to

apply newly learned methods using specific application software. Teamwork, which is collaboration and sharing of knowledge and resources. Communication skills, which focus on both written and verbal skills through presentation and public critiques.

The idea is new methods for the new economy — Tech B.C.'s advanced accessibility, knowledge, entrepreneurship, research, creativity and opportunity.

I have a question in mind, and I want to present it to you. It is this: given the groundbreaking emphasis on new technology teams–based learning and Web-delivery course structure, why would Tech B.C. ever be faced with a possibility of being shut down? The question haunts me and every other student who has taken the leap of faith to trust the futures of this brand-new model of higher learning.

Let me tell you what Tech B.C. education is about. At Tech B.C. we use information technology every day. We work in teams, so we share our knowledge and skills with each other. We learn together even as we cooperate in exploring new uses for new technologies.

It's not uncommon for a student to work on five or six team projects in one week. In the process, we are building time and team management skills that will benefit us and our employers throughout our working lives. Tech B.C. doesn't offer a football team. We don't have a pub, and there's not even an on-campus cafeteria where we can gather. Despite that, we are excited to be here.

We believe that Tech B.C. provides exactly what we want for an education: the skills and the knowledge that will allow us to participate actively and creatively in the information economy of the twenty-first century. We will be the social and industry leaders precisely because we are getting tomorrow's education today. Yet the provincial government is considering closing the doors on us, shutting down Tech B.C. Why? Advanced Education Minister Shirley Bond claims that Tech B.C. students can be absorbed into other universities and colleges throughout the lower mainland. This reflects her misunderstanding of the character of the Tech B.C. education.

Other institutions simply do not offer the interdisciplinary courses, structure or cooperative learning models that are so much more a part of what makes Tech B.C. innovative. No other colleges or universities are going to offer a mix of disciplines and incorporate the fine arts, electronic engineering, software programming and global economy — a typical course of study at Tech B.C.

We need your help. Tech B.C. can no longer be the best-kept secret in British Columbia. We need you — citizens, entrepreneurs, voters — to speak out on our behalf. We need you to tell the provincial government that Tech B.C. is not a boondoggle. It is a creative and timely response to the emerging information economy. The short-sighted thinking that identified Tech B.C. as a disposable luxury is a problem. Tech B.C. is a solution.

I thank you for giving me the time, and I hope that you can take my concerns into consideration.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you, Kevin. I know that you've asked some questions in your presentation. We are working within the mandate of our committee, and you have expanded yours to outside the mandate of our committee.

We appreciate your input, and we definitely will take what you have said into consideration as we make our recommendations on choice, access, flexibility and quality in K-to-12 and how to improve access and strengthen initiatives to the post-secondary institutions.

J. Kwan: Actually, it's not a question but rather a clarification on the issue around mandate. If Tech B.C. falls outside of the mandate, as you've suggested, then on the post-secondary side in terms of access…. It appears to me that the presenter is making the argument that access to education ought to include Tech B.C. Therefore, from that point of view, one would argue that it actually is not outside the mandate. Of course, the other component includes the issue around capital funding, capital initiatives for K-to-12 and post-secondary education, which I would imagine is within the mandate of the committee to look at.

W. McMahon (Chair): Jenny, I think you know the mandate of the committee also. I'm not questioning what he's presenting to us. I appreciate his input. We do have a specific mandate, and that's to make recommendations. For post-secondary, it's ways to consider initiatives to strengthen the universities, colleges, institutes and on-line learning agencies in B.C.

Thank you for your comments too. We'll take your information and consider it when we are putting together our report and making recommendations.

Our next presentation is Chilliwack school district, Silvia Dyck and Susan Boisvert. Good afternoon.

S. Dyck: Good afternoon, Chair McMahon. We're very delighted to be here. We appreciate all the time you're taking in going across the province. What a mammoth task. I read the Sullivan commission, and I know how tough that job was. I doubt yours will be any easier.

Susan Boisvert is the president of our district parent advisory council, and I'm the chair of the board of school district 33. I'm pleased to present the following information for your consideration in the mammoth task before you.

School district 33 is in Chilliwack, British Columbia, 100 kilometres east of Vancouver, serving almost 12,000 students in a predominantly agricultural community of 86,000 people. Despite this profile, 80 percent of Chilliwackians are actually urban or suburban. Chilliwack is one of the fastest-growing school districts, with 21 elementary schools, four of which are community schools — and you've heard the importance of community schools just recently — five middle schools, two senior secondary schools and three alter-

nate schools. In addition, the district offers an educational program in a local correctional facility.

Our senior secondary schools offer international student programs. An exciting new program has an exchange with Nankai High School in Tianjin, China. Eighteen students from Nankai visited and stayed with students from Sardis Secondary, and those same students visited Nankai last summer. The Sardis students had to complete an intensive Mandarin language short course to qualify. Sardis Secondary is working with Nankai on delivering a technology 11 course program via the Internet.

Our schools offer a wide and varied range of programs. Courses and program outlines are easily accessed by our community on the school district's website. Our wide range of programs ensures all students leaving our schools will have the knowledge, skills and attitudes to continue learning and to succeed in their future endeavours as responsible citizens. Three concepts provide the foundation for continuous improvement at both the school and district level: (1) meaningful teamwork; (2) clear, measurable goals; and (3) regular collection and analysis of performance data.

The board of school trustees is committed to setting goals that will provide clear direction to our system and will result in continuous improvement and better results for our students. We are also committed to involving all of our education partners in improvement efforts and collecting and reviewing the data that will help us to set goals and direction for the future. The district focus is on adapting the system to meet the needs of students under the themes of quality, with yearly objectives and evaluation; collaboration, with yearly objectives and evaluation; and accountability to identify indicators of effectiveness at elementary, middle and secondary levels with yearly objectives and evaluation.

All schools in the district must submit annual improvement plans to the superintendent. Such plans will be reviewed annually by a school committee which includes parents and trustees. The annual board goals are published and distributed to schools to assist schools in aligning the district directions with their activities and plans. Some of our schools' annual improvement plans are already on the website. School district 33 believes it is already in tune with the Ministry of Education goal of accountability and student achievement.

Our understanding of this committee's mandate is that it is to make recommendations to improve access, choice, flexibility and quality in public education and on measures to strengthen our network of colleges, institutes and on-line learning.

On the issue of quality. The ministry statement of education policy order states: "A quality education system assists in the development of human potential and improves the well-being of each individual person in British Columbia society." Thus, we feel our scrutinizing and continual evaluation of programs and services to ensure student achievement at all levels and communicating results to students, parents and communities ensures such quality.

Choice. Our board strives to honour the education policy order which states that in an effort to accommodate varying parental and student expectations of school services, public schools within available resources will provide parents and students with a choice of programs.

Program requests are presented to our board in two ways. The first is by way of our curriculum and instruction standing committee, and they are called "locally developed courses." These may originate with staff, parents, students or administrators. Once this all-partner committee is satisfied with the proposed program, it is sent to the board for approval.

The second way choice is communicated to the board is by way of our community-initiated programs process. This process allows parents and the community to initiate choices they wish to have for their students directly with the board.

Just a few examples of the variety and currency of our locally developed programs. We have broadcast media, philosophy 11 and 12, physical education leadership, technology 11A and 12A and Cisco programs. Two years ago Cisco programs graduated only eight people in the entire country of Canada. All those eight people were from Chilliwack. Technology 11C and 12C, Microsoft certified systems engineer, vocal jazz and electronic commerce: these are just a few.

1. Giving boards the freedom and autonomy to use time and space more effectively.

4. Reviewing the graduate requirements which dictate choices that may not meet the learning styles or career aspirations of all students so that students are free to take courses that both interest them and are relevant to their chosen life direction. Some of the locally developed technical courses lead directly to rewarding employment, yet only eight credits count for graduation.

5. Increasing the support, information and respect for technical and trades training.

Chilliwack has a lighthouse program with the Industry Training and Apprenticeship Commission, ITAC. ITAC advised this committee that they had 800 apprentices last year throughout the province; 100 of these were from Chilliwack.

Moving from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy does not mean that one replaces the other. It is merely that the resource-based industry is becoming more highly technical and using new methods. The complexity of this new age requires more education, not less, for all human endeavours.

Do schools and their programs have an impact on British Columbia's economy? Absolutely. Stream International, a high-tech call centre with over 650 employees, chose Chilliwack this past year for its new home because of the excellent technical programs and skills

Access is the ability to take advantage of available choices. New initiatives are required that reconceptualize the adherence to buildings, schedules, calendars and boundaries.

The students of the future may receive their schooling in a variety of ways — perhaps a more balanced calendar on line at all hours of the day and early evening and classrooms of varying sizes and locations, depending on the subject and presentation style. Such variety and ease of access is critical for an affordable public education that serves lifelong learning communities. This board requires the autonomy to make decisions for the delivery of programs in the best interests of their students and in collaboration with their community.

Flexibility. Flexibility is defined as the ability to adjust easily to change — adaptable. In the context of public education, this is currently not available to boards due in part to old agreements and legislation. Boards must have the ability to respond to the changing educational needs of their students and communities if they are to be truly accountable. This is the challenge to this committee and to this government.

Strengthening the post-secondary network. It would be of great assistance, both financially and educationally, if the talents of our students were respected and career options other than university were actively promoted as having equal worth. Only an estimated 20 percent of students go to university directly from high school, although many may still attend university in their lifetime. The shortage of teachers is not the only skills shortage our province is facing, as for the first time in history, more people are leaving the workforce than joining it. New thinking is required to solve today's problems.

Funding public education. The funding formula of government is unnecessarily complex and creates the perception that boards are not transparent in their budgets. With almost 92 percent of a board's budget going to staff salaries and benefits prescribed by contracts, boards have little financial ability to address all of their community's concerns.

We are not concerned about whether targets are removed or not. They are simply indicators of how many dollars government is willing to put to those extra identified challenges. Like many boards, school district 33 spends several hundred thousand dollars more on special education, for example, to try to meet their students' access needs. So much for targets.

S. Boisvert: Parental involvement. The board recognizes the Ministry of Education as a national leader in parental involvement in public education. School district 33 facilitates parents' involvement in districts and in supporting parent advisory councils and district parent advisory councils. Parents in our district are encouraged to participate in the provision of quality education programs and services by financial support, professional development, membership on all board standings and ad hoc committees, including budget development.

The district parent advisory council brought the advocacy project to the district, with the full support of the board and district staff. The services were advertised in all schools and to new parents.

S. Dyck: The board urges this committee to keep the public in public education by ensuring that the elected representatives set the educational agenda at the provincial level and that the elected school trustees implement the agenda to meet the unique needs of their community. Provincial governments and local school boards are elected and accountable to all British Columbians. This, along with parent advisory councils at all levels, will empower us all to continue and expand the excellent public education we all strive to provide.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. We're running short of time, so no questions. Thanks.

Our next presentation is the Western Society for Children with Birth Disorders, Sanda Turner.

S. Turner: I saw somebody standing up. I can speak really, really fast, if you want to run and get a drink. I've been known to speak extremely fast. I'll be right here.

S. Turner: I saw you guys all squirming, and it reminded me of the children we work with. A lot of them have disabilities. I also say it because in my other life I do track and field, and I know how nice it is to burn off some energy.

S. Turner: I'll start over again. My name is Sanda Turner. I'm from the Western Society for Children with Birth Disorders. We're a non-profit organization that started in 1993, and we are in charge of finding people who slip through the cracks. In other words, most of the children that we service are children with multiple disorders, and they can't go to, say, the blind society or the Canadian Paraplegic Association or anything like that. They've just got too many problems.

We're a total volunteer organization. We only have one person who is on staff. That's how come we don't have a written submission. When you function under a

I also bring greetings from the New Westminster district PAC. I will leave their last little comment to the very end. Because I am from New Westminster and New Westminster is a very small town, we tend to combine a lot of things together.

The first thing I'd like to say is that our slogan at the Western Society is: "See the child and not the disability." What we mean by that is that often when you see somebody, you get an impression within the first ten seconds. When you see somebody who is in a wheelchair or with crutches, those are the visible disorders or disabilities. There are non-visible disorders and disabilities that are there — for instance, children who are special needs. I'm going to expand on what I mean by special needs. Special needs doesn't necessarily mean somebody who is in a wheelchair. That's why we use the slogan: "See the child, not the disability."

Because of the changes in our society, children with special needs are now found in the regular classroom. We, as parents of children with special needs, feel that the tools the teachers have now to teach children are not there. For instance, if you go into a classroom now, lots of times you see little people standing up and doing little things over on the side. Those are the kinds of things the teacher is not taught how to handle in class. They don't have the tools. If you talk to teachers who are new in the system, that's one of the comments they make: "We weren't prepared for that." They learn from talking to us parents; they learn from talking with the kids. Therefore, let's give the teachers the tools they need to teach.

The other thing is that when you talk to teachers and to parents who do have special needs children…. One of the things we would like to see, if feasible — and this is a disagreement amongst a few of us too — is all-year-round schooling. We don't mean it in a negative sense. We mean it in a positive sense, particularly in the elementary level. The children could go for about six to eight weeks and have a break. That's about all they can handle, because they get a little squirmy. You know, from having children of your own, that if you've got them home for six weeks during the summer, at about the six-week mark all you can think about is how soon you can get them back into school. We'll just reverse it and think about the teachers. They would probably like to be able to have that week off and so would the kids. It seems to work.

What I understand is that Australia uses a form of this. I'm not too sure what part, but I know that some parts of Australia do it. I was also talking to somebody in Calgary, and some of the schools there use this alternative, or all-year-round, education system. It's not new. It's an alternative program.

The other thing is — and this goes back to the New Westminster district PAC — years ago there was a quote that said it takes a community to raise a child. I think that's what a lot of us were brought up under and tried to bring our children up under. It takes the community to raise a child — and community schools. In New Westminster we are very, very fortunate in the fact that we have 11 community schools. We only have 11 schools, so it means that every school, every elementary, middle and high school, is a community school. With the changes that are taking place within the structure of the finances of community schools, one of the areas that the district PAC would really like to see is that community schools come under a branch and maybe become funded differently. Somehow, keep community schools.

When you have a child who is special needs, you need that break as a parent, but it's also a break for the child. It's a time for them to show off some of their talents. A child who is special needs could have a gift in music, and because of the educational system we have now in elementary school, there is no music or art program, or it's slim to none.

What I'd like to do is thank you very much for allowing me to come today to talk. I think I kept it under the time limit.

I will tell you that there will be a written submission as soon as the volunteers can get caught up to us.

J. Kwan: On the issues, then, around special needs in the school system, we do, right now, have the formula that applies for the 4 percent cap. Also, in some schools, where there is the application of testing the child to see whether or not they fit into the special needs category, it may not even include them. It also means that those children actually get excluded for additional funding. I'm just wondering, from a funding perspective, as it relates to the supports in our educational system for special needs, what your thought are. Should we be relooking at the formula? Should we be lifting the cap?

S. Turner: I graduated from high school 33 years ago in east Vancouver. I have LD, which means I have a learning disability. I did not discover this learning disability until I was in my second year of university, and it was only because I could not write a 25-page essay without great difficulty. Now, I had enough smarts to get through high school; I had enough smarts to get into university. If I were going through the system now, I would still slip through the system. Some children who are special needs are so adaptable — and that's the word I'm going to use — that they can slide through. It means that for the rest of their life, they will never function as well as they could have had they been caught, had they had early intervention, had the teachers had the tools to spot that learning disability

and to be able to aid the person in how to get through the school. That's why I go back to my first or second statement, which says: give the teachers the tools they need.

I know it's an expensive thing. The other side of the coin is that if you get a teacher who has the talent — and I'm going to use the word "talent" because that's a word that cannot be defined — and who can teach special needs, I don't want to see that teacher always having special needs children in their class. In other words, if you have 12 children in a large school who are in grade 2 or 3 and they all end up in the same class, it isn't fair to that teacher, it's not fair to the special needs child nor is it fair to the rest of the classroom. That's something to take into consideration. Yes, it is expensive.

J. Kwan: I think the point, then, is that it's a resource question. Sometimes class size may be the issue with special needs educators and so on and so forth. I think that's the point I'm trying to make.

R. Stewart: You mentioned some of the alternative schedules. We've heard several presentations over the last couple of months on alternative schedules or people who had proposed the year-long schooling or the year-round schooling or whatever we call it. It's actually just alternative schedules. Do you have some perspective on how one might be able to empower or give to the local school districts the ability to examine these more carefully and perhaps find one that meets their needs? Right now we don't have that flexibility, and I wonder how we could give it.

S. Turner: You don't? I think you guys do have. I think you guys have the power to give. We as voters have a different kind of power, and I think it's a division of labour. Yes, it would be nice, and yes, these cautions have come up within certain school districts. Personally, I can't see my organization as being one to empower so many districts that we are involved in or that I can say to them: "Yes, this is the best for it." I think it has to come from the top down and not from the bottom up in this situation, if there is going to be that kind of change, if there is going to be all-year-round schooling. I believe that in some districts, as you say, it's already being presented, and there are the pros and cons to it.

As I said earlier, everybody has their opinion whether it will work or not work, and who knows? We've gone from an agricultural society to a technological society in a matter of a hundred years. A hundred years ago in Canada 97 percent of the total population was involved in agriculture, and now we're down to 1 percent. That says a lot in a short period of time, in under a hundred years.

I don't know if I've answered your question. From my personal perspective, I would have liked to have seen all-year-round schooling. Would it work? I don't know. There's a lot of ifs.

W. McMahon (Chair): Our next presentation is Judy Shirra. Good afternoon, and whenever you're ready.

J. Shirra: That would help. I have a lot of material here, and I have submitted it in draft format. I will get you an edited copy afterwards.

Good afternoon, and thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Judy Shirra, and I am currently an elected school trustee from Port Coquitlam serving on Coquitlam school district 43. Today I am here as a parent, a community volunteer, an in-school mentor, a past PAC chair and a longtime DPAC member. The Coquitlam school board will be reporting to you later today. Please know that these are my personal opinions that I am about to share with you today.

I have been active in the public school system since 1988 and was involved with our district's ten-year reorganization plan for our children. Much of my knowledge base is derived from my involvement in my community. My day-to-day frustrations as a trustee are because I cannot do the job my community elected me to do. I chose to run as a trustee so that I could accomplish more for the children of our community than was possible as a parent and a volunteer. Now, as a trustee, I have found my hands tied by policies and procedures, and I even have been discouraged from time to time from helping members of my community.

My points today will cover the areas of teacher evaluation and accountability, central teaching registry, ESL and the student information system and community partnerships.

The previous government liked change, but it also created more work and provided little support for the implementation of these changes. One example is the change to the report cards and the reporting. The Ministry of Education sent blank report cards to the schools, from Victoria, but the cards did not fit the computers and the printers, and the software provided was not conducive to all grade levels. There is more reporting to the parents. This is good, but has it helped with student achievement? Many times we may add more to the day, but we take nothing back. The frustration here is that Victoria pushed its agenda onto our schools, and it became costly in man-hours and resources.

This happened a lot with the last government. I would like to point out that a little consultation with districts and reasonable time lines to implement would have saved money and responded to the needs of our students.

Report cards are crucial to keeping our parents informed, but they are not the only means of communi-

cation. We have a current example happening right now, with the standardization of the math curriculum for grades 9 to 12. We are implementing the grade 12 this year. It seems that every year we're implementing the math program, I am getting calls from parents. I received a call a few weeks ago on the math 12. A parent was very upset. He had been into the classroom. His son, an A student, was failing, so he asked the teacher to do the test that the teacher had just given the student. The teacher replied that he could not do it because he didn't know how. He is the department head. We are not keeping up with the resources for our teachers. The question from this parent is: "Where is the process to evaluate this teacher?"

Our school district does provide in-service and support to the staff. Attending in-service and professional development classes is not mandatory. The dilemma we face is the lack of process for teacher evaluation. This is part of the collective agreement. There is nothing that states our teachers must buy into the educational changes. The educational needs of the student must come first. If this requires a student collective agreement that would pre-empt that of the teachers, so be it. Their needs must be front and foremost.

In my presentation I have many examples from students. I won't go into them, but I ask you to read them. These are real people, and there are hundreds of examples in our communities. We could do our own Chicken Soup for the Soul around parental experiences in our public school system. Would a teacher-evaluation process help these parents? You bet it would.

We have teachers that are sometimes being let down by other teachers. We have a teacher in a secondary school whose good friend is the dean of apprenticeship programs for BCIT. He arranged for this individual to come and speak with the teachers in the event that they could partner and develop a course in this area. The teachers didn't show up for the meeting.

I recently offered to supplement the costs of a speaker in our school district, up to $1,000, to assist students in developing good study skills. I saw a need that could be met for the grade 11 and 12 students who could benefit from this forum. I was told I was undermining the authority of the teachers. The class I was offering was just basic study skills and note-taking that could help the students.

The public often wonders why there is an increase in private school enrolment. If we are preparing our students for university, why are there small lecture classes? When they attend post-secondary classes, they will be put in rooms with over a hundred students. This, again, is part of the collective agreement restriction.

In our district the teacher complaint process to be followed is laid out very clearly. I have advised parents many times to put their complaints in writing. The parents are reluctant to follow the process and do not write, because they feel their children will be punished. I have a hard time disagreeing with them. I know of another parent who wrote a letter, only to have the teacher use it as a grammatical lesson. That parent was a teacher in our district.

Further to the complaint process, I have a very good friend who asked me to advocate with her son. This would entail a visit to the school administration office and a meeting with the principal. My first reaction was no. A second later I said yes. I will always be a friend; I won't always be a trustee. When we had the meeting with the principal — he was advised I was coming — I explained that it was my friendship and the fact that my friend needed to be kept on topic, as she had 15 pages of complaints.

By the time we finished — we had all been in tears at one point during the meeting — the principal's comment was that if the teacher wanted to teach to a third of his class, he should get a third of his paycheque. I had been advising my friend of the process as I understood it, but I learned that day that there were other ways to follow the process and make it work faster. After 13 years in this system, I'm still learning.

I find it very difficult to get parents to follow up on their issues. Many of their issues are very valid. I think we forget that for many people, school was not the best of times. They carry a lot of emotional baggage around school, and I see this baggage being transferred to their children.

These are just a few examples of how the collective agreement gets in the way of service delivery. There are hundreds of other examples that parents could present. In general, it is my opinion that the collective agreement prevents principals from managing their staff effectively and school boards from delivering service effectively. Flexibility and choice are wonderful buzzwords but are next to impossible to implement because of the collective agreement. I recently attended a workshop on private dollars in public education. The presenter stated that the reason his district was able to generate revenue and have a small surplus was because the union in his district does not hold them to the collective agreement. If the union held them to their contract obligations, they would be in a deficit position.

We need a mechanism for teacher evaluation that would include students; the administrators and fellow teachers, such as a department head; and the classrooms statistics. To do this would violate a collective agreement. We have exceptional teachers who are entrepreneurial and creative. These teachers would welcome an administrator into their class. This, too, is restricted by the collective agreement. To award or acknowledge outstanding leadership from our teachers is not allowed in the collective agreement.

Let me stress that a teacher evaluation record is not a tool to get rid of teachers. I see it as the opposite. It is a tool to assist teachers who are not meeting the outcomes that they should. It is a way to mentor and share ideas and strategies that work. It could allow us to take successful schools and team them with ones that are struggling with bare minimal requirements.

I know that I have intermingled two points here. First, there is a collective agreement that is hampering student achievement and causing huge financial restraints. The second point is teacher evaluation and the need to implement a method for better accountability

Essential teacher registry. I noticed there was an article a couple of days ago in the paper about this. They're calling for a national registry. It's a critical element to teacher accountability and would be implemented in a central registry. The central registry of teachers would include their education, job history and current data. It could be managed by a third, neutral party, such as the teachers profession. This is not a huge cost, and I think it would benefit many.

ESL and student information system. This is not a politically correct question, but I get it asked frequently: "Why are my tax dollars going to ESL and my own child cannot get a little bit of learning assistance?" ESL is a huge drain on our schools, and the ministry should be recouping their money from the federal government.

Our schools have partnered with groups such as SUCCESS and provide service to families of immigrants in our community. We currently have 84 different languages being spoken in the homes of our students. These students come from various backgrounds, and it is the hidden horrors they've experienced prior to migrating to our community that have huge social ramifications.

I'm going to go on to community partnerships. We have a great community partnership happening with our local government here. The city of Port Coquitlam is helping us to maintain our school fields and playground. The Ministry of Education is no longer funding playgrounds for new schools, nor is it helping maintain or replace equipment that does not meet Canadian standards. We had a parks and recreation department ask our schools to put their requests forward prior to a city budget meeting. While in the city liaison meeting, the chair recognized the importance of partnerships, stating: "We have one tax pocket." What a novel concept — all going to one area. This proactive approach by the city will allow us to upgrade fields and playgrounds for three schools this year.

The cities of Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam have endorsed our police and school liaison program. The RCMP now has six officers working in our schools as a resource for our staff. This proactive approach is paying huge dividends to our community. The police are providing educational programs such as DARE and safe routes to school. They are visible in our schools and are getting to know the students of our community. Vandalism is down.

We have many exceptional programs to be proud of in our community, and our schools are a major focus. The aboriginal community is embraced with programs in our local schools. The proud names of Coquitlam and Minnekhada Middle School reflect the aboriginal heritage of our area.

In closing, I thank you for the time and implore you to remember that we all have one common goal: to fulfil the educational needs of our students and make public education a success. I would like to say thank you and that I am extremely excited about the new direction that the Ministry of Education is heading. The presence of this committee speaks volumes to the dedication of making and maintaining education in this province. I think public education is the equalizer in our community. Thank you. Are there any questions?

R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I was very interested in your comments on teacher evaluation. I wonder if you could tell me: in your district, is there a program of regular evaluation? In other words, is the principal able to write reports on all teachers on a regular basis, either every three years or two years or one year? What is the process for an unsatisfactory report?

J. Shirra: I'll go with the unsatisfactory report, because I did ask about this recently. It depends on how it is presented. If it's presented as an informal complaint, there's no paperwork and the principal speaks with the individual. At the end of that, apparently, that's the end of it.

If it's a formal one, in writing — which is what I tell people to do all the time, because it's the only way we can act — there is an outline and a process to be followed. That's when visiting the classroom becomes a little harder. Apparently, our principals can get into the classrooms. They're supposed to get in and check once in a while. I don't think it happens. I think our administrators are so busy managing a system and putting out fires on a day-to-day level that it isn't being done.

As a parent, it's a huge concern when you have first-year teachers that are coming in and their slogan of the day is, "I don't care if you pass or fail; I still get paid at the end of the day," and they're not fulfilling the requirements of the curriculum. A parent writes a letter at the end of the school year, because they're scared that their child would be punished. The principal says: "I can't do anything. I can't get into the classroom to visit them. You've got to bring those complaints to me earlier." We're caught in a bit of a catch-22 where parents are concerned.

R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I'm just wondering about the first part, on a regular basis. That would include satisfactory.

J. Shirra: I don't believe that happens, but I can get back to you and have my district get back to you on that one.

R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I'm just wondering if it was a matter of contract or not or just practice.

J. Shirra: I don't think there is a common practice. I think the first-year teachers are evaluated, and from there on, there's very little. The president of the teachers union is here. You could ask him; he'd probably know.

K. Manhas: I just want to thank you for your energy and your candidness in your presentation, as well, Judy. The collective agreement constraints you were

talking about: are they specific to Coquitlam, or are they provincial agreements? Is it a bit of both?

J. Shirra: I hear it all over the province. These are just a few examples. If we go into the collective agreement, there are more and more that hamper the outcomes of our students.

The simple one is children with special needs. If you get three in a classroom and halfway through a year a child is diagnosed as having a mild to moderate need that may need a little remedial, and if there's an educational learning plan put in place and that teacher has three kids in this classroom, that kid gets pulled, even if that's where his friends and his comfort zone are. It's not in the best interest of kids. We forget that kids are learning social skills here as well. I talk about the negative baggage. I think we sometimes put it on ourselves.

D. Oborne: Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm very happy to be here. I've been a member of the Coquitlam school district for the last six years. I must say that I've worked with a very dedicated and professional group of people in Coquitlam at all levels. I'm very happy to address the committee this afternoon. I came primarily to address the committee around the early years project, and you'll note that Eileen Grant will be speaking to you in a few minutes about it.

I would like to turn your attention to some work that we're doing. At some discussions previous to this meeting, I was asked if I would bring it forward to this meeting so that I could share the results of some work that we've done in Hong Kong, which actually has some implications for us here in Manitoba. Sorry — in B.C. I was in Manitoba when we started the project. You're very surprised to have moved, aren't you?

What we've known — and the Ministry of Education has spoken to it at some length in previous years — is that there are approximately 20 percent of students who are of average intelligence and who for some reason or other are not successful in our secondary school programs. The ministry has labelled those as grey-area students. As you are looking at areas of accountability and student progress, retention rates, graduation rates and student excellence, this is an important group of students who somehow seem to be slipping through the cracks.

It is not actually too surprising that if you went to the mental health literature, you'd find that between 15 and 18 percent of adolescents suffer from some form of social or emotional dysfunction. There is a wealth of knowledge that already exists in our school system about these students, but as yet, it is not systematically recorded and used. We need to encourage those who are already flourishing, because we want to promote excellence, but we also need to take time with those who are struggling along the way. Adolescence presents its own special set of challenges.

We developed a system that looks at pre-crisis intervention. The literature on crisis intervention versus pre-crisis intervention is that pre-crisis intervention is between nine and 12 times as cost-effective, yet typically, we wait till crisis ensues before action is taken. That is because people really haven't been able to screen for those forms of crisis. They happen to our adolescents all the time — those who are conduct-disordered, those who are suffering from depression and those who are suffering from somatization or suicidal ideation. Screening is looking at those who are at risk while they're still reachable in a pre-crisis way.

We combined the understandings of education, psychology and psychiatry in a project in Hong Kong a number of years ago. In this project, we developed a screening mechanism for the Hong Kong school system. The Hong Kong school system has roughly a million children, about 80,000 per grade level. We developed a screening system at the secondary form 1 level, or grade 7. We prepared this project in 50 schools, and our initial study was based on 3,500 students. In Canadian dollars we were dealing with about $350,000 for this study. We did comparisons to standard psychological tests of all natures, and we subjected it to a rigorous analysis with colleagues from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Dr. Philemon Choi is the general secretary for the Breakthrough organization, a youth-serving agency in Hong Kong under whose auspices we initiated the project. He is also presently the commissioner for youth, and of course, you can see that he is a justice of the peace and a Member of the Order of the British Empire. I've asked Dr. Choi if he would share with you the findings from the Hong Kong project. If we could have the video.

D. Oborne: This form actually takes people seven minutes per child to complete and involves, as well, the family registration form. It's machine scored, and the rating is built within our program.

What we developed for Hong Kong is something that they use now on 80,000 students per year at the grade 7 level. With that, they are developing primary prevention programs. Please don't forget that these students are still within our schools, and they're able to work with them on a group basis, pre-crisis.

What we found was that with our form we were able to pick out 40 percent of the top 20 percent of at-risk students. Now, when you think of the top 11 percent, those are students who are classified as clinical or subclinical, so we're really talking about psychotherapy at this point, and these are kids in our school systems now. Imagine, then, the difficulty students will have attending to tasks, attending to mathematics, attending to those other subjects, when they themselves are not wanting to bring their full presence to bear.

The costs of our form, in our machine-scored fashion, are approximately $2 for the processing. The next test that we compared our form to — the Achenbach, which is a standard psychological screening form used

here in North America — is approximately $800 per student. You can see the immense discrepancy between a screen as a way of working with children in a primary way and a full diagnostic tool, which is the next step. There is no step in between.

What we've found in the ensuing projects in Hong Kong is that it has been predictive in nature. We were able to predict where Achenbach would actually start to find children at the clinical level. What we have is a very easy tool. Dr. Choi mentioned the policy announcements, and if you go to the website in Hong Kong, you'll see the various policy addresses by Tung Chee Hwa, the Chief Executive Officer.

Here's what we were able to help them with. As a direct result of the study, the departments of social work and education decided to place 450 FTE social workers in the secondary schools in Hong Kong. That's a very major step. They've developed a systemwide screening for 80,000 students. There's an agreement on their part to look at primary prevention, and they've now moved to include grade 4 screening. If you look in the last policy announcement for special projects, Hong Kong has dedicated $1 billion (Canadian) for special projects. That will be found on their website. They really are taking that into very serious account.

The implications for social service integration for adolescent youth are immense. If social work and education in Hong Kong can get together to really start addressing these problems, along with community groups, we need to as well. There's the economy of forethought, the economy of being nine to 12 times as cost-effective. Schools are really the focal point of service, aren't they?

We've had similar studies in Canada, but not using schools as the focal point for the studies. You may want to refer to Dr. Dan Offord and his adolescent health care study in Ontario, where they used social allowance data.

Social and emotional assessment is a key to increased learning potential for our students. We do see that as a major part of the education platform. We can work together in British Columbia. We can target our actions early, we can promote resilience and we can reduce dysfunction if we are able to screen properly and help students before the crisis ensues. We will retain more students, and we will promote our population competencies.

We are very pleased to present this to you today. There are some documents that I've left with you: the project handout; the notes that I've gone through here in PowerPoint; an article which is in press for CNS News, a medical journal in the States, following a presentation this past year; and an executive summary of the project itself, the original project in Hong Kong. With that, thank you. If there are any questions, I'd be happy.

R. Stewart: This is a simple screening process. Is there a false-positive issue to be dealt with? It seems somewhat simple.

D. Oborne: Yes, there is a false positive. Actually, I believe it's in the executive summary. There are a percentage of students who would be screened in and would have been negative. There are both of those elements, so what we did was to take a 20 percent cut-off rate. The projects that we are looking at are projects that are fairly benign in nature and really revolve around very observable data that schools see and can refer to in discussion with parents.

It's not a matter of screening a child in because they have a particular problem. This wouldn't say that a child is depressed. It wouldn't say that a child was suffering from some other form of social or emotional dysfunction. What it does say is that there are some children we need to work with first, and in groupings, we have done that in our schools already. This helps us systematize that. As you know, when children move from elementary to middle school, there is a lot of data that needs to move along with them. This is a helpful, systematized way of moving that data forward.

As well, in the middle schools, we have already started to use some elements of working with special needs kids, kids who have difficulties in doing homework, kids who have had truancy difficulties, children who have behaviour difficulties. Those are very apparent difficulties that we could work with, and those will help save us from a crisis further on.

R. Lee: You mentioned that this is 40 percent of the top 11 percent of at-risk students. What does that mean?

D. Oborne: We took a cutoff of 20 percent of the population. Within that 20 percent grouping on our screening form, we found that 40 percent of the top 11 percent were included in that screening. That meant that the other percentages would be less, but we were looking at 20 percent of the population as a group to work with. Now, that could use further refinement, but essentially what we found was that we had enough students within that category to say: "This is a group we should work with, whether or not they actually exhibit that dysfunction."

When we're talking about primary prevention, that's distinctive to secondary or tertiary prevention. In tertiary prevention you have full-blown incidents of depression or whatever dysfunction is present in that case. In secondary prevention you do see the dysfunction appearing, but it hasn't led to the breakdown. In primary prevention you're looking at at-risk populations, so you're not really working with individual students. You're working with a population at risk. If you target your efforts towards some groups who you see more at risk without having a full-blown case, you wouldn't be dealing with depression. The types of things that you would be working with would be very benign lower-level items.

For instance, I'm also involved with a national youth justice network. Our findings are, and research has reported, that adolescents have greatest difficulty between the times of three and six in the afternoon,

those typical times when they are free and parents aren't. After-school programs would be one area, or intervention with other groupings or community groups would take care of those times.

It's a matter of controlling the environment, and it's also a matter of working with groups of students in productive activities which occupy time.

T. Christensen: Thank you, Dr. Oborne. In Hong Kong, are they far enough along in this project that they're able to assess the effectiveness of the programs they're implementing in follow-up to the identification of these students?

D. Oborne: They are at this point, where the report was presented. I presented the report to the Hong Kong group of the social welfare committee in 1996. Since then, they have been working on various models of primary prevention. We have consulted on some of those models, and they are showing results.

It's quite true that people were experiencing some difficulty finding success in the early preventative models. Those have been supplanted by programs that are now becoming more successful.

It really has to do with understanding the full dynamics of the groups. It needs very close coordination. That's why, when we presented the project — actually, we ran it — we used child psychiatry and child and adolescent psychology as perspectives and, as well, the perspective from education which I bring. You need a multidisciplinary perspective to make sure those programs are effective.

E. Grant: Good afternoon, hon. members of the committee. I'm very grateful to be here this afternoon and to have this opportunity to speak to you on a topic that is very close to my heart — specifically, the importance of a partnership between the community and the education system and how that partnership contributes to the possibility of every child having the opportunity to reach his or her unique potential.

My name is Eileen Grant, and I'm a resident of Coquitlam in the Port Moody–Westwood riding. In my working life I am the research coordinator of the Understanding the Early Years project in school district 43. School district 43 comprises the cities of Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody and the villages of Anmore and Belcarra. Our community here is often referred to as the Tri-Cities, but in the work that I do here in the community in the Understanding the Early Years project, we refer to the community as Fraser North in order to be more inclusive not only of the three cities but of the two villages.

The Fraser North area has a reasonably youthful population of approximately 190,000 people. Our population of children and youth ages zero to 19 is estimated to be approximately 54,000, or 28.5 percent of our total population. The population of children ages zero to 6 is estimated at approximately 19,000, or 10.1 percent of our total population. These statistics are the latest available from B.C. Stats in Victoria.

Our children and youth form a sizeable and very important part of our community. The education of our children and how that contributes to their life chances is of critical concern. As a community we want to be sure that all of our children have the opportunities that they need in order to be successful both in their school careers and throughout their lives.

It is that commitment that compelled a broad-based community coalition, led by the Fraser North council for children and youth and school district 43, to bring the Understanding the Early Years project to our community. This project is designed to increase children's readiness to learn in a school environment.

Our community is one of the project's pilot sites, one of the first five communities in Canada to be implementing this project. The other four sites are in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Prince Edward Island; and the southwest region of the Newfoundland portion of Newfoundland and Labrador, including the city of Stephenville. The prototype for the project was implemented in the city of North York, Ontario.

Here in the Fraser North area the project is of five years' duration. We are currently completing the end of phase one, which is the research phase, and are beginning the three-year community planning and implementation phase.

The main local sponsors of the project are the school district and Fraser North council for children and youth. We are very, very lucky in our community to have an exceptional school district with very bright, involved and proactive teachers as well as a supportive, forward-thinking administration. Our school board also has been very supportive of the Understanding the Early Years project and our community goals of giving children the best possible start in life and increasing their readiness for school.

The Fraser North council for children and youth is a broad-based, grassroots, community table drawn from the major agencies and groups in our community that are concerned with the health and well-being of our children. It includes representatives from the school district, the Simon Fraser health region, the ministries that are involved with children and families, children and family supporting agencies in the community, child care professionals, our first nations community, parents and grandparents.

The Fraser North council envisions a community where all of our children receive the physical, social, emotional and intellectual supports that they require to reach their full potential. This vision statement of the council was written well before the advent of the Understanding the Early Years project to our community, but it echoes perfectly the five domains that the Understanding the Early Years research is designed to carry out.

Understanding the Early Years is a community research initiative that looks at the whole picture of

how neighbourhoods, children's programs and services, families, schools and child care facilities influence early childhood development. It also maps out where children are in the community and where they live in relationship to the programs and the services that support them and their families. With this information, communities can put in action plans that will help their children, both before and after they enter school, to reach their full potential.

Before we will know what we need to do to help them to do better in the future, we need to answer the question: how are our children in our community doing? The Understanding the Early Years project is providing answers to this question so that communities and governments can help develop the policies, programs and services that best promote the well-being of children.

There are three parts to the UEY project. The first one you will probably have heard about, as it's quite a visible entity in the province at the moment. It's called the early development instrument. Those of you that are familiar with the work of Dr. Clyde Hertzman will have heard about this.

It's a questionnaire that is filled in by kindergarten teachers that assesses how ready children are to learn as they enter school. This questionnaire is filled out by teachers several months after the children enter kindergarten so that teachers have had a chance to get to know the students.

It's important to understand that the early development instrument measures how well children are doing at a group level, not at the individual level. The measurement is not meant for individual scorekeeping. It is meant to tell our community how well we are doing in supporting parenting and early child development from a population perspective. Because the early development instrument is not an individual measure, it cannot be used to label or to group individual children by ability.

The five areas of school readiness that the UEY data reports on are physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development and communication and general knowledge.

The early development instrument was completed in our school district in spring 2000 for 2,161 kindergarten students in 140 kindergarten classes. That was almost 99 percent of our kindergarten students, and it was the first year of our data capture. These results have been analyzed by McMaster University at the Canadian Centre for Studies of Children at Risk.

A second round of EDI data was collected for our kindergarten students in March and April of this past year, 2001. The EDI instrument was completed for 2,153 kindergarten students by 122 kindergarten teachers in 149 classrooms in 53 elementary schools. This data has been processed, as well, at McMaster University, and we have received the results back in the community.

A report analyzing the data from both years will be available shortly. In the meantime, as each of these portions of data was analyzed, the results went back to the school district and to individual schools.

The second part of the research is the national longitudinal survey of children and youth, and this was a community component of that survey. This modified version of the national longitudinal survey of children and youth has been developed to collect more detailed data on a random sample of preschool children participating in the UEY project. That was a random sample of the parents of the children that were in our kindergarten studies. Parents of children in kindergarten were randomly selected and asked whether or not they would like to participate in the additional data collection process.

The survey collects detailed information from parents on a variety of factors that influence child growth and development. Perception of community characteristics and use of community resources are also collected from parental responses. The data collected will be used to help researchers better understand the impact of community resources and services in a young child's development.

The survey is completely voluntary. Parents decide if their children will take part. Statistics Canada is responsible for the data collection, and all of the rules and regulations surrounding Statistics Canada apply. Human Resources Development Canada directs and disseminates the research. I am the facilitator for coordinating the research collection in the district.

The national longitudinal survey of children and youth community study was completed in our district in May and June of the year 2000. The data has been analyzed by Statistics Canada and an integrated report, using all of the EDI data and the longitudinal survey, has been completed by Dr. Doug Willms from the University of New Brunswick. It is in its last draft stage at the moment, and we're hoping to have it in print form first thing in January.

A community study has also been done. That's the third component of the Understanding the Early Years research. It maps out our local child and family resources. While the national longitudinal survey of children and youth looks at individual and family use of community services, the community mapping study provides information about the resources that are available in the community at the time of the survey. This study of community resources helps us to know about the kinds of programs and services that are available to children under five and their parents, where these programs are located and information about the physical characteristics of the neighbourhoods in which our community kids grow up.

The community mapping study includes a series of detailed maps indicating the distribution, intensity and range of programs and resources within our community and the physical characteristic of neighbourhoods. It also provides some demographic information about the community. As we are able to collect any information now on programs, we are able to generate maps that show specifically where the programs are related, and we can cross-tab all of these with where the chil-

dren live and also how children are doing on the different components of the EDI study in relationship to where the resources are in the community. For instance, one of our results showed that in an area where the children weren't doing particularly well in terms of their physical development, there were very few physical resources, such as parks and playgrounds, for the children. That kind of information can be taken by planners in our community and put to use immediately.

The Understanding the Early Years project is a groundbreaking effort that looks at the way children learn and develop physically, emotionally, socially and cognitively. This federally funded initiative is part of the government of Canada's commitment to measure and report on children's readiness to learn, to help assess our country's progress in the area of child development and to determine how we as a society can help to ensure the well-being of families and children in Canada. This initiative builds on our knowledge of the importance of the early years and how childhood experiences shape learning, health and well-being over the full course of a lifetime. It has been designed as a way of helping communities measure how well they are doing, and it helps them to make policy-planning strategic decisions.

The type of regular locally based reporting that the UEY project provides helps us to gauge how, as cohorts, our children are doing in terms of their readiness for school. The information that this project provides helps to explain the factors that influence early development, helps to predict future outcomes for the children and also helps with community planning and action in meeting the needs of the children. In a time where resources may be less plentiful, the results of UEY research strengthens a community's ability to make informed decisions about the best policies and most appropriate programs to offer families with young children.

It's easy to see, when you listen to the type of work that was done within the UEY project, that this is the kind of work that happens in a community only when the community and the school district are in a position to partner, in terms of both mandate and good will, on the side of the school district and of the community to work together. We're particularly lucky in this community that that condition exists.

As a result of much of the work that has been done with the Understanding the Early Years project, we have a number of initiatives that are now going on. Sometimes the initiatives are bubbling up from the community before we even have a chance to capitalize on them. We don't have the personnel in place.

I have a couple of examples to show you of the kinds of things that can happen when the school district and the community partner.

E. Grant: One of the first things that I would like to tell you is that we have a number of community schools in the district. They're a very, very important part of the fabric of what happens in the community in a place where the community and the school district intersect. I would hope that we will be able to continue to support community schools. They're a particularly valuable asset. Wherever the dollars reside for community schools — be it the Ministry of Children and Family Development or the Ministry of Education — is not, to me, the key issue. What is important is that we continue to support all school-based services, and in fact, in the interest of readiness-to-learn levels of all our children we should be increasing the connections between the community and the schools.

In one of the community schools in our district, and in a couple of other schools, we have a project in place called the Tri-Cities family preschool project. This came together as a result of the community, the school district and the health region working together. It's a community-designed and community-implemented project funded by Health Canada. It's designed to give a 20-session, quality preschool experience free of charge to children who have never attended any preschool and have never been part of any organized, licensed child care facility. The children must live in the catchment area of the school in question. At the same time that the children meet with the preschool teacher, there is a neighbourly program designed to meet the needs of the parents of these children. There are no criteria beyond the lack of preschool experience and residence within the catchment area of the school.

Because of these criteria and because of the way we recruit for the programs, most of the intake to the project comes from families with many inner-city challenges. We don't talk about at-risk populations. We don't talk about inner-city challenges. What it is about is the opportunities for the children and the parents.

The Tri-Cities family preschool programs are located in elementary schools. The principals and kindergarten teachers are integrated into the program so that at the end of the 20 sessions, children and families feel very connected to their schools, children have had a quality preschool experience, and everybody is ready to enter school on a very, very proactive footing.

We have a couple of other projects that have been developed at the school-district level as a partnership. One of them came up through the development from teachers of an early literacy project. They brought it to the community. The community accessed funding to implement it, and now it's taking charge of implementation of the project in four of our schools. As well, the community has been able to access funding for a parent resource centre at one of our schools with challenges that we've been able to determine through the use of the EDI data from the UEY project.

There is one final thing that I would like to take a minute to say, and it's a personal plea. In a climate where a measurable outcome of concrete deliverables has a very high profile, I would like to speak to the value of the arts and the opportunities they present to children to explore their creativity and develop their potential. Exposure to the creative arts gives children other languages with which to express their ideas.

Sometimes it's through the creative arts that children are at their most expressive.

I'm a mother of two young adults who were educated entirely here, in school district 43. One's a graduate interior designer, and one is a teacher who's on call at the moment in the school district. In their preschool and primary years, nothing gave these children more pleasure or a greater sense of esteem than bringing something home that they had made with their own hands and their own creativity. I believe firmly that they would not be the successful young adults that they are today had they not been provided with these creative experiences.

I would also like to make one cautionary and, again, very personal comment on the issue of measurement. I make this as somebody who majored in applied research and believes absolutely in the value of evidence-based decision making. A few days ago I overheard with despair — not within this district; I was at a conference elsewhere — a primary teacher speaking to another teacher. They were talking about curriculum planning and what she perceived as the current climate. The one teacher said to the other teacher: "If you can't measure it, don't teach it." This was a primary school teacher speaking, and it filled me with such sorrow. How do you measure the value of creativity? Do people who concentrate on measurement have a balanced understanding of the value, particularly in the primary years, of the opportunity for play? I am reminded of the words of Antoine de St. Exupéry in his much-beloved book The Little Prince: "What is essential is invisible to the eye."

I thank you very much for your commitment to the best possible educational opportunities for all of our children, and I thank you for this opportunity to speak to you. I hope we'll be able to find your support, within the educational community, for the combination and the integration of opportunities, for the community and the school district to work together.

I would like to leave you with some very simple words from Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations. He speaks to the immediacy of the issue, to the fact that children pass quickly through the childhood years but that the future of our society is written in the heads and in the hearts of the children that we hold by the hand today. To look into some aspects of the future, we do not need projections by supercomputers. Much of the next millennium can be seen in how we care for our children today. Tomorrow's world may be influenced by science and technology, but more than anything, it is already taking shape in the bodies and the minds of our children.

W. McMahon (Chair): Sorry — no time. We've run out of time, actually. Thanks so much for your presentation.

Our next presentation is from the Langley Teacher-Librarian Association, Jade Graber. Welcome, and go ahead when you're ready.

J. Graber: Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak on behalf of teacher-librarians for Langley.

I'd like to begin with a recent excerpt taken from the Vancouver Sun, written by Ken Haycock, professor and director of the graduate school of library, archival and information studies at UBC.

I work in a district that is decentralized. A decentralized district means that there is choice, and in the district of Langley, prior to the previous contract, that choice often meant the elimination of school librarians. It meant the decimation of school budgets. One of the two schools that I work in had not had a teacher-librarian in over ten years. This is in spite of the fact that we have a provincial curriculum which mandates teachers to teach resource-based learning. How can you have resource-based learning if you don't have resources and the professionals to find the resources and make use of them?

In terms of budgets, we are supposed to have one teacher-librarian to every 702 children. If you work that out, it averages approximately 2 minutes per week per child that they receive in terms of time for learning information-literacy skills. In Langley there was a time when over half the schools did not have any teacher-librarian. We are now finally meeting the base ratios in the school system.

Research from Alaska, Pennsylvania and Colorado has shown that there's an increase in student achievement when students have access to a teacher-librarian; when students visit their school library more frequently; when flexible scheduling allows students to visit the library and media centre individually; when the library staff spend more time on delivering information literacy to students, collaboratively planning and teaching units of study with classroom teachers; and when the teacher-librarians provide in-service training to teachers. We're supposed to be the curriculum leaders in the school, and yet we are the ones that are often cut from the schools.

In addition to delivery of an information-literacy program, the teacher-librarian is concerned with the selection of resources for their school. The curriculum, as I mentioned before, calls for resource-based learning, which is a fantastic method of learning for students. It removes us from the use of textbooks, but when you no longer use textbooks and you remove resources from the schools or you do not fund resources in the schools, how do you expect students to learn accurately?

In one of my schools — this was an elementary school — I've looked at books, and I've removed them

from the collection because they were teaching that one day man might land on the moon. How do you teach children about space with that?

Some people would argue: "No problem. We now have the Internet." Go and take a look on the Internet. What's out there? How do you make appropriate use of it? The teacher-librarian is available to assist the classroom teacher in finding the materials they need and in teaching students how to critically assess the information they're looking at. Look at the information on the Internet. If you don't have accurate resources in your schools and the people to teach students how to use those resources, how can they verify whether the information they're looking at on the Internet is correct?

The library services at the Minnesota State University in Mankato has taken delight in creating artificial or intentionally misleading websites to test people's gullibility. There is one for a town called New Hartford, Minnesota, which, as it turned out, is a fluke. There really is a town called New Hartford, Minnesota. When he created it, Dr. Don Descy didn't realize that. He even placed it close to where it exists. However, the statistics he included about this town were out of whack, but when you look at it, you would believe that this town truly does exist.

He also created a site on Mankato, Minnesota. If you were to go to most search engines and type in "Mankato, Minnesota," the first hit you will get will be of this artificial site. I showed parts of the site to my grade 6 students, because I'd pre-screened it and found that there were parts you wouldn't want children looking at.

The site starts out by telling you that it's a balmy 83( Fahrenheit in the middle of the winter in Minnesota. It talks about underground cities, an underwater town and, I believe, Roman ruins. I had my students take a look at it, and I even showed them the letter of protest from the real city of Mankato, protesting the stupidity of the site, for lack of better words. The initial reaction of the students was: "Wow, this is cool; this is a cool city." I had to show them. "Hold on. Let's take a look at an atlas. Is this possible? There isn't a mountain range where this city is for it to be nestled in." The explanation was that they were nestled in this wonderful mountain range that protected them from all the elements of the continental weather. It was just completely ludicrous. You look at other resources in the school to prove that this is not possible.

Classroom teachers do try to do this, and they try very hard to do resource-based learning, but do we expect them to also be the experts going out and selecting the materials? Do we expect them to be the experts searching out the Internet sites? They are doing that as much as they can, but there are only so many hours in the day. They need our assistance — the assistance of the teacher-librarian.

We have staffing-level problems in the schools, but we also have budgetary problems. In British Columbia in the school year 2000-01 the average per-pupil funding at an elementary school was $12.79. That barely buys a paperback novel, let alone the sort of resources we would like our students to be using. The average secondary school was slightly higher at $14.22. In Langley this year we are looking at an average of $6.48 per elementary student and $12.48 per secondary student. Because of decentralization it can vary from one school to the next.

We have eight schools in Langley that have a zero budget for resources. These numbers of $6.48 per student include processing, cataloguing, taping the books, keeping them in order, repairs to old books and computer programs to do the circulation of the collection. Over and above this, we have problems with plagiarism. It's a backup to the Internet.

The inconsistency in staffing. As a prime example of how decentralization can hurt the delivery of services to our students, we have a school in Langley that has 348 students in it. They have a teacher-librarian one day a week. They have clerical help one and a half hours per day. So for four hours of the school day, for four days out of five, their library is not available to students. In this province it's looking as if, with the cuts that are coming, there will be fewer and fewer services for children.

Schools provide access to a lot of these services, and one of them is literacy. One of them is books. For a lot of children who are at risk, their only access is their school library. They're not taken to the public library to get access to books. They don't live in homes where reading is valued. If teachers are trying to teach the value of reading to students, what message do we send when the children then walk past an unstaffed, closed school library?

In one of the schools I work in, the library is closed on Fridays. The kids know this. You can't get a book on a Friday, the day before the weekend. We have kids who would like to take out books that day, but if they don't plan ahead on Thursday, it's too bad. They're not taking anything home on the weekend.

J. Graber: With ever-increasing demands on the classroom teacher due to the integration of students with special needs, students with learning disabilities and ESL — just to name a few — all specialist, non-enrolling teachers are essential to student success.

Proposed cuts to child welfare services will place an even greater strain on all areas of the education system. We implore you to consider the detrimental effect that allowing the BCPSEA to remove contract language guaranteeing this minimal ratio for teacher-librarians will have on all students.

This is not an issue of deciding who to remove from the system or how much further we can go to meet the minimal requirements. We are already well below the staffing levels that must be provided to all of our students. History has shown that in the face of budget cuts educationally sound practice is often sacrificed. Re-

member: the sacrifices look great on paper, but they look horrible on our children.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you for coming today and for your presentation, Jade.

W. McMahon (Chair): Because of our time limits, sorry, we're right at the end of your time. Thank you.

M. Mott: First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here to speak to you. I represent the Nursing Educators Council of B.C., which in fact represents all of nursing education across the province. We represent all levels of nursing education in British Columbia, from aide through to the PhD level. I would like to present three points today for your consideration. I'm speaking from the post-secondary level of education. Since I've been here, it has been the primary or secondary levels, but I'm speaking to the post-secondary level.

Three things I would ask your committee to take back and consider. One is to increase access for all nursing students to degree completion. I'll expand on each of these a little bit later. The second is to consider increased funding for graduate nursing education and also different and alternative delivery methods of graduate education. The third is to look at increasing capacity for getting aboriginal youth into post-secondary education and, more specifically, health-related education.

To go back to the first point, I'm speaking to the issue of allowing and providing all nursing students the opportunity to complete their degree in nursing so that they can practise. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the current situation with nursing education. Our professional association and regulating body of the province has reviewed, along with the other provincial regulating bodies and the Canadian Nurses Association, the competencies required for nurses to be qualified and competent at entry level.

What has come as a result of that review is that in British Columbia the beginning and entry-level competencies have been revised. Currently, there is no diploma program in the province that provides the education necessary for these students to meet all the competencies that will be required for entry into practice or for licensure. That is the first reason why we would like you to seriously consider moving towards a degree as the entry to practice. We feel there's a lot of support for that. What's required, of course, is dollars to move towards that direction.

The second reason that the educators are concerned about the access of all students to degree completion is that it's becoming financially not viable for us to offer the diploma program. What has happened is that the students are opting not to leave. They have determined that they do in fact need the extra year — it's two semesters, basically — to meet the competencies and be prepared to go and practise nursing. As a result, they're staying in the system. But the current funding process is that only 50 percent of the nursing seats from first year are funded through to degree completion. As a result, we don't have the funding required for the students, and the students are making the choices, not the educational institutions.

Those are two reasons. A third reason is that we're seeing an increased number of students requesting access — these are diploma graduate nurses — to degree completion at our educational institutions. For example, in another life I'm dean of community and health studies at Kwantlen University College. This past fall we had over 80 registered nurses request access to come in for degree completion, because they felt they required that education to go on and be competent practitioners.

Those are the three areas I would like you to consider. Probably the most viable one — if that's the right word — is the issue around funding and budgeting. It is an issue for us.

The second point I wanted to bring forward was the need for increased access to graduate nursing seats. Not unlike our current nursing shortage in British Columbia, Canada and the world, we are currently in a nursing education crisis. There are no extra nurse educators available in our province. In fact, they're being recruited outside of British Columbia — and, of course, south — as aggressively as our nurses are. What we're asking is that the education forum really consider how we might, in fact, increase our seat numbers for nurses to get through graduate education in British Columbia. We would like them to be educated here, and then they tend to stay here. That's our option.

Different ways of helping access. One is through increased funded seats. Another is to examine alternative delivery methods, whether that's distance delivery…. There are many degree-prepared nurses in rural and remote areas who would love to be able to do graduate work but who, typically for financial reasons, cannot relocate and whose employers definitely do not want them to relocate. We're asking that different delivery methods be considered.

The third point I wanted to bring forward to the committee was to examine ways to increase the capacity to have aboriginal youth tracked into post-secondary education and, more specifically, into the health career fields — nursing, in my case, because that's who I'm representing. There's currently a project that has been funded by the Ministry of Health Planning. It's a partnership between two school districts — the Surrey and Langley school districts — and Kwantlen University College and our local health region, as well as the chiefs health committee. That project is to develop curriculum to offer a summer camp for aboriginal youth in grades 6, 7 and 8. We're trying to get them prepared for grade 12 so that when they graduate from grade 12, they can, in fact, track right into our post-secondary system without having to do upgrading, as they often have to do, or do another year to be eligible to go into many of the health-related pro-

grams. What we would ask is that you consider different ways of extending that type of programming and those opportunities to develop further partnerships outside even our specific area.

Those are basically the three areas that I wanted to bring forward. I am open to any questions that you may have.

R. Lee: Thank you for the presentation. In your estimate, how many nurses, say, in five years may need some kind of upgrading?

M. Mott: The nurses that are currently practising are competent nurses. They will not need to be upgraded in that same sense. The reason they have the competencies is that they're working in the field. In five years all new graduates will require the degree. It's not nurses who are currently practising. The increased demand for seats for degree completion are nurses who are choosing to further their education, but it's not required.

R. Masi (Deputy Chair): I just wonder if you could go over the qualifications for the degree in nursing in the sense of whether it's a B.A. plus a year or so of practical training. Equate that with PDP for teachers. Would that be the same sort of thing? Is the practical part included in the four years or five years? I don't know that either. Is it a four-year or five-year…?

M. Mott: It's a four-year degree. The practice experience is integrated throughout the whole area. By the time they leave with their BSN, their bachelor of science in nursing or their bachelor of nursing, they have received their practice as well.

Our next presentation this afternoon is from the B.C. teachers of English language arts, Yvonne Price and June James. Thank you and welcome.

Y. Price: Thank you. We represent the B.C. teachers of English language arts. We're a provincial specialist association that is affiliated to the B.C. Teachers Federation. The purposes of our association are to promote the importance of English language arts and to represent the professional interest of English teachers, grades 6 to 12, in our province. We're both also secondary English teachers in the Surrey school district.

Our association strongly supports the curriculum of English language arts in our province and the status of English 12 as a mandatory subject for secondary graduation. However, we have many concerns about the current provincial testing, both the grade 12 provincial examinations and the foundation skills assessment. In addition, we believe that there are very specific improvements that can be made to working and learning conditions that would improve student achievement.

Recent government comments, as reported in the press, suggest that curriculum and graduation requirements in B.C. are under review. In any changes that may occur, our association urges the government to consider some of the following points.

Language is fundamental to thinking, learning and communicating in all cultures. This idea is a basic premise of our curriculum in British Columbia. English language arts education offers students the opportunity to develop an understanding of different types of informational and literary communication and to develop their communications skills in written, verbal and representational forms for a variety of purposes, personal, academic and work-related.

Our curriculum's broad scope allows opportunities for students with different talents and learning styles to achieve success in a wide variety of areas. This is the reason that our association wholeheartedly applauds the spirit and vision of the present curriculum. Its premise is truly democratic and, if supported rather than hindered or restricted, will offer a truly useful foundation of skills, understanding and critical and cultural awareness for students with a wide range of abilities and interests.

Unfortunately, there exists a number of impediments to the full implementation of the vision of this curriculum. First, the current grade 12 provincial examination, with its narrow academic focus on literary criticism, tends to skew instruction in classrooms toward what might be called a university focus. While the curriculum stresses six strands of communication, the exam focuses on reading and writing alone. While the curriculum stresses texts and communications of different types and for a variety of purposes, the exam focuses almost entirely on literary analysis and formal writing.

Our association believes that this exam hinders and limits the potential of the curriculum. Because the grade 12 exam counts for 40 percent of a student's final grade, this two-hour test exerts a tremendous influence on how teachers teach. In some cases, the exam becomes the curriculum. As a result, the potentially broad experiences that students could have in their classrooms are diminished.

Our association does not oppose a provincial measure of student achievement. However, we do promote a measure that would encourage rather than hinder the curriculum — in other words, a measure of accountability that would truly encourage teachers to teach skills and provide a broad range of experiences to a diverse population of students.

Our second point is that BCTELA also questions the usefulness of the current foundation skills assessment. Here, too, is a provincial assessment that emphasizes a narrow range of student achievement which seems to have been very arbitrarily deemed as most important. In this assessment, reading ability is reduced to reading comprehension as demonstrated through a multiple-

choice and question-and-answer format. Writing is based on first-draft writing on a cold prompt. I would like this standing committee to consider how well you might perform if I asked you right now to produce an intelligent piece of writing on the topic "Are first impressions important?" Would this 45-minute piece of work, with no time for discussion or revision, be an accurate reflection of your writing ability?

The problem with these assessments is that they do not show students' true abilities. They do not take into account regular classroom or real-life practices, and they place an arbitrary emphasis on some skills as opposed to others. English teachers in our province are frustrated that the rich variety of activities, capabilities and real skills are reduced to such narrow testing hoops through which students must jump.

These assessments do not promote best practice, do not take into account learning styles, do not emphasize and value students' achievements in a wide range of areas, do not provide classroom teachers with useful information to improve instruction and do not support the curriculum. Instead, because of the way these results are used, these assessments promote a narrow view of English skills, suggest that poor results mean teachers are not doing a good job and create a contentious atmosphere in education.

These assessments, I would guess, cost a considerable amount to develop, print, distribute, mark and review, and yet what do they do to help students? How do they identify areas that need increased support in our educational system? How do they help teachers identify instructional strategies that promote student achievement?

A recent Vancouver Sun article featured a map comparing how well Vancouver schools performed on the assessment. On the map, east-side schools clearly had poorer results than their west-side counterparts. How does this kind of information serve education? Are we supposed to conclude that east-side schools are doing a poor job? Are we supposed to put pressure on those schools to pull up their socks? Are we supposed to conclude that west-side schools know how to teach kids basic skills in a more effective way?

The FSA provides no incentives, no detailed information on what students do well on and where they struggle, no support and no encouragement. The FSA seems to be an educational whip that strikes out at the most disadvantaged students, in effect blaming them for being disadvantaged, and suggests that if teachers work harder, all will be well.

BCTELA urges the government to work more cooperatively toward improving student achievement. Assessments are a good idea, but let's tie assessment to real educational improvement. There is a lot that is excellent in schools. We urge the government to be a true partner in education; to work with teachers, not at odds with teachers; to draw attention to excellent teaching practice; to highlight the innovative programs; to celebrate student achievement; and to provide leadership through research and detailed information that can make a real difference to schools.

Our third point: BCTELA's experience has been that English teachers are generally open to new ideas and are eager to consider activities and strategies that would improve student achievement. A recent BCTF survey of English teachers in our province indicated that close to 27 percent of English teachers have their master's degree. However, given the demands of the discipline, English teachers often find themselves with a heavy workload outside of the classroom. These occur in the form of marking, preparation, meetings and administrative paperwork. In fact, the BCTF survey revealed some interesting and rather disturbing statistics. For example, 92 percent of teachers surveyed said, "the student population and its needs have become more challenging," 86 percent said, "I have less time available to work with individual students" and 76 percent said, "I have less time to work with students outside the classroom."

Compare this kind of provincial data to the very recent results and implications of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's international assessment of literacy skills. This assessment suggested that class size, teacher expertise and reasonable pupil loads are significant factors in student achievement.

BCTELA believes that this province needs to make a greater commitment to supporting the work of teachers through professional development and planning time and through consultation and support for the complex classrooms that exist today.

In conclusion, we'd like to thank this committee for the opportunity to speak about the concerns of English teachers in our province. We understand that this present government is concerned with improving the educational system that currently exists. We would suggest that there is a great deal that our province can be proud of. We also agree that there is work to be done that can make a real difference. Let's work together with solid information and with the best interests of students as our goal.

R. Lee: Thank you for the presentation. It seems that there are problems, as you suggested, with the FSA test. It seems that you endorse the test by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Are those two kinds of methodology? Are they different? I would like to hear about that.

Y. Price: I'm not really endorsing the other test in terms of it as a test. I was just indicating that some of the comments that were made after those test results were released were rather positive, whereas a lot of the comments that were made when the FSA was released were very negative. Yet we're really talking about the same population here.

I'm not really comparing the two tests in terms of methodology and one being better than the other. I read a little bit about the methodology of the interna-

tional literacy test but not enough to make some very solid comments on that one.

R. Stewart: I listened with keen interest, because this testing issue has come up again and again. I was waiting for the solution. I'm going to read a little bit: "Our association does not oppose a provincial measure of student achievement, but we're looking for a measure of accountability that would truly encourage teachers to teach skills and provide a broad range of experiences."

Where do we find this one? How do we develop it? Clearly, all of us want the system to be accountable and to meet the expectations that society has placed on our school system. How do we test for that?

Y. Price: Well, a couple of points. One is that we need to know why we're testing. Are we testing to make sure that the curriculum is being taught and how well the curriculum is working, or are we testing just to see if individual kids are doing well given very specific circumstances? Our province used to have the provincial assessments of curriculum. Those were not the multiple-choice, pencil-and-paper tests done in a quick three-hour period as these FSA tests are done. They were much broader and included classroom visits and portfolios of kids' work over the course of a year.

We thoroughly support that kind of testing, because what that does is actually give us some very useful information about what's working well in the curriculum; what sort of good things are happening in classrooms that should be shared so that other teachers know about them; and what kind of competencies our kids are getting when they go through a whole year of whatever it may be, whatever stage you're testing, during a school year. There are instruments around that have existed in our province, too, that are really useful in terms of telling us something about the curriculum. That's my point. Testing students and testing the curriculum aren't necessarily the same thing.

J. James: We can, though, take what we learn from testing the students to try and improve the curriculum. I think that's what B.C. teachers of English language arts would really like to see. What are we doing with that information? When the FSA results come out, what happens aside from the little map with the red and blue flags on it?

Y. Price: Yes, if more support were going to schools that obviously needed more support, that would be a useful thing too.

R. Masi (Deputy Chair): First of all, I was very happy to see the OECD results, too, in terms of literacy and the general accomplishments of our students in British Columbia. I think it's commendable, and it's a good reflection on our teachers. I think we should state up front that that's very important. I think it's unfortunate that so much of the testing thing is focusing on the FSA. I'm a firm believer in testing, but what I'm getting at here references your first comments on the current grade 12 provincial examination. I was under the impression that the English teachers PSAs — do they still call them PSAs? — were directly involved in the examination process, and in fact, English teachers do make up the English 12 exams. I guess my question here — it is worth 40 percent of the total mark —is: what would you examine, if not what they do examine today, in terms of 40 percent of it?

Y. Price: Well, a couple of points. One, the PSA has not been involved in creating the English exams — not for many, many years. If it was involved, it would have been quite some time ago — I would say 15-plus years ago. Yes, there are some teachers, who are hired directly by the ministry or a consulting group, that create the exam, but that's not necessarily something that's supported provincewide by English teachers.

In terms of the exam itself, there have been a lot of comments in the press about such a strong university emphasis in terms of the graduation requirements in secondary school. As English teachers, when we look at the English 12 course, it has such potential for all students, but the exam focuses very strongly on literary criticism. Kids get a poem, and they get a short story. There are multiple-choice questions about that referring to literary terms. Then they're expected to defend a position using quotations from the poem or short story to illustrate their opinion. This is literary criticism. It's very useful for university, when you go to English 100, but not necessarily terribly useful if you're graduating from high school and going out to do some other kind of work.

We believe it's useful to have the literary experience in the classrooms, but you don't have to have an exam that completely focuses on that. There are other kinds of writing that kids do. There are other kinds of viewing; there are other kinds of reading. They do a lot of informational text. They do a lot of creative writing themselves in the classroom. None of that is represented on the exam. There's a lot of different options of things that could go in the exam that would emphasize how broad the course is as well.

R. Masi (Deputy Chair): The reason English and the government exams were reintroduced, of course, was that there was a lack of consistency from school to school across the province and across districts. What is fair? I think we have to say what is fair to the student who may, in fact, be examined very severely in one school and not in another school. That's why it was brought back into the whole school system. I appreciate your comments very much, but I just wanted to know where you were coming from.

Y. Price: I agree about consistency. It just doesn't have to be literary criticism across the board as the basis of that consistency.

Our last presentation before our break is by Murray Martin, and then we'll be taking a break until 6 p.m. Good afternoon, and welcome.

M. Martin: I've submitted something for you to peruse at your leisure, but I'm here to talk about mathematics and particularly the mathematics in the high school system that leads to university. We're not necessarily talking about a large number of students, maybe as much as 20 percent.

The province has implemented a new curriculum, and now we are in the last phase with the new principles of mathematics 12. As a teacher who has been in the system for 25 years, there is a lot of anxiety among mathematics teachers. They do not feel very comfortable with the new curriculum. There are many topics in there that they are unfamiliar with and that they're not really sure how to approach. It's a major, major problem, because I don't think the students are going to benefit from this situation.

What is needed, I think, is to implement some sort of in-service program. Teachers need to have an opportunity to take courses at the university level to upgrade their skill and knowledge in these particular topics that are presently being taught in the B.C. curriculum. I think that we need to also involve the universities. We need the two ministries, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Advanced Education. I hope it's called that; I don't know what it's called. I asked somebody at university. He didn't know either. They need to work closer together. I don't think they've ever worked together before at all, so this is going to be kind of a new experience.

I teach at both the high school and the university level, so I'm kind of a unique person. I know that we need to do a better job of preparing kids for university. I can say to you, frankly, that the principles of mathematics course starting at grade 9, which is supposedly preparing these kids for university mathematics, is not. That's the bottom line. The university is concerned, and certainly, when I looked at the curriculum, I was very, very concerned about that too. It's something that you're going to have to wrestle with.

One of the problems we have is that we have textbooks now which have mathematical mistakes in them. They just simply are absolutely wrong. I mean, it's one thing to have solution answers in the back of the book incorrect, but when you teach something in a textbook and it's mathematically incorrect, that is inexcusable.

In the math 11 textbook, the geometry portion is just not done properly. There's no foundation at all to teach this geometry course. It just stands all by itself, and that's not the way geometry is meant to be taught. The new math 12 textbook is a textbook where if teachers don't understand the topics…. If they read the textbook, they still won't understand the topics, because the textbook doesn't teach the topics at all.

There seems to be an overemphasis on graphing calculators in textbooks. We are loaded with this thing — graphing calculators in grade 11, graphing calculators in grade 12. Students know how to punch the keys on a graphing calculator to get answers, but they don't understand how in the world it's arrived at.

About a year ago, I read this book, recommended by George Bluman, the department head at UBC, about knowing and teaching elementary mathematics. It compares the way China teaches elementary mathematics to the way North Americans teach mathematics. The bottom line is that most of the teachers in North America teach mathematics from a procedural point of view. They just tell students: "You do this, you do this, you do this and you get the right answer."

Unfortunately, that works in maybe grade 8, grade 9, grade 10 and a little bit in grade 11, but boy, it falls apart when you try to teach math 12. And it certainly doesn't work when you teach calculus. Students need to be taught mathematics conceptually. Not only do they need to know, "You do this, you do this and you do this," they also need to know why you do that and that to get the right answer.

I tell my students: "No, you can't divide by zero. Why not?" They can't explain to me why not. They know how to divide fractions. They say: "You invert and multiply." I say: "Why does that give you the right answer?" I say to my students — and these are grade 12 students: "What does it mean for three-quarters to be divided by 4/5? What does that mean?" They don't know.

You wonder why they can't do calculus. They don't have the concepts. They've just been taught everything by rote. I think one of the things we need to do is to adopt what many countries are doing. We need to have math specialists starting to teach mathematics at the elementary level, starting as young as grade 3. If you actually talk to a lot of elementary school teachers, the subject they are not comfortable with is mathematics. We need to have it taught from a conceptual point of view. The students need to understand what they're doing and why they're doing it. They need to understand the rules and why they work. That will make them better problem solvers.

In today's society, where we rely heavily on technology — and we're going to rely heavily on technology for an awfully long time — mathematics is the underlying driving force behind all of technology. We need to have some very, very good problem solvers. Mathematics is the subject area that teaches very, very good problem-solving skills. The skills you learn from problem-solving in mathematics go across the curriculum, because you use them in any other areas.

The other thing, too, is that I think the math 12 provincial exam should be based on the principles of mathematics 11 and the principles of mathematics 12 curriculum, not just on the 12 curriculum. I think it should be based on grades 11 and 12. The other thing, too — and this is only a comment — is that because of the new curriculum and the concerns I've had, I've had several discussions with the Ministry of Education and the people dealing with mathematics there. I have a funny feeling when I'm talking to them that they really do not understand this material at all either. That is really, really a problem.

We've got to make sure we have the people that really understand this stuff in those kinds of positions, and my gut reaction is that they don't. I asked somebody a very simple question. I said to him: "How do you feel about probability and statistics?" He said: "I'm not very good in probability, but I really feel comfortable with statistics." I asked him a very simple question in statistics, and he did not know the answer.

When I got off the phone, I said to one of my colleagues: "You know, I just asked this person a very, very simple question. It's certainly my opinion that he doesn't know this stuff at all." When I asked them, they said, "Well, you know, we're going out, and we're talking to other people," as if they have to go out and ask people what to do. I think that, again, is a recipe for disaster.

I'd also like to say that one way to help teachers immediately is we need to implement some sort of mentor program for teachers. We need teachers that not only teach students; we need teachers that teach teachers. That is really necessary now in the area of sciences.

The world of mathematics has changed greatly in the last 15 years, and I don't know if a lot of teachers are up to date in terms of changes that have taken place. One way to do that is to have people that work both at the university level and also at school district levels. They could be involved in working with university people and developing courses the teachers could take that would make them better mathematics teachers.

When I talk to the universities, they think it's a really great idea. The only problem is, you'd have to have the two ministries working together. This committee has got the power to make those kinds of things happen, and if they do, I think we're going to be off and running. We're moving in the right direction, but we definitely have to involve the universities in the development of curriculum and also in the development of provincial exams. I think the universities need to have input. We're supposedly preparing these kids for university mathematics, so they should have some input.

K. Manhas: Thank you, Mr. Martin, for your presentation. You're the second former high school student that's come here before me today. It's an interesting experience, listening on this side.

K. Manhas: It's a blast from the past. I feel like I'm back in your class listening to you again.

I was interested in a couple of your comments. You were mentioning that you taught at high school, and you are now teaching at the university level as well.

K. Manhas: Were there any challenges in your duties at high school as part of your contract?

M. Martin: No, because I teach in the evenings. The one I'm teaching at Simon Fraser is at 5:30 in the evening. There are no problems at all with that kind of conflict.

It really has been an eye-opening experience, because the students I teach are business students. It's a second-semester calculus course for business students. They're fresh out of high school, and so I have an opportunity to talk to my students. It's really interesting. I say to them: "How was high school mathematics?" They hem and haw and that kind of stuff. I say, "Well, it's certainly different at university," and they say yes. I say, "Do you think you were well prepared?" and a lot of them say: "No, we weren't really that well prepared for university."

The person before me was an English teacher. I understand that they can certainly lobby for small classes. On the other hand, at the school I'm at, we'd love to have a lecture theatre. I'd love to teach 150 kids at once and then have open labs where kids can come in and get one-on-one help. That's the way I would like to see us do things, but we don't have any high schools built with lecture theatres. The reason is that that's the way they're going to be taught at university, and for the university-bound kids that would make sense. As the universities change, we can change too. We can just model the way they're doing it. We need to prepare them better for what's ahead. For a lot of kids it's a real eye-opener when they go to university.

I love teaching when I've got 99 or 150 kids in my class. It seems to be the more I have, the more I enjoy it. It's a lot of fun.

K. Manhas: Are you aware of any other teachers who also teach at the university level?

M. Martin: I taught at UBC, and George Bluman said I was the first high school teacher to do this.

R. Lee: I was interested in your comment on the in-service programs. Do you think this kind of program would be receptive to the teachers?

M. Martin: Yes and no. I should tell you this thing. Last Saturday I taught all day at Port Moody Secondary School. Guess who I was teaching? Mathematics teachers. Guess what I was teaching them? Probability and statistics in the new math 12 course. These are some of the finest teachers that we have teaching it, but you know, they really, really were feeling uncomfortable with it, and they really wanted my help. In January I will be teaching the new chapter 8 on statistics for them. After I'd finished teaching for six hours, one of my colleagues said: "Well, I'm sure glad you're next door next semester. If I need any help, I'm just going to

come and ask you." Some will, but I think it's really important that teachers are encouraged to upgrade themselves.

I have a master's degree in mathematics from Simon Fraser University. I need to go back and take courses. I can teach probability and statistics, but it's not my area of expertise. I would love to be able to take a couple of courses, because I'd really like to know and be able to tell my kids: "This is where this stuff is leading." That's not my area of expertise. Myself, I would love to go back and take some courses. I'd like to have the opportunity to be able to do that. If I, with a master's degree in mathematics, need to do that, I think a lot of other mathematics teachers have to do it too.

R. Stewart: My own experience, and this is actually in university, was taking calculus and physics in the same semester, succeeding wonderfully in physics, and only at the end of the term realizing that the first and second derivative are velocity and acceleration and they're the same thing. I don't understand. Are there differences between people that make some of them capable of learning the process better or perhaps better able to understand the philosophy behind it? To what extent do we have to retrain teachers on an ongoing basis to understand how these processes can move forward and how we ought to shift how mathematics is taught?

M. Martin: I think some people are born with the ability to do it. I also think that we're losing a lot of people because they haven't been taught mathematics from a conceptual point of view. I think that some of those people wouldn't slip through the cracks, and I would feel a lot better about that.

I think that a lot of the teachers that I'm aware of do have only a procedural understanding. As this author said, if you only have a procedural understanding of mathematics, that's as far as you can take your students. If you have a conceptual understanding of a concept, you can teach your kids to conceptually understand it. This book, to me, was a real eye-opener. This author was in Vancouver last Christmas because the Canadian mathematics society brought her over. She was in a discussion panel. The Canadian mathematics society has basically adopted what she is saying in this book.

M. Martin: Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping La. She taught in China for a number of years and did her master's degree and then her PhD in math education. This is her PhD thesis — into a book.

M. Martin: I tell you, we've had lots and lots of problems. For me, it's never been a better time, because I love solving problems.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you. We're going to have our dinner break now, and I'm going to ask that we be back by 6:10. If we can get back a little earlier, that would be great.

Our next presentation this evening is Helen Ho, Jason Ho, Vicky Taylor and Caleb Taylor. I'll ask you to come up to the front. Welcome.

Just to let you know, we've allocated 15 minutes. If you finish early, then we'll have time for some questions. If not, we'll just have to keep going with our presentations this evening. I'll let you start when you're ready.

H. Ho: Thank you for the opportunity to present to you. My name is Helen Ho, and I'm presenting with Vicky Taylor. We are here as parents. We are both prepared to answer your questions following our formal presentation, and you have received some written submissions from us. We are here today with our sons as a lesson in advocacy for them. I trust you are here today to prove to them that our advocacy for them will make a difference.

V. Taylor: I've been happy to access three of the options for education in British Columbia. For a number of years my children were registered as home-schoolers, and then both my children were enrolled in the pilot program that brings us here today. This fall we chose to enrol our daughter in a local public school. I'm going to tell you a little bit about her.

After home-educating Elena for six years, we made a family decision to have her enter the public education system for the first time. It has proven to be a successful experience for her so far. Her teacher has given us verbal affirmation that she is transitioning well. Although the present job action has prevented her from receiving her very first written report card, she has been given her grades verbally. To quote Elena: "Mom, I got straight As, except for two Bs."

She is one of many success stories for the public education system. However, I like to think that the attachment she has shared with our family for eleven

years before entering the public education system has made a huge difference to her ability to handle it.

After home-educating Caleb for six years, we made a family decision to continue to home-educate him. This has been an excellent choice for him. While Caleb learns in a style that the public education system is not geared towards, we have chosen to take on the task of continuing to educate him at home instead of expecting the public system to bend to his needs. Our son learns differently. He is bright. He loves life. He has a passion for learning, and we have chosen to keep it that way. Now he'll share some of his experience.

C. Taylor: I'm a home-schooler, and I'm proud of it. I enjoy home schooling, because I don't have to sit around all day from 9 o'clock to 2:15 and have a couple of hours' homework afterwards. My mom has given me a way to be the teacher and the student. True, sometimes I need to ask her questions, but not much. I'm just about always done school for the day about one hour before Elena, my sister, is even home. I'm certain I would struggle in school. "Why?" you may ask. No, I'm not dumb. I'm dyslexic.

My dad is my tutor. He took a course just so he could teach me. I just wouldn't do well in school, because I don't learn that way. Another reason is I just started transferring from manuscript to cursive this year, and this week I learned the -dge rule.

I am feeling a lot better in the last two years. Also, I get everything done faster because I'm the only student. I get a real crack when I have to do something with fellow classmates. I like being on this program, because we get a computer. Mind you, it's not the best, but we pay for ADSL, so it works fine.

J. Ho: My name is Jason. I'm 11 years old. My mom has been home-schooling me my whole life. I have never gone to a public school.

I enjoy home schooling, because I can learn things I would like to learn about. For example, a couple of years back I did a study on single-celled organisms. This year I am learning about robotics. I can learn at my own pacing level as well as plan my own schedule.

My mom and dad work hard to provide me with a good education. I thought this program would help us by helping my mom and by providing a computer. The computer has been very helpful, but it has not been upgraded in two years.

I want to have a good education as a home-schooler until the time I decide to go to school.

H. Ho: We are in our seventh year of home education. The reasons we chose this are many and varied. We are committed to our kids and their quality education. We are not saying that quality education cannot happen in a public school, but we are convinced that quality education can happen outside a school.

Families home educate for many reasons. As our students have indicated, different learning styles mean there are kids who are not necessarily well served by a classroom setting. Addressing how public education can serve the needs of a diversified population is your job, through this committee, but at present in British Columbia, one option families have is to home-school.

Home schooling has been identified as being chosen for primarily religious reasons. I could challenge that. As one gets to know the community, there is a realization that some home-schooled kids are gifted and have special needs. Educating them at home can give them opportunities to pursue learning at a pace different from the classroom.

The privileges the School Act offers for us as parents to have the ultimate responsibility and choice as to how our children are educated are the best in Canada. We would like to see it remain so. Realizing that this government will probably open the act and not knowing how the changes could negatively affect us does add anxiety. Our charge to you is to ensure that the changes you make to the act will strengthen parents' ability to choose for their children.

V. Taylor: Two and a half years ago our school district came to home-schoolers in our area to invite us to the electronically delivered education, or EDE, program they had decided to offer. The program is modelled after the Nechako E-Bus program, but it remains undeveloped.

We have chosen to relinquish our complete freedom in educating our son for the trade of the support and direction from a professional educator. We have received some of what was promised to us. We do believe in an incredible potential that this school of choice could have for children's education — the individual attention that a parent can provide, balanced with some direction and support from a professional educator.

H. Ho: One positive for us is that Jason could access a band class at a local school. This has been a positive experience for him — to experience a classroom setting while progressing in music in a collaborative environment. It gives him information to decide if or when he will go to school. As parents we are pleased about the transitioning opportunity. We could identify lots of positives, but our time here is limited, and it's the negatives that you will have to hear about.

This is my third year on the program. I have had questions about the program since the beginning that remain unanswered. On EDE programs, the school district receives half a full-time equivalency, or FTE, for each student enrolled. There has been communicated an attitude of "we would rather have the whole FTE your child could bring to the district."

We certainly get it that professional educators as a whole do not appreciate the home school movement. On an individual basis, many teachers I have met respect my choices and my work as a parent teacher. We are not the only parents that feel frustrated on this program.

What did the Ministry of Education and the people of this province intend when they began this pilot project? I pay my taxes just like any other citizen. What do

I get for the education of my child? I have received a few resources. I have taken on the burden of teaching; it's my choice. It was also promised to me that we would receive some support from a professional educator. What services can I expect? There are no minimum criteria for an expected level of service for the consumer on EDE programs.

An acquaintance has her son enrolled in a school. She has arranged with the principal to educate her child at home. He has decided to give her $600 to cover some curriculum expenses. The child is added to his numbers, and he receives one FTE from the ministry. The rest of the money is used to fund, perhaps, his computer lab. He has made this option available to others. He's turned it into a program.

A number of options like these are springing up all over the province, according to the B.C. Home Learners' Association. Why do my child and my program have to operate on half an FTE while others do not? Is that equitable education in British Columbia?

V. Taylor: Where do we go to solve the concerns we have about our program? Locally, who cares about a few — 50 — students? The ministry sets up and funds the program; the local district delivers it. Where is the accountability to myself, the taxpayer and client? How does the ministry determine that a job is being done?

I heard that school boards in this province could be fired if the books don't balance, but they cannot be fired because children are not being educated. Districts are clamouring for cash and the lifting of the EDE cap promises that. If there is money targeted for this program, who will ensure that the children enrolled are benefiting from it?

In my own community, I have only one option in enrolling my child in a parent-led EDE program. I am a public school advocate. There is a part of me that is loath to say: "Give more money to private schools." I began to realize that the reality is that independent schools have long offered resources and support to home-schoolers on small amounts of money and did a good job. I wonder: if private schools could receive the funding to provide EDE programs, then the competition might bring accountability to district programs. True accountability is to give some choice to the consumer.

What will this government do with home schooling options in this province? How will this government ensure that my children will receive a quality education within the educational choice I have made for them?

H. Ho: In summary, firstly, we want changes to the School Act to strengthen parents' ability to choose for the child. We want home schooling to continue to be an option in the School Act with the right to decide between registering as a home-schooler, which means complete freedom without accountability, and enrolling as a home-schooler, where there is some accountability and some resources.

Next, we would ask you to continue programs for home learners that allow partnership with professional educators. However, removing a cap on EDE programs requires accreditation and minimum standards that ensure districts are actually delivering a quality program.

Next, programs for home learners should be equitable. It's not fair that the principal down the road can get a whole FTE for a home-schooler while our program only receives half.

Lastly, open EDE programs to independent schools, because it seems that competition creates accountability.

R. Stewart: Thank you very much for your presentation. We haven't heard very much from home schooling parents, and I really appreciate it — particularly from the students.

Had you made any attempts to enrol in Nechako Lakes E-Bus program or something like that — outside of the school district?

H. Ho: This program is — along with the pilot program with Nechako…. Two and a half years ago the ministry offered other school districts around the province to follow the same model that Nechako has and to operate locally developed E-Bus programs like Nechako. Yes, we certainly would have an option to register in Nechako. We appreciated the opportunity to register in a local program because of the benefits that would give us locally.

R. Stewart: Okay, but you don't have any feedback as to whether Nechako's program is more developed or better?

V. Taylor: Nine years they've been running. They have a principal. They have teachers assigned to students. They have a lot of things to offer besides the one thing that we wanted, which was local. They weren't local for us.

R. Lee: Thank you for the presentation. You mentioned here that there's $600 per year — the money given out by the school. Is that correct?

H. Ho: Our program receives a half FTE, which is around $3,100 for the year that we're enrolled in.

I'm talking about programs that are called renegade programs or golden boy programs, where the principal down the road offers to register my son. To the ministry, he's a student at a desk in that classroom, but actually — privately arranged — I'm home schooling him.

He gives me $600 a year to help me with some of my curriculum costs, but he gets a full-time equivalency from the ministry for my son being in his school.

V. Taylor: In our program the district gets half full-time funding. We get $200 for registering there.

R. Lee: So the school is actually getting most of the money allocated by the ministry.

H. Ho: We also get the loan of a computer. We get some software, depending on whether we use it or not. For our other curriculum expenses we get $200.

J. Kwan: A quick question on the calculation of how much you get, whether it's a half-time or full-time FTE. Where does that come from? In terms of its determination, is that from the school board? Is it from the Ministry of Education?

V. Taylor: The Ministry of Education, in the pilot programs, offered school districts this program, which was half FTE. These renegades, who would register my son as a full-time student and get full-time funding, just do it.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation tonight. We appreciate you coming.

Jason and Caleb, thanks very much for coming too. It was great to hear from you.

W. McMahon (Chair): People don't usually pronounce your name properly — is that what you're going to tell me?

A. Uhl: I'd like to thank you for having me here today. I'm here to speak about physical education in the schools in British Columbia.

I guess I had to think a little bit about why me and what made me an appropriate person to talk about this. I thought I should probably give you a bit of a frame of reference. I'm in my twenty-eighth year of teaching physical education in Burnaby. I'm currently a secondary school PE department head. In the previous three years I was a district program consultant, where I had responsibility for PE and athletics from K to 12 in the Burnaby school district. I'm on the B.C. School Sports board of directors. Probably most importantly, I'm the parent of three kids who are in the system and, I think, have benefited a lot from it over the years.

It's a bit intimidating here. Being a teacher, you know, I'm not actually used to people listening to me, so you'll have to forgive me.

I guess, first of all, we need to think about what a physically educated person looks like. What's the goal at the end of the day? What are we trying to achieve? According to our curriculum, obviously, they should have some basic movement skills. I think it's more often seen that a physically educated person is an athletic sort of a person. That's only a small, small portion of what we do. They need to demonstrate that with an active and healthy lifestyle. They need to demonstrate personal and social responsibility. Those are really our three curriculum areas that we strive to produce in.

I like to tell the kids in my PE class that when you're on a school team, the focus is on excellence, and if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. When you're in my PE class, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. Really, that's the dividing line. Just the fact that I'm a crummy badminton player doesn't mean that I shouldn't get out there and enjoy it. I think that's our goal.

What separates physical education from the other core areas in education is that we're the only ones that really deal with the mental, physical and social development, the well-rounded student, in the way we approach our subject. I think that when we look back on some of our experiences, good and bad, in physical education classes, it's a bit of an intimidating thing to teach. I can sit there and struggle in my math class and nobody knows, but in my phys ed class I did some dance today, and some of those grade 10 boys were struggling. It's very public. They got a sense of what it must have been like for some of the girls in that class when they did the soccer unit earlier on, I guess.

I guess the biggest thing about PE is the frame of reference. I think there should be accountability. The problem is: where's the finish line? If you watch an Olympic marathon and watch the end of the first or second mile, you have a hard time predicting the end winner. It's the same thing here. Often, with the attitudes and the things we work on in physical education, our finish line is ten, 20, 30 years in the future. That's when we get our feedback about how successful we've been. I think in physical education classes we've struggled, because we've often been held accountable for where a kid's at right now. I really don't think that's valid or what people are really looking out for.

There's plenty of research out there to say how important physical fitness and physical education are to the students' overall development. Their ability to achieve academically is enhanced if they're physically

fit and active, and you only have to see a bunch of kindergarten kids to realize that it's really unnatural for them to sit still for very long. The brain research that's come in now tells us for sure, and it tells us what we already knew as parents: kids need to be active. The problem is that although it's extremely important, it's not urgent. Because of that lack of urgency, it can often get shunted off to the side.

We've come a long way from the days when — I think it was — the president of Harvard University said that every time he felt the need to exercise, he laid down and rested until that feeling went away. I think we now understand how important it is for us. We see things like the Surgeon General's report. We see the fitness levels of kids going down when they hit kindergarten and down again when they hit grade 11. We see the onset of type 2 diabetes in teenage children.

Where are we at? What's going on in physical education? Well, I can tell you, looking first of all at the elementary level, that if I went and told you there are teachers that aren't very good readers — they can't read themselves — teaching kids how to read at the school your kids are going to, or they can't do long division but they're teaching your kid math, you'd have a lot of concerns. I can honestly say that I think in many cases around the province, we have people who aren't physically educated, who struggle with it, who are in charge of children's physical education. There are very few physical education specialists left.

We've been in a competition with the computer labs, with music, sometimes languages — all very valuable programs. The net result over the last 20 years — certainly in Burnaby, I know — is that physical education specialists at elementary have all but disappeared. Like I said, that's probably not a big deal now, but it's going to come home to roost ten or 20 years from now.

At secondary the pressure is to balance the emphasis on extracurricular athletics with physical education, as I said, and that takes a lot. They shouldn't be mutually exclusive, but there's only so much time and energy to go around. There can be a conflict there.

What do we need from you? Well, I think what we need is some wisdom to see in this day and age, where everyone's looking for accountability and instantaneous results. What I'm really asking for is some maturity and some leadership to see that this is early on in the marathon. We need to follow the process, and then the outcome's going to look after itself at the end of the day. We can cut these programs, just like I can cut my exercise program. I don't pay the price tomorrow, next week, next month or next year, but two, three, five years from now I know that my health is going to pay the price for that. It's exactly the same issue here.

I think that as we step into this new age, where there's constantly more and more competition for resources, the squeaky wheel tends to get the oil. I think we have to do a better job of explaining to the public and to people making decisions how important what we do is.

I think that's about what I needed to say today, but I'd be happy to answer any questions.

An area that I think will be coming forward over the next few years is coaching and extracurricular teams. I was wondering what your thoughts were relative to paying coaches, as they do in the United States, and how that would, in turn, affect the whole system.

A. Uhl: Well, you know, we always look at what they're doing in the States. It must be better, I guess.

I'm a long-term coach as well, and my kids have gotten tremendous benefits out of it. When I leave here, I'll be picking up a daughter from a basketball practice.

I didn't really come to speak about extracurricular stuff, but I can tell you this much: speaking purely for myself here, I think the real value of it is that you are a volunteer. When I was out with my grade 8 boys basketball team, all 40 of them, at 7 o'clock this morning, they knew I was there giving them a gift. For me personally, I don't know what you could pay me to make it worth my time. In a way, I would feel a bit insulted, because it's something I'm passionate about and something that I do because I want to. The kids recognize it as that, and that's where the value of it comes. It is a volunteer activity. That's why they're so powerful, in my opinion.

T. Christensen: A basic question. In the current curriculum, what's the level of physical education that students are getting? Do you still have to take PE 11 and PE 12?

T. Christensen: A second part of that is: if you're in those courses, how are they graded? Some kids have this natural ability and others don't.

A. Uhl: First question. PE is a required core subject until grade 10. After grade 10 it becomes an elective. I was telling kids in my grade 10 classes that that's their grad year for PE. This is their last kick at the can, and if they want to work on their fitness level, for instance, this is it. What do we get at senior? In grade 11 and 12 classes, it's a lot of singing to the choir. The kids who need PE the most are, of course, the least likely to sign up for it.

We have competed with academic pressures and that sort of stuff, and we haven't fared very well, in all honesty. I think we need to have a hard look at what we're doing.

That comes around a little bit to what you said. How do you get a mark? How do you get graded in PE? I've really enjoyed the fact, as a teacher, that this past fall I haven't had to give report cards, because I've been telling kids that it's all about your effort mark, and we've got set criteria at our school for what is a good effort, what is satisfactory and what needs im-

provement. The kids do a lot of self-evaluation. I've had kids coming in and saying: "Mr. Uhl, what's my mark?" I'll say to them: "I'll tell you that, but first I have to ask you a question. Have you tried your best?" That's, of course, a yes or a no question. If the answer is, "Yes, I've tried my very best," I say: "Tom, congratulations. You should be really happy with that C-minus if that's the best you could have done. I don't know what the heck your parents could have asked you. That's tremendous to have achieved to your top potential." If the answer is, "No, I haven't tried my best," then I tend to say to them: "You really shouldn't be wasting my time, because if you really cared about your mark, you'd be getting a G." As I said, it's my own way of emphasizing the process and de-emphasizing the outcome.

I've never seen a kid struggle in PE because of a lack of ability. Lack of ability leads to a resistance on the part of the kid in some areas, which in turn leads to problems. I see a lot of kids that I wouldn't call gifted athletically who are tremendous phys ed students. They just have the ability to maintain a positive attitude, even though they might be struggling. That's a tough thing to do. It's a great lesson in life, though.

W. McMahon (Chair): Our next presenter is Carolyn Shiau. Good evening, and welcome.

C. Shiau: Thank you for this opportunity to present information to this committee. Let me start by telling you a little bit about my educational background. I have lived in Coquitlam my entire life, but I have not always attended school here. I completed elementary school within this district but couldn't find a suitable middle school. My parents and I decided to send me to a private school outside of the district in order to ensure that I received a good quality of education.

I returned to the public education system for my high school and graduated in June 1999 in the international baccalaureate program at Port Moody Secondary School as the graduating class top student academically, artistically and in service and leadership. I went straight into second year university at UBC. I'm currently in my fourth year of honours biophysics and am scheduled to complete my degree in May, finishing with three years on a full scholarship.

As you can imagine, being in both the public school and private school systems and having moved on to university, I have been given a unique student perspective on education. My one overall observation, having had these experiences, is quite simple: no one seems to know what anyone else is doing in the system. Many people make assumptions about what happens, make good guesses and profess to understand, but until they go out and talk to the people, it's difficult to say what is really happening. The profound lack of communication is clear at almost every level and is hurting the quality of education for students, in general.

As a prime example, let us look at the way the curriculum is set up. How many elementary school teachers do you think actually go and talk to the future teachers of their students, in middle school? In many cases, we are taught the same things over and over again throughout school.

I know that the curriculum is set up to allow teachers to choose which topics they would like to teach, but how many times throughout school do I have to learn about the Roman Empire? I learned it in grade 5 before leaving elementary school. I saw it again in grade 10 social studies. I saw it again in grade 11 history. You know, nowhere in my entire education in history, from kindergarten to grade 11, did I ever see anything about World War I or World War II. However, there were other people in my grade 11 history class who had seen World War I and World War II several times throughout their education and knew nothing about the Roman Empire. Somewhere, the communication about what has been taught in different places has been lost.

The mathematics curriculum is another example of something that is very repetitive. The real difference between grade 8 mathematics and grade 10 mathematics is one formula. It's called the quadratic formula. Why could it not have been introduced in grade 8? For most kids, that's two years entirely wasted, learning the same thing over and over and over again.

We need to encourage students to be creative in their problem-solving. I volunteered for the UBC elementary school math workshops program, where we go out to elementary schools and teach kids how fun mathematics can be if they work their way through problems using a few simple mathematical skills and a little bit of thought. We always received great comments back from those teachers that we performed workshops for, about how their students have stopped asking them, "Please tell me the recipe on how to do this, from step one to step two," and instead try to think their way through a problem.

If we want to create lifelong learners, we should teach people how to think and learn. It's quite simple, but it's something that the current public education system does not always accomplish.

I must say the one thing that was good about me going to private school is that I attended a kindergarten-to-grade-12 school. They had taken the time to think through precisely what should be taught, and in what sort of depth, at each level, so that no student who went from kindergarten through to grade 12 would ever be forced to waste time relearning something. It saved boredom for the students and for the teachers, and it's allowed them to accomplish more in the short, few 12 years that we have for education.

Most of my classes in private school had below-average students, but the teachers did not teach to that level. They taught at a level that challenged even the brightest of the students in the class. Contrary to popular belief, this did not discourage students but really forced everybody to work to their full potential, taking responsibility for their work and the effort that they put into everything so that everyone — even the brightest student — felt motivated to continue to learn.

Such ideals could be extended to the public school system easily without tacking on a $6,000 to $10,000

cost. The question remains: why should we pay for an education when the major difference is that people are really communicating and thinking through their plans? In an effective and well-thought-out manner, why don't we put a little more thought into the planning of, perhaps, the curriculum of the public school system? There are plenty of examples of good curricula out there for a starting model. There are several private schools throughout the lower mainland that have good curricula set up, and there are other programs, such as the international baccalaureate program, that have well-thought-out curricula.

The IB program in particular covers topics that are relevant to a university's first-year curriculum and encourages students to think using different methods of learning. Instead of receiving a fill-in-the-blanks grammar worksheet for my English class, we were reading classic literature; having full class discussions; writing full-length, thematic essays; and doing impromptu oral commentaries on the plays, poetry and novels of some of the greatest authors, while the regular English class was still writing a paragraph — something that students start learning in grade 7 and continue to do in language arts all the way through to grade 12.

The saddest thing is that we were all required to write the same provincial exam, and our IB English teacher gave us some of the wisest advice. He told us: "Do not think. Try to go into the exam and write what you think the writing committee wants to see. The markers of the exam may not be able to appreciate your intellect." This is very sad, because it shows how flawed some of these exams are in the standardized way of testing.

I can tell you for sure that the regular, public high school system curriculum does a terrible job of preparing students for university. A good mark in high school means absolutely nothing in university. If all you know is how to follow a recipe, university is going to be a disaster. I've seen several of my friends from high school who did not do a program such as IB, and they have all dropped out. Out of my entire elementary school class that I started with, only two of us are in university now.

Who is setting the public school curriculum? Is it the same person who sets the elementary school curriculum? Is it the same person who sets the middle school curriculum? Is it the administrators setting the curriculum? Is it the teachers who have had some experience who are setting the curriculum, or is it just people who have master's degrees that are technically supposed to know what we are supposed to do?

Does anybody know what the universities are looking for in their students? UBC's mathematics department now finds the grade 12 provincial curriculum so inadequate that they force students coming out of high school who have not done a locally developed calculus course to take a remedial course — that's extra money, extra time and extra homework for a lot of students — regardless of whether or not they got 100 percent in their math 12 curriculum.

Many other science departments at UBC are considering similar measures to try and help students bridge the gap between high school and university. It's like adding an extra year onto our university curriculum. I know that committees are formed to decide on such things as curricula, but are you getting knowledgeable people into these committees? Are you talking to the right people?

Half the battle of communicating is seeking out those who are best to talk to. If you want to repair a leaky roof, do you go and find someone who has a master's degree in engineering, or do you find an experienced roofer who knows the tricks of the trade and has been around awhile and can deal with a variety of situations? Life is not in a book. You don't find the answers at the back. It's about experience and creativity and thought — things that are not always encouraged.

How do you find the right people? It's quite simple. You go to the schools, and you ask. Ask the students, and they will point out exactly who the good teachers are. Ask the good teachers what makes them such good teachers, and then ask those good teachers to share their ideas with other teachers. That way you can have good people influencing others in the system.

Don't ask the administration or the school board. In my twelve years in school I have never seen a school trustee in my classroom, let alone a principal or a vice-principal. If you continue to ask people in administration and only get whatever reports come out of administration, you're not really getting the full picture of what is happening in the classroom. To rectify that situation, you might consider that perhaps vice-principals and principals and school trustees should be in the classroom for some portion of the time. I don't think my parents voted for school trustees to not know what was happening in the classroom.

You can ask the students what they are looking for in a good school. We don't expect to be babysat from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day. Some of us want to go to university, some of us want to go on to trade schools and some of us don't even know what the options are that out there. Things like career and personal planning are very useful for some students and a waste of time for others. The education system has to realize we are not all the same. We have different interests, different needs and different goals. You cannot say that everyone is the same and teach to a level of mediocrity.

I don't think you want to encourage students to aim for just being average. I think you want to have them aim higher, to reach their full potential. When will you know when you have reached your full potential? Most likely when you fail at something. Of course, it's not a pleasant experience. Nobody likes to fail at anything — we don't like to see the self-esteem of children at that sort of level — but they might as well do it while they're in school, while they still have mom and dad around to catch them when they fall, with a support system and a network for them, as opposed to letting them go to university or go out into trade or go out to work and have them fail somewhere out there when it's much harder to turn to somebody for help.

If you learn nothing more from my humble experiences as a student and an observer, let this be the final message: communication is vital. Without it, we will forever stumble around in the darkness, wondering what's next and where the light switch is. We need to get people talking at all different levels — elementary to middle, middle to high school, high school to university — and between administrators, parents, teachers and students. It's absolutely crucial. There are plenty of people with great ideas out there. They just need people who are willing to listen and put those ideas into action.

Let me end by commending the objectives of this committee. You are an excellent example of how communication can improve the system. I applaud your efforts and hope that you will be able to take all the information you have gained over these past meetings and use it effectively to improve the education system for all.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you, Carolyn. We have just a couple of minutes. Do we have a question? Richard Lee does.

R. Lee: Thank you for the presentation. We also heard that math 12 sometimes is too difficult for the students already. You are saying that probably math 12 is not up to standard in the university level. It seems we should have three levels of math in grade 12. Is that what you're suggesting?

C. Shiau: I believe that there are different methods of doing the mathematics program. Specifically, you should talk to some math teachers about it. Math 12 is not a required course. University does not necessarily require math 12 as an entrance requirement, so some students choose to only take up to math 11. There are other course that can be offered, such as the applied mathematics courses, which are a little easier for students. In general, most high schools have five or six classes of math 12. I don't see what the problem would be with having perhaps one of those classes be an advanced class or a locally developed calculus class in a lot of schools.

It's difficult to say exactly how it should be done. I'm not an expert on these things. I don't profess to know. All I know is that the universities are not happy with the math program, there are students who struggle with math and the tutorial systems that have been set up are somehow being cut due to budget funding and other sticky issues. I did not come to ask for more money. I know that the money is tight, but there are things that can be done to the system that don't require a lot of funding.

W. McMahon (Chair): Carolyn, thank you. It's great to hear from a student. We appreciate your being here tonight.

Our next presentation is the Burnaby Primary Teachers Association, Megan Hardie. Good evening, and welcome, Megan.

M. Hardie: Thank you. Before I start, I just wanted to tell you a little bit about me. This is only my second year of teaching in a classroom. I'm currently teaching in a grades 1, 2 and 3 class in Burnaby. As you can see from the bags under my eyes, they're very energetic, but I'm loving it.

I do want to thank you for this opportunity to speak about the concerns that Burnaby primary teachers have that have been heightened by the three-year funding freeze. To condense them into a ten-minute morsel, I have separated them into three main areas. They are resources, teacher and student support and the future of education.

I'm sure you've all heard the statistic that the average teacher spends $700 to $800 a year on resources and other materials for their classroom. Why do teachers spend their own money to do their jobs? There are few resources available. In every district it is slightly different, depending on how the school board spends that money. The resources that are available are outdated, or there's such a high demand that they're not available. Parent committees have stepped in to help support in most schools and communities where there's no money, but that money doesn't support their fund-raising efforts either. Resources are still suffering.

It is amazing that there are classrooms that do not have any textbooks in them, or they have one textbook per two students. This shortage of resources is causing teachers to photocopy more materials to teach with rather than use the costly textbooks or workbooks. The pressure then falls on the paper budget for photocopying. Last year, because of the budget deficit in Burnaby, all accounts were frozen, including supply budgets. How do we teach if we have no paper or supplies? We are concerned that the short-term budget freeze we experienced will be a normal occurrence in reaction to the government's three-year budget freeze.

Ministry documents and resources are helpful and useful for many different reasons. I'll use the performance standards as an example. I've been fortunate to be in schools where there have been other teachers that were interested in looking at them, but many teachers have not had that experience and are unsure of the resource. Any new ministry document or resource needs to have consistent distribution and in-service.

In-service is a very important part of new documents, and it's often treated as an afterthought. Teachers have a lot of planning. We have a lot of meetings, information gathering, parent interviews and all the regular duties that we perform daily. Teachers don't have the time to open the new document, research it and commit it to memory. In-service that's a decent amount of time needs to be provided, not just an afternoon for a whole document. The whole document can be looked at and discussed so that teachers are aware of all of the aspects of implementation.

Teacher and student support is another key issue that has teachers concerned. Support staff are a very key group of teachers that have their time scheduled down to the minute. These teachers are LAC, ESL and librarians as well as district resource staff. Their exper-

tise and services are vital to the teachers and students that receive their support.

Unfortunately, it is the students who are labelled or having extreme difficulty who get the support. Those students who do not meet designation guidelines do not receive the support vital to their education. Take, for example, the kindergarten and grade 1 students. In most cases, they're looked upon as too young to be designated. Instead of getting the support they need from the beginning, the students must struggle with one to two years of curriculum before they get that vital intervention. If the designation is based on behavioural issues, then those children have two years of learning before the management techniques that they could learn from support staff would help them with that curriculum and through their whole school career. This lack of support makes teaching that student, as well as the rest of the class, that much harder.

Inclusion of special needs students in the regular classroom is very important. To make the classroom a successful learning environment requires the collaboration of the classroom teacher, resource staff, district resource staff and educational assistants. There's a large number of meeting times and observations to support one special needs child. These teaching positions are as vital to any education program as enrolling teachers and should be treated accordingly.

I do have an example for you. In my class I have a boy with severe Tourette syndrome. Over the course of a week I might have about five hours just to myself in my classroom. There are usually adults coming in and out, which is very helpful, and district resource staff coming in to do observations. You know, it's always a really busy place. We need all of that support to help those children and to make sure that they are included in the regular classroom.

Unfortunately, the non-enrolling teaching positions get reduced or cut first. Last year in Burnaby, again because of the financial shortfall, ESL teachers had their time reallocated. Many ESL teachers now had one or two more schools to service during their time or a reduced amount of time. At my school our ESL teacher was only able to service level 0 and level 1 ESL students — very beginning English speakers. Before the reallocation, she was able to service our whole ESL population at our school.

Why, in financial matters, do we no longer think of the effects on the student and on the educational programs we are cutting? District resource teachers are also caught in the funding web. Many of them have several schools to support and reduced time to support them. In the past there were primary coordinators that helped teachers with unit planning and resources. There were district occupational therapists to help those children with the fine motor skills — the printing and just actually colouring the lines. We're finding that it's quite a big effort on our part to learn all those special skills as well as curriculum and providing that education.

There were multiple speech therapists, hearing specialists and district psychologists. Now there are fewer and fewer district resource support teachers. We now have a speech therapist in the school one day a week. She is unable to service all the students that need her help every week. The hearing specialist can only work with a certain number of students, and the district psychologist can only come to our school by appointment, if we can get one.

The district psychologist is the one that we need to get in to do the psychoeducational tests in order to get children designated. At this point in Burnaby there's about a two- or three-year wait on that list. It could take up to three years to have a student tested so that we can get them that extra support. That really frightens me, as a teacher, to be completely honest. It's difficult to comprehend how much bigger the list of students that need to be tested is going to get in the next three years, with no additional funding to deal with that backlog.

The final area I'd like to speak to today is the future of education in British Columbia. I'd like to refer back to the statistic that I opened with about the average amount of money a teacher spends in a year. I must remind you that the statistic of $800 a year is an average of teachers, from beginning teachers to the teachers who have more experience and more resources because they've had the years to collect them. Most beginning teachers I've talked to, including myself, spent a minimum of $1,100 to $1,200 in their first year to get the resources available to teach the quality of education that the IRPs demand.

This statistic alone will deter many would-be teachers from teaching. It's expensive to go through a minimum of five years of university training only to get a job that pays you $37,000 a year before taxes and have to spend $1,200 of that to do my job properly. Something about that doesn't quite make sense to me. If the government wants to encourage more teachers to teach in this province, some things do need to change.

As primary teachers in Burnaby, we know the maximum number of students in our classroom is 22. This is guaranteed to us in our collective agreement. With all the different factors I've already spoken to you about this evening, a removal of class-size limits and limits on special needs and behaviour students would destroy the quality of education that teachers have worked so hard to establish. With the freeze in funding, teachers are concerned that districts will be increasing the numbers in classroom to reduce the amount they would pay in salaries.

Non-enrolling teachers are vital to an inclusive, quality education. We are all concerned at how they could be victims of a budget crunch. These teachers include the resource teachers I spoke about earlier, as well as music specialists, PE teachers and arts specialists. These are the programs that get cut when the districts run out of money. We are very concerned that this funding freeze will result in the reduction or termination of the programs and positions that these teachers are responsible for.

Burnaby primary teachers are concerned about the education in our district and throughout the province. The three-year funding freeze is going to affect the way

that we teach. It is going to cause a continued problem with resources in the school. It will cause students not to get all the support they need from the school-based and district resource teachers, and it will cause the quality of education that we can deliver to our students to suffer.

Thank you again for this opportunity. I hope the comments and thoughts I have presented will help you with your gathering of information.

J. Kwan: In terms of assessing the needed amount of resources in the classroom, what are some of the suggestions you may have to assess the true needs of our education system?

M. Hardie: I think it would vary, district to district. Most definitely, each school board does use its funds in different ways. I know there was quite a push for technology in Burnaby, which did require a lot of the funding to head towards computers and software and away from the textbooks. That was a board initiative.

My recommendation would be to involve teachers in that discussion and the decision of where funds should be allocated. It's really hard as a school board, I would think, to be in control and have an idea of what resources are in each school. Why not talk to the teachers or even the school-based resource team to find out what is in each school and what is needed to bring that resource base back up to standard?

J. Kwan: Can we follow up with one more question? On the issue around special needs education and targeted funding, we've heard from school trustees who suggest that the targeted funding is irrelevant. In some school districts, they actually spend more than what is given to them under the 4 percent cap. Others, particularly parents, worry that if the cap is lifted, then the targeted funding for that special area may well be lost. From that perspective in terms of targeted funding, what are your thoughts? Do you think they should still continue, or should there be a brand new evaluation, district by district, in terms of what those needs are and then for the funding to be allocated accordingly?

M. Hardie: Again, I do agree with you on looking at it district by district. Some districts have the greater amount of special needs students and those students that are being included in the regular classroom. I do think it's important that the funding stays as close to the child as possible, because some students do need that full-time aid, whether it be one-on-one support or small-group support. It is quite an interesting topic, most definitely. I feel that to keep the funding as close to the child as possible and to try to support the child as much as possible with that funding would be the best way to go.

E. Brenzinger: You were talking about the assessment of children in kindergarten and grades 1 and 2. If you identify a child in kindergarten or can see as a teacher that the child has problems, can you not get them assessed? Can you talk to the parents?

M. Hardie: We can talk to the parents, and we talk to our school-based resource team, but because of the backlog of two to three years, it's really difficult to get a kindergarten or grade 1 child assessed. We can watch them. We can make notes in the report cards and their finals at school, but at that point, we can't get the designation and the extra help for them.

R. Lee: The other day I learned that, say, in Burnaby, targeted funding for gifted students is actually allocated for something else. Given right now, with targeted funding, that the district or the school can still rearrange their priorities in terms of funding certain programs, what's your comment?

R. Lee: The question is that even with targeted funding right now, the school itself can still not target the funding, and the funding will be used for some other purpose.

M. Hardie: Right. At the school level, I'm not quite sure of the use for funding. I haven't been involved with that. I've only had two years' experience in the system, so I'm not completely sure about the funding. I do know that it seems to me that it's harder and harder to get an educational assistant and it's harder to find the funding that should be with that child to get them the full-time or half-time support they need. I don't know if that answers your question, but it is a difficult issue.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you, and thanks so much for your presentation today.

Our next presentation this evening is from Abbotsford school district, Susan and Bill Bartleman. Good evening and welcome.

S. Bartleman: I brought my husband along for moral support here. I'm not a very good public speaker. Anyway, I'm here as a mother. I have four children. They are 19, 17, a nine-year-old and a five-year-old in the Abbotsford school district. We are also a Christian family. We're concerned about the Christian education of children.

Tonight I'd like to present an educational choice for public Christian education. As Christy Clark has been seeking areas of weakness in our public school system, I feel very strongly that the government has ignored the large exodus of Christian students from the public schools.

I did some research on the numbers of students that are attending Christian private schools in Abbotsford. There are currently over 3,200 students enrolled in private schools. Some of them have waiting lists. Also, home schooling is the choice of many Christian families, with well in excess of 200 students currently being home-schooled. Determining the number of home-schoolers was difficult, because most of them are registered outside of the Abbotsford school district. These numbers do illustrate a difference in families' expectations and what they are perceiving the public school system is providing. With these totals it added up to almost 20 percent of the students residing in Abbotsford enrolled in programs outside of the public school system.

These families have made the choices despite some great financial hardships and personal commitment to make their children's education a priority in their lives. Why are these families choosing this difficult route? It is because there is a wide discrepancy between what the school system offers and what they perceive is the minimum. As I'm sure many of you are aware, these differences are based on Christian values and morals, students not being allowed to discuss God in the classroom, exclusion of prayer in public schools, debate over evolution and creation, the celebration of Halloween and the non-celebration of Christ's birth.

Abbotsford has provided and has been very open to allowing alternative schooling. A recent one is traditional schools. These have a wide following of 730 students, and there are waiting lists. Many of these families are Christian families who have enrolled their children in these schools. The values in the programs offered have been very popular, even though transportation of their children to these schools is to very remote areas of Abbotsford. That still leaves 20 percent of the student body choosing to remain outside the public school. I know that there are many others who are within the school, but because financially they could not afford Christian schools, they are persevering, keeping their children within public schools.

We have an eroding support base for the public school system by one of the most committed groups of parents. What is the solution to this problem? It's been an ongoing problem for many years.

One solution is increasing the choice to families to satisfy the minimum requirement of their children's education so that we can stop this erosion. The province of Alberta has established an alternative Christian program within the public schools that is called Logos, which you will find in the back of this pamphlet package. The presentation that was made to the school district regarding this Logos program…. It has been widely successful there. Since then, they have established three other programs that they are running in different school districts around the Edmonton area. This program operates much like French immersion, where classrooms are set up in a Christian environment which removes the parents' present objections. The program would utilize the basic provincial education curriculum, but would vary in the Christian environment where it would be presented. This program would be open to all races and religious backgrounds as an educational choice.

As demonstrated in the current private Christian schools, it is a popular choice for non-Christians because of its high moral standards and commitment to quality education.

I believe many educators don't understand the stresses of Christian students within the public school system. These students are attempting to follow a positive moral value system, which is often put down in a classroom setting.

As an example, my older daughter was in the public school. She's in grade 12 this year. Of all those 12 years, she was in a private school for one year. In grades 4 and 5 I had her pleading with me to home-school her. Unfortunately, I did not feel qualified to give her the education that she required. Finally, after much pleading, in grade 10 she requested to be placed in a Christian private school. We did follow through on that. At that age level, it's hard to fit in to a new surrounding with making new friends and that, so she did return to the public school. By grade 12, she felt strong enough in her Christian values to stand up for what she believes in. My daughter, like many other Christian students, struggled through those developing years in a very anti-Christian environment.

My nine-year-old son requested in grade 3 to be switched from a public school to a Christian private school that he is now attending.

We have never done any coercion of leading our children into a certain school. We've given them the freedom to choose where they would like to attend school. It seems unfair that as caring citizens who have a belief system — which is becoming unpopular — we're being pushed out of the public school system.

What I am suggesting to this committee is to look at the needs of Christian education and, more specifically, in communities such as Abbotsford where there is a very high percentage of Christians, that assessment of the needs of Christian education be provided.

One suggestion would be to allow the freedom of placing programming like Logos in public classrooms. In order for this to happen, school boards need to be given the ability to offer more choices to reflect this community's needs. I do realize that this means amendment to the B.C. School Act, but I feel that if our neighbouring province could do it, then we can address the same issue too.

We need to keep our Christian students in the public school, as many of them are very positive role models and they have much to offer the school community. I do thank you for taking this time for hearing and pursuing the needs of the students in our community.

I had come across an article about this book a while ago, and I managed to locate it through a local store. I

just received it on Thursday. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to read it completely all the way through. This woman — I'll let my husband read — did research right across Canada, and it's quite extensive. It's called God in the Classroom by Lois Sweet, and I would highly recommend it to this committee to look at. She has gone across the whole country to address this issue. That's just so you'll have a bit of an idea of what it's about.

B. Bartleman: This is a problem that's hard to grasp. What's the complaint? Why aren't we serving them? Why do these people have to really stretch their family budget — they're probably giving up a new vehicle; they're probably giving up summer holidays — to make payments for their kids to go to private school? These are often not wealthy families. They're struggling, average people willing to make real personal sacrifices. She seems to have come to grips with this.

She was a writer for the Toronto Star, and she went across the country to find out what is going on. She wasn't terribly sympathetic to the Christian community. She didn't open up with an agenda that she was going to write a book on. She discovered that there was a problem, and she tried to analyze it.

Her book went on to become a five-part series in the Toronto Star and was a two-part series on the CBC on the National Magazine. It drew a huge response by listeners and people who read the article, and it shows that there is a real crying need out there for people with children in school who are not happy with the climate and the atmosphere their kids are in.

We're not out here to ask for more money. We're here to ask for what the province of Alberta has allowed: to have a choice in education in the climate of the school. Christian families are feeling pushed out of the school. Traditional schools have come a long way and have been very, very popular. We're asking to go the next step in allowing some Christian influence back into the school.

Quite honestly, if we don't support the eroding base, the most committed parents are not going to support a public education any more. Of course, being committed parents who are spending money on an alternative education, they're going to vote another way. They're not going to support a public education when their money is going somewhere else. If they're spending their money, they're certainly going to be the people who actually show up and vote on election day. I think we've got to stop the erosion and look at what Alberta is doing.

As we mentioned in the brief, it is an attempt to value a selected Christian group. Some of the Christian schools in Abbotsford — the ones our children attended are the only ones that we're really familiar with — have children from many ethnic backgrounds and non-Christian children. MEI, where our daughter went, has a lot of practising Sikh students. The parents like the culture and the morals that the kids are receiving there, and they've chosen to pay the money to send their kids there. Their choice wasn't a religious choice. It was the moral influence. They just like the atmosphere much better.

R. Masi (Deputy Chair): A couple of things. One is that I was interested in the concept of the Logos school. I'm just not sure — I haven't experienced this — how the administration of the school actually operates. Are these students part of the mainstream of the school, are they just booked as separate classes, or are they sort of a school within a school? Give me an idea of how that works.

S. Bartleman: I believe these classrooms would be set up depending on the number of students of course. A group of parents formed this Logos Society, so they are the ones that stipulate how to incorporate the Christian part of the curriculum. They are involved in the hiring of the teacher for that school. It is still completely following the Alberta school curriculum.

S. Bartleman: It would be like a French-immersion kind of scenario, where you would have some of the classrooms within. As far as I know, I don't believe there's a lot of cross. These children are elementary level.

S. Bartleman: Yeah. I'm talking elementary level. They do have it up to grade 9. I'm not sure what they do in the high schools at this point. I'm talking elementary level, so it would be the same teacher they'd have.

B. Bartleman: We admit this is kind of like a trial balloon. We want to bring to your attention the fact that there is a perceived problem by thousands of people. Now that you're opening education to new ideas and new directions, it's time for us to throw this idea at you so that maybe you can come to grips with the problem and try and think of some solutions. Alberta seems to be a long way ahead of us in that they've done this already. They have it going full-blast in Edmonton, and it's very successful.

S. Bartleman: At this point we have Emery Dosdall, who was involved in starting up the program in Alberta. Now he's our Deputy Minister of Education here.

S. Bartleman: You have resources to find out how they incorporated this into the Alberta school system.

T. Christensen: This is not a question; it's just a point. I'm just flipping through the part about the Lo-

gos Society. I've only got every second page, the odd-numbered pages. If all of us are like that, can you just send us in the even-numbered pages?

T. Christensen: Exactly. If you could just mail us in a full copy, we'll have the whole record.

S. Bartleman: Yes. Okay. I did exclude the part about budgeting from Alberta, because I thought that was not applicable.

B. Bartleman: There was a whole bunch of unique Alberta stuff that didn't relate.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you both for coming tonight and making your presentation.

Our next presentation this evening is from Richard Stock. Good evening and welcome.

R. Stock: Hello, there. This is a new experience for me. I am a parent of a special needs child. My child has been in the Abbotsford school district probably since he was six years old. He's now 16 years old. I will tell you some of his story and how he has functioned at school.

R. Stock: Okay. There's a lot of information in there. It took years to put together.

My child was first diagnosed with a learning disability when he was approximately three years of age. He was diagnosed through the infant development program, and they recommended that he be seen by Sunny Hill Hospital for an assessment. They went in and did this assessment, and they put down his learning disability as severe. They made some recommendations. They did some assessments, and they recommended intensive speech therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy. The file was put together. I got a copy, and a file was sent to a school. The infant development program was with us during the assessment, and they recommended which school to send this to.

That following year, my child was becoming able to go to school, and the school district contacted me and asked me to hold him out of school for another year. I said: "Okay. That would be fine with me if you would send the speech therapist to the preschool to give the teacher some strategies in how to deal with his speech problems." Fine. They sent the speech therapist once, maybe twice, up to the preschool. The teachers there found it helpful.

The next year my child started in school and was in school for a couple of months. The teacher's phoning me at home: "Has your child ever been assessed?" I said: "Yes, he has been assessed. He's been assessed by the doctors of Sunny Hill Hospital. Do you not have his file?" "I have nothing," she says. I go down one evening after work, and we, the principal and I, photocopy his assessments from Sunny Hill Hospital. The teacher now had his assessments.

I'm waiting for this intensive speech therapy to start, but no speech therapy. September. October. Finally, I asked a few questions. I said: "When is the speech therapist going to start?" "Well, he has to be assessed." "Well, he's been assessed by the doctors from Sunny Hill Hospital." "I'm sorry. The school district does not recognize the doctors from Sunny Hill Hospital. We do our own assessments." It was in October or November, maybe, when she started therapy. Actually, she gave him quite a bit of therapy. It was three 20-minute sessions a week. I thought that was pretty good. Anyway, so much for the first year at school.

The second year in school: new teacher, same classroom. Again no speech therapy. I go to the different speech therapist that year and say: "What's the hold-up? He had speech therapy last year." "No, I'm busy doing assessments" — doing assessments again. Then she started speech therapy with my child, but there's no following up with three 20-minute sessions a week. There's one five-minute session in a group, I think it was. I said: "You are reducing services." "Well, I don't have any more time to work with your child."

I phoned the Ministry of Education in Victoria and explained my situation. She said to me: "Your teacher is not allowed to reduce services to your child unless they are telling you, via the IEP, why they're reducing services." I opened up my IEPs, and every IEP explained how well he was progressing, yet they are reducing services. Again, the Ministry of Education says they send over enough money each and every year to maintain services, and teachers should not be reducing services. I talked to them, and I said: "That's the way it is." What are you going to do? Who do you phone to complain? No one. Time goes on.

When he was preschool, I found out to go to the health unit. The health unit's supposed to provide funding for speech therapy. I went down and filled out the application form. After a year on a waiting list — and I'm getting a bit anxious now about what's going on — I found out that there wasn't even a speech therapist on staff. That was a wasted effort. They never even told me when I filled out the application form that there was nothing there. I'm rather annoyed. I'm a little bit ticked off.

Anyway, this goes on and on and on in the school system. Then one day I get a communication from the school teacher that she's decided to tie him up. I said: "What? You're tying him up inside the classroom?" "Yes, I don't know how to handle him." We were having behaviour problems with our child. It was not a surprise to hear from her that she's having behaviour problems. I had retained a registered clinical psychologist to give our family some strategies in how to deal with this difficult child, and the school system says:

"Tie him up." I went to the psychologist, and he said: "No, put a stop to that. That teacher's doing harm to your child."

I made a complaint with the B.C. ombudsman's office. The B.C. ombudsman's office was very, very reluctant to do any kind of investigation at a school. They don't have the authority. I contacted the Ministry of Social Services child protection branch: "We do not investigate allegations of child abuse at school."

I went and had my school-based meeting, my meeting with the principal and the teacher and another official there, and they started hollering and screaming at me. Either I give permission to tie him up, or he's out of school. I put some other options on the floor. I said: "Well, how about bringing some grade 7s in to help out in the classroom?" No, not an option. "If I were to go and ask for grade 7 students to help out, I would be overwhelmed with volunteers. We're not going to have too many children coming down here and helping us. That's not an option. Either you give permission, or the child is out of school."

Well, I reluctantly gave permission, not even knowing if I could give permission to have a school teacher tie up my child. They were tying him up ten minutes at recess in the morning, ten minutes at lunchtime and ten minutes at recess in the afternoon — only on days that it was raining. I asked the teacher for a copy of their restraint policy. They don't have a restraint policy that she's aware of, but I'd better cooperate or my kid is out of school. I reluctantly gave permission.

I'm now writing letters to all the different government agencies to find out if I could even give permission to a school teacher to tie up my child. What they're trying to do — in letters from the school — is to try and modify his behaviours so he knows that he has to be sitting. They don't want him running around the classroom on lunch breaks and what have you.

I'm writing letters, and I get a lot of letters from different ministers. Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any law against this kind of thing, but this seems to be an issue of how children are being treated. I get a bunch of letters that come back and forth. Three months have gone by now. My clinical psychologist, a child professional, says: "No, no, no. You'd better stop this." She's telling me she's trained. The psychologist tells me: "Well, she may have some basic training, but she's not a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist. She's doing harm to your child." He is my child. They were tying him up to save money on teacher's aide time. This is what it came down to.

The next thing I did was to phone up the Vancouver Province. I said I needed to speak to a reporter. "Oh yeah?" I told the reporter they were tying up my kid at school. The reporter says: "Get away from here. I don't believe you." I said: "Well, it's happening." "Where is it happening?" I told him the name of the school, the name of the teacher, the name of the principal. "I'll have a reporter get in touch with you." A couple of days later the phone rings. I'm not at home. My wife's at home. This reporter is asking a few questions. I hang up. A couple more days go by, and another reporter phones. "We're coming out." They came out to my house, they talked to me and they saw the documents I have from the school, from the Attorney General's office and the Ministry of Education. They said: "We're going to go to the school to take a look-see."

That was on a Saturday. They go up to the school on Monday, and sure enough, they're tying him up. They've got this restraining harness. It's not only my child but probably some other children. The next day it was front-page news. All of a sudden the school district has found other options to deal with my child — just like that.

I phoned a lawyer in New Westminster and asked him to review this newspaper story. He told me my course of reaction was to file a breach-of-trust lawsuit against the school district, because when you send your child to school you trust that the school system is going to treat your child with care and respect. If your trust has been broken, you have grounds for a lawsuit.

When I told the superintendent what the lawyers had told me, everything flew apart down there. He was angry, and the teachers got in trouble. The other principal got in trouble.

Anyway, I filed a human rights complaint against the trustees of the Abbotsford school system. The B.C. Council of Human Rights did a two-year investigation into my child's treatment at school, and in their conclusion they concluded that tying up a child at school does not violate a child's human rights as long as the parents or parent has given permission — even under threats, even reluctantly. It's a two-page document, and the file is pretty thick.

I didn't know what to do with this document, so I contacted some people who were working with the family for the Ministry of Social Services, who by policy do not allow any foster mom to use any form of mechanical restraining device on a child — okay? Yet this is going on at school.

They were alarmed. This document came forward, so I took it to a lawyer. The lawyer read it over and said: "I do not understand what this means." I went to another lawyer. They do not understand what this means. The B.C. ombudsman's office says: "They cannot give you permission to tie up your own children." This is what the B.C. Council of Human Rights is saying, that I can give permission to other people to tie up my child. If I can give permission reluctantly to a schoolteacher, I can give permission willingly to myself or to you. Once I've given permission to you to tie up my child, then to whom can you give permission?

Finally I contacted three human rights lawyers. One lawyer said he needed $2,000 just to look at the file. Another human rights lawyer said he'd look at the file for $1,000, and another human rights lawyer said he'd look at it for free. He spent 20 hours studying my file and came back and said I should've been a lawyer. I'd put together a human rights file. What you are witnessing is the writing of a new law.

The B.C. ombudsman's office told me I cannot do a judicial review of this file. Other lawyers told me I cannot do a judicial review of this file, because once the B.C. Council of Human Rights has made a ruling, it's

over. He told me the method of attack on this was to file a complaint with the Supreme Court of British Columbia against the Attorney General's office. By saying to the Attorney General that it does not violate this child's human rights to be tied up, then what are the rules in the law?

R. Stock: Well, what I'm coming here to ask you to do — and what Ottawa is asking you to do — is, under the UN convention on the rights of the child, to put into domestic legislation the rules for the restraining of children at school.

It's very, very clear that you must get the parents' permission. If teachers are restraining children at school and are not getting the parents' permission, then they are violating these children's rights. There's no mistake about that now, in that B.C. Council of Human Rights investigation.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. Unfortunately, we don't have any time for questions.

R. Stock: I have a little bit more to add to that. Over the years that my child has been in school, the teachers have had some difficulties with him. I've hired this private, clinical psychologist at $130 an hour for the teacher and myself to come to his office away from school board property. After an hour's-worth of consultation, the teacher would say: "I wish you were on staff so you could give the teacher some support in dealing with these very difficult children."

If I can give permission to a teacher to restrain my child at school in order to save money on teacher's aide time, then all parents can give permission to themselves to tie up their children at home to save money on child care. The teacher's the babysitter; that's all she is in federal law. That's all she is.

I've also included in that file a Supreme Court decision where a babysitter took electrician's tape, in the parents' home, and taped the child to a chair. The prosecutor laid charges against that family and won the case. The man was convicted of using excessive force in disciplining that child. He got a criminal record plus a $100 fine for taping this child to a chair. He didn't like that, went to Vancouver and filed for a Court of Appeal decision. The Appeal Court overruled the lower court's decision, stating that taping of a child is not use of excessive force. Taping of a child to a chair is just fine.

The Ministry of Education, when they write back to me, refer to section 43 of the Criminal Code, where you cannot use excessive force in the disciplining of a child. This prosecutor, who prosecuted this case with the electrician's tape, said that he also laid charges against a teacher when the teacher hit a child so hard it actually knocked out teeth. That in itself is not considered excessive force in disciplining of a child. All the laws that are written right now are written to protect the teachers, not written to protect the children. There is no one out there to investigate allegations of child abuse at school. There's no one. The only person to advocate on behalf of a child is the parent. That's what it is.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks very much for your presentation tonight. We appreciate it.

B. Vriend: My name is Ben Vriend. I'm president of the Computer-Using Educators of B.C. We are an association of teachers with a focus on issues and professional development for teachers who integrate information technologies into their teaching. We at CUEBC appreciate this opportunity to raise our concerns regarding how new technologies may change the educational scene.

Information technologies are a driving force in our changing world. Education, too, is being radically influenced. The Internet has put information literally at our fingertips. E-mail and chat lines have broadened our avenues for meeting new people. On-line courses are being offered, so some students don't even need to attend school in the traditional sense.

There are both benefits and dangers for students and teachers involved with the digital revolution. How does one determine what is beneficial for an education system? We would encourage this government to consider the following in setting its educational policies. I'll present three general principles and then make some comments on technology and education in light of them.

Schools are microcosms that reflect all that is good in human society: music, literature, science and sports. Education has a very positive and important role. We as teachers encourage, guide and instruct our children in all that is good and worthwhile in culture. Students are microcosms that reflect all that is good in human society: music, literature, science and sports. Schools are not a business training ground.

How we educate our children determines the values and virtues of our society's future. Our children need to become aware of issues in our society. Students must become aware of ecological and environmental issues challenging our growing population. They must learn to become aware of and tolerant of cultural and individual differences. Public education creates the environment that best addresses these issues. Emphasizing the role of public education, Neil Postman once stated that public education is the public. Everyone is involved and affected by what happens in our schools. Education is a crucial prerequisite for any democracy.

We would discourage the government from implementing a system of choice or voucher schools. Creating a system of choice or voucher schools would create a safety hazard and contribute to an important environmental problem in the lower mainland: air pollution.

Roads in the lower mainland are already too congested, without parents transporting to and from schools. The roads around schools cannot handle the traffic that choice schools would generate. The result would be a safety nightmare for all our children. Traffic problems already exist without the choice factor exacerbating the situation.

And what of modelling good environmental practices for students? We have growing problems with air pollution in the lower mainland. Vehicles are most polluting during the first ten to 15 minutes of operation. Consider the pollution caused by transporting 50 students — there are a whole lot more students in the lower mainland here than this — to and from school in greater Vancouver. Driving students to school teaches them nothing about being environmentally conscious. Environmentally, maintaining the current neighbourhood school system is desirable.

A third point is that our children need a caring and supportive environment to grow up in. Education is not a business. Profit is not the goal of the education system. Children need a caring and supportive environment to grow up in. They should not be treated as commodities to be competed for by rival schools. That's the thing with a voucher school system or a system of choice schools. It does exactly this. Schools will be forced into competing for students for business rather than having sound educational theory and practice.

Teaching will be determined by the flavour-of-the-year fads and whims of parents. It will be like telling doctors that they should have to practise medicine according to the fads and whims made popular by some charlatan. Should doctors have to change their focus from practising medicine to advertising and competing for patients? I think it is perilous to the need of the patient.

So it is with schools and teaching. It is to the detriment of students and the public to recreate them into the business image. Imagine the instability for schools as they close because they're not competitive. The students are forced to attend yet another school with yet another educational method and philosophy. Imagine the confusion for the students. Education is about nurturing children and giving them values and critical and evaluative thinking skills in a stable, caring and supportive environment.

I think the way in which choice or voucher schools are funded will put our neediest students at risk. Special needs programs are costly. Catering to individual needs is time-consuming and labour-intensive. Schools constricted by limiting finances and the need to compete for students would not undertake these costly needs programs. Funds that should be slated for students' programs will be diverted to advertisement and other means of procuring students. Our special needs students, especially, need a stable, caring and supportive environment to learn and grow up in.

In light of these three guiding principles — that schools are microcosms, that how we educate our children determines the values and virtues of our society and that children need a caring and supportive environment to grow up in — I would like to raise several issues regarding educational uses of technology.

The first is that new technologies not be looked at to replace teachers or schools. A false promise of technology is that it will replace teachers or schools by creating virtual or on-line schools. Schools are learning communities involving interactions between students and teachers, students and students, and students and learning materials and experiences. It is not possible to create the same broad-based, interactive communities on line. There are sensory elements missing.

On-line choice schools will remove students from the future environment in which they must deal. Getting along with people from many different backgrounds is one schooling which community schools teach very well. Virtual schools, such as on-line and choice schools, may appear to alleviate such problems as bullying, but in fact they hide or sublimate the issue. The public's concern about bullying is a sign that democracy is at work. People are discussing the issue of how to get along with each other. The education system responds by implementing lessons and programs to teach children about the harm that bullying does.

Simply providing learning materials and courses on line does not replace a teacher in a classroom environment. Some courses currently being offered on line are no more than jazzed-up versions of correspondence courses. Correspondence courses have a dismal success rate for completion.

However, we want to point out that distributed learning, when fully supported by adequate staffing and funding and resources, can be a meaningful part of a student's educational experience. Distributed learning is when part of a student's learning program is delivered electronically. Distributed learning can be part of a course offered electronically or an entire course.

For example, the TLITE program, offered by Simon Fraser University, has on-line resources such as course outlines, prescribed assignments, optional assignments, articles and links to other on-line resources. But the TLITE involves three summer institutes, where learners learn in face-to-face interactions and attend discussion groups, lectures and workshops. The focus is very much on creating a learning community among the participants.

There are many components to an effective digitally delivered course, including adequate software, adequate on-line resources, adequate technical staff and some methodology. A properly delivered distributed learning course is at least, if not more, labour intensive than a regular classroom setting. It should not be considered a cheap, cost-effective alternative.

We would encourage the government to support teachers developing and exploring the benefits of distributed learning courses but under the auspices of the districts employing those teachers. The districts must be accountable for students and programs within a district. You do not want to see a situation where districts are competing with each other for students. This detracts from the districts' mandate to provide quality

learning programs to focus on advertising to parents and luring them with incentives such as cash rebates.

One final point with regard to distributed learning is that the student should not be expected to shoulder an extra fee for taking a distributed learning course. This would create a disparity between the more well-to-do and the poor, who couldn't afford the fee. There should be no financial or other incentive for parents or school districts to enrol students in one program over another.

The government must be aware of environmental concerns regarding technology. Our government must develop an effective plan for what happens to old computers. Note the concerns of the U.S. National Safety Council which has said that there are over 350 million computers that will be obsolete by the year 2004. Simply trashing all these computers would add an estimated 8.5 million tons of waste to America's landfill. I am sure that a similar situation exists here in British Columbia as we dispose of computers in the same fashion.

The amount of landfill space that obsolete technology occupies is only part of the environment dangers that trashed computers pose. Computers may contain many highly toxic materials, such as cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, arsenic and lead. Obsolete computers will become an environmental nightmare if allowed to accumulate. Our government must be judicious in how school computers are purchased and have a very clear, effective policy with regard to how old school computers are disposed.

B. Vriend: Okay. Corporate involvement in schools. I'll see if I can abbreviate some of this stuff.

We have concerns regarding corporate involvement in schools. Concerns include advertising partnerships and training courses for companies. School district 36 now advertises on the sides of school district vehicles. Large trucks now double as moving billboards to bring in extra revenue. Schools should not be biased, promoting one consumer product over another. It detracts from the educational mandate that schools have to teach what is best about our society and culture, not to teach which products to buy. One school in the States was tattooing students with corporate logos to raise funds. In another school, whose corporate sponsor was Coca-Cola, a student who wore a Pepsi T-shirt on Coke day was suspended. How are schools to focus on student learning in a neutral, unbiased fashion if school boards are forced to turn to so-called corporate sponsorships?

We are also concerned with turning the schools into training grounds for corporations. Schools must teach students skills that will enable them to adapt throughout their entire careers and must not cater to the training needs of the company. Some of the skills may be in demand now but are relatively short-lived. Take, for example, the Microsoft network administration course. It was once in demand but is not in such demand right now.

In conclusion, I would like to point out that technology is affecting education in many positive ways. Here are but a few examples of technological innovations that creative teachers are coming up with to benefit student learning. In chemistry 12 a student created a CD containing study guides and questions gleaned from previous provincial exams to help students study. The CD also includes corresponding voice tracks that explain the question and give strategies to facilitate student learning. This has been an invaluable tool for these students.

There are several more examples in here to illustrate that teachers are doing very creative things using technology — right from grade 12 chemistry to a kindergarten teacher developing phonemic awareness in their children with special needs and speech and language teachers using some of the technology to retrain how a child hears, actually solving some hearing problems, some speech and language problems.

There are a number of other things in here — like the Behaviour File, which is a program set up to track behaviour problems in the school, to put a handle on the amount of violence going on at the school, to identify where behaviour problems are happening at the school, so that the school can be proactive rather than reactive to behaviour problems. These are ideas that the teachers are developing, and they're coming and need to be promoted.

I'll go to page 6, second paragraph. The point I'm trying to make with all these examples is that teachers are implementing digital technologies in all subject areas. Teachers must be part of the decision-making process around implementing technology if technology is to be successfully implemented. It is the teachers that are innovators, and it is the teachers that this government must support if students are to benefit from the new technologies.

How can the government support computer-using educators in their pursuit of teaching excellence? There's a tax break. There are countries that give teachers computers just to get them using them. Providing training, professional development. Our PSA grants were recently taken away. Give us our PSA grants back so we can provide Pro-D, with teachers teaching teachers how to use that technology. Realistic IRPs. The IRPs are huge, and we need an opportunity to pin down so that we get the limited amount of learning outcomes and so that it is possible to cover all the material we would like to do. Providing tech support, so teachers aren't becoming technicians to repair all the machinery.

In a recent global survey, the B.C. education system was rated one of the best in the world. It is one of the best in the world due to the dedication and innovation of B.C. teachers. I think it's of paramount importance for this government to support teachers who are the creative drivers and implementers in our education system.

I hope I have that short enough so I can take a couple of questions or comments.

W. McMahon (Chair): We have some time for a question. Do we have a question? No, it doesn't look like it.

You cut it short, and here we are. Thank you so much for coming today and making a presentation. It's the first time that we've heard from this group in front of our committee. It's great to have that input.

Our next presentation is school district 43, Barb Hobson and Laureen Doerksen. Good evening and welcome.

B. Hobson: Thank you very much. When I read this over this afternoon, I had six seconds left of my ten minutes. I'll see how I do tonight.

B. Hobson: I'll let you know that the copy you have is not the one I'm going to be using. That one is about 35 minutes long.

I'm pleased to present tonight on behalf of the board of school trustees for school district 43, Coquitlam. Coquitlam is the third-largest district in the province and encompasses the cities of Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody and the villages of Belcarra and Anmore. We serve approximately 33,000 students.

The board recognizes that you have an enormous task in listening to the many and varied submissions on education with the purpose of making recommendations on measures to improve choice, flexibility, access and quality in education. In our presentation this evening, we would like to briefly address each of these areas.

Regarding choice, we would like to highlight the many choices available to students in Coquitlam and to state that we are very proud of the choices presented. Some examples of unique programs and opportunities offered include Montessori; French immersion; advanced placement; international baccalaureate; teaching and evaluation centres; learning disability classes; language classes; social adjustment programs; gifted and challenge centres; the Pro-Ed program, providing transition for students just out of detention homes; a program for teen moms; and a day-treatment program for those students with emotional or mental illness.

We have initiated on-line learning opportunities within our district, and our secondary schools provide a wide variety of both locally developed and career prep programs.

Over the past eight years the board of trustees has strongly supported choice within the district. However, it has become more and more difficult for us to expand the range of options available, for a number of reasons. These include contractual processes for posting and filling, the inability to hire specialist teachers, requirements demanded by post-secondary institutions and the lack of resources and funding.

In addition, in the area of choice we would like to express our concern about the core review process currently taking place in the Ministry of Children and Family Development. We are very concerned that if funding to our school district for youth workers, meal programs, inner-city schools and community schools is cut, this would significantly limit the variety of choices that we can offer the students who have diverse social and learning needs.

Concerning the concept of flexibility. The fiscal framework's targeted structure, the fact that more than 92 percent of Coquitlam's budget is spent on salaries, and the need to subsidize basic facilities maintenance and to pay mandatory fees to outside agencies such as WCB and BCPSEA have conspired to severely limit the board's ability to make strategic decisions and to respond to the emerging needs of our children, our student population, employee groups and parents. Simply stated, we have no discretionary funds.

Since provincial bargaining has been initiated, districts have not been able to renegotiate local contracts. This restricts the board's ability to reallocate resources to areas that may require more support as issues arise. The capital funding program has resulted in overcrowding at our secondary schools and has, therefore, limited the alternate programs that we are able to house in Coquitlam.

In spite of the lack of flexibility for decision-making created by the above constraints, our school board appreciates the flexibility to interpret the School Act and to create district policies that establish and reflect our local values, visions, missions and goals. In the area of access, school trustees in district 43 have wrestled with this issue through many previous years and have addressed the issue through policy development. The board's policy on residents in catchment areas, for example, has always allowed students to register outside their catchment area, providing there is space available.

The board has attempted to balance program offerings across schools and in equitable geographic areas throughout the district. In addition, the board has supported the provision of services in the area of special education, including ones outside the mandate of education, and spends far beyond our funding allocation in this area.

Although the board has worked to provide access to programs by all students, there are several factors that have interfered. Coquitlam school district is a geographically large district with a limited public transportation system. Space is not always available in schools where alternate programs are desirable. The cost of setting up duplicate programs has restricted programming — for example, teaching kitchens in each of the secondary schools. We've had difficulty hiring trained staff to expand programs.

In the area of quality, the board of school trustees has been very proud of the quality of educational programs and services offered in the Coquitlam school district. We have emphasized collaborative processes for the analysis and interpretation of school results and for the purposes of planning and goal-setting. As a result, we have developed an annual district directions

document that has set goals for student learning and achievement. A copy is attached to our submission.

School improvement plans include setting goals, objectives, actions and time lines related to school improvement; a process to interpret ministry data, such as provincial exam and scholarship results and foundation skills assessment results, in the implementation of recommendations for the improvement of student achievement; professional development activities in order to help teachers upgrade or retrain; and a strong network of local specialist associations and district collaborative committees that focus on educational program and curriculum issues.

The board has had a goal of improving student achievement in the area of literacy at every level of the system since 1997. The board has also continued to support our resource centre — called Winslow Centre — even as we have had to face the reality of shrinking funding. Trustees believe in the value of providing ongoing in-service to staff.

The school district has been involved in a pilot project with Fraser North society that has focused on school-readiness levels. The early years project has provided us with information about the readiness levels for students who are entering kindergarten. This information is combined with detailed research on family demographics and will result in a community mapping report that will enable the board to allocate resources in the areas of greatest need.

One of the goals of our school district performance plan is providing achievement results in numeracy. Curriculum changes in the area of math for kindergarten-to-grade-12 have resulted in math courses that are extremely difficult for students and that have worked against students' ability to graduate. An area of increased concern for our board is that we are not able to afford the technology that is required to prepare students adequately for the skill levels needed as they experience the transition to work.

The ministry continues not to recognize our school grade configuration of elementary, middle and secondary, despite the fact that this reorganization is based on student developmental needs, is widely admired and has been extremely successful.

We would like to comment on the overcrowding of our secondary schools. This has resulted in an organization at secondary that requires an extended-day timetable. The extended-day timetable adversely impacts on students' learning and the ability to connect both with peers within school and with their teachers to receive extra help normally offered either before or after school in a regular school setting.

Lastly, our recommendations. The board of school trustees for school district 43, Coquitlam, wishes to make the following recommendations. We recommend that the Ministry of Education explore how current employee contracts could be changed to build in flexibility to respond to local circumstances. Work with post-secondary institutions to create more openings in educational programs for specialist teachers. Become involved in centralized recruitment of qualified specialist teachers to British Columbia. Recognize the importance of resource centres and the need for trained staff who are experienced in areas of curriculum and instructional strategies to support schools in implementing school improvement plans.

Make available on an ongoing basis the current levels of Ministry of Children and Family Development funding to our school district to ensure that we have continuity of service in vital preventative and supportive areas. Recognize that meeting the needs of diverse students and improving student achievement requires extra funding for special education. Recognize that students learn differently and at different rates, and that funding formulae such as the ESL five-year funding limit adversely affect those students in our district who may take much longer to learn.

Review the math curriculum with a view to ensuring students' success. Begin to examine all of the policies and procedures as well as curriculum resources to include the middle school model. Address the issue of requirements by post-secondary institutions, particularly in the areas of dual credit and transition credit for students who are transferring to and between post-secondary institutions. Provide sufficient funding for technology. Review the area of technology and education for administrative purposes and offer centralized student administration system solutions. Build into the fiscal framework discretionary funding to allow creative decision-making and to expand programs of choice.

In closing, we would like to thank you for the opportunity to present to you tonight. We wish you well with your deliberations on the many issues facing education in our province.

Thank you. I'm sorry; I was remiss in not introducing Laureen Doerksen, our superintendent of schools.

R. Masi (Deputy Chair): You mentioned about the contract in terms of the effect it has on the operation of the school district. I wonder if you could give us an example of the financial and the educational implications of the contract.

B. Hobson: As far as the educational, I'll give you an example that hasn't ever happened and I hope never will. For example, a teacher might be coming back from leave. They would be entitled to a job before a teacher who was transferring within the district would be entitled to transfer within the district. There might be a teacher who has gone on leave to work on history, and they come back and decide they want to teach grade 12 physics. They have the qualifications but maybe not all of the training and the time they would need to be proficient in that. They would receive that job, if they had the qualifications, before a teacher who might well have worked in the area for a number of years, say in grade 10 and 11, and would like to advance themselves to a grade 12 level.

R. Masi (Deputy Chair): You indicated that the contract has an effect. Did you mention 98 percent?

B. Hobson: It is. It's all salaries. Part of the concern we have in our district is that we have a provision that was negotiated before provincial bargaining came into being. That gives our teachers a significant retirement benefit package, and that package is not covered. For example, when the government decided they were going to provide an early incentive package for teachers, our incentive package was there as well. When we expected that 25 teachers would retire and we had, in effect, 85 teachers retire, that gave us a deficit of $500,000 in one year. That happened to us two years ago.

R. Masi (Deputy Chair): When you looking at financial implications, we've had submissions over the last few weeks that indicate some elementary teachers are putting out $800 to $1,100 of their own money in terms of resources. Is there a connection there in terms of the contract and how it affects the availability of resources?

B. Hobson: There's definitely the fact that we have no flexibility in our funding. I think it's wonderful that those teachers are doing that. Unfortunately, we don't have the capability to provide that funding for them, should they choose not to.

R. Stewart: Thank you for your view. You mentioned at the beginning of page 1 that contractual processes for posting and filling severely restrict the board's ability to staff programs of choice. I'm trying to understand what kinds of contractual restrictions. At this point, we haven't heard a lot of criticism of the thought that we could go out and offer more choice, but we have heard some barriers. This sounds like a barrier.

L. Doerksen: Barb referenced the problem to a certain extent earlier when she indicated that we have obligations under our contract, for example, to make sure, as we should, that people who are within our system have first opportunity at jobs. Depending on whether you're in a growth cycle or a cycle of decline, it can produce some difficulties around matching the qualifications people have to the jobs that are required.

Certainly, in the last couple of years, when our district has gone from a high-growth district to a district that's flattened out and is in a period of decline, we are in a situation of not being able to add additional staff but to in fact utilize the staff we have. Sometimes we find that what's happening is that teachers who have qualifications in one area aren't matched particularly well with the jobs that are required at the time.

B. Hobson: Or we want to offer music at the secondary level, and we have a teacher who has taught part-time at the elementary level. If you're doing this by choice, you might expect that there would be more expertise. It's not that every teacher can't teach every subject, but it takes some time to come up to speed, and you might want different matches in your schools too. You might be looking at the way people interact and not have the option of looking at that, as we discussed.

J. Kwan: You mentioned in your brief that your school district receives about $1 million towards what you called the social equity grants, the hot lunch programs and your city schools programs, etc. We've also heard from other parents who are concerned about this component of the educational supports. I'm wondering. In your districts what do you think the impacts are if these dollars were lost?

L. Doerksen: We have several alternate programs that are supported by the presence of youth workers in those programs. They're actually shared programs for non-attendees — our teen mom program, our rehab programs, for example. We have about 32 youth workers, but 13.7 of them are definitely funded for those specific program purposes in our district. That funding would be lost.

We have four community schools. All of those community schools really operate almost on a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week basis to bring in students — also parents — within the community. For parenting purposes and parenting education purposes they have been very successful. If that funding's gone, certainly those schools could not operate on that basis.

In addition, we have about 13 schools that have had some sort of support for meal programs. In spite of the fact that the Tri-Cities area is a very mixed demographic area, we do have real pockets of need. We have kids that come to school hungry. Those dollars have supported those kinds of programs for kids in our schools.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you both so much for being here this evening and for your presentation. We appreciate it.

H. Daykin: Thank you. A quick word to relieve your mind. My brief is really just the first two and a half pages. That's all I intend to deal with. There are footnotes. If you want to argue in your mind with some of the outlandish statements in here, just look at the footnotes as we go along. They start on page 3.

Another thing. I'm from Surrey, and my only business here is that I couldn't get on the roster at Surrey. I called in almost hours after the announcement was made that you were holding court in Surrey, and I was told: "It's filled up, sir." I have a few grandchildren and what not in Port Coquitlam, and that adds to my interest.

Any special knowledge I might have is based primarily on two things — or three things, if you like. First of all, I'm a grandfather, and that counts for something. I'm a grandfather ten times, at last count. I'm a great-grandfather on two counts. My last career was as a computer systems analyst, for what that's worth. Oh, yes. For about the last decade my chief hobby in retirement has been helping to organize young people's chess tournaments, first of all locally in Surrey and then occasionally at a provincial level in Vancouver. In that process, I've got to learn quite a lot about some of the brighter, more ambitious minds, all the way from, believe it or not, kindergarten — can you imagine that in some schools they routinely introduce kids in kindergarten to a game of chess? — up to grade 12.

Well, enough of that. Now, I'm going to depart from the text now and then, but I'm going to try to have everything finished in another seven and a half minutes. I wonder if I could read aloud, and perhaps you could follow this quote. It is quite extensive, but I'll give you the basis of it. The lady Rosabeth Kanter wrote this book, which is just four years old, and which I recommend to you if you want to be put to sleep early. She was editor — so help me — of Harvard Business Review for four years. Unfortunately, she wasn't a Canadian.

Anyway, let me read this, because it gives you the basic rationale for what I'm proposing here. The basic rationale is not what would be good or nice or needed for our more ambitious students in British Columbia, but for the economy. Let me read it. This is up at the top.

"World-class workplaces provide employability security because they prepare people for jobs of the future." That means not flipping hamburgers. "This makes employees better able to contribute to innovations." Notice: employees — not just managers and supervisors, but employees.

"Security for workers at" such and such a company — I left that out because it doesn't matter — "starts with world-class quality and innovation." The company in question "has been first to market with more products than competitors."

"Education to support innovation and change lies at the centre of employability security" — notice the phrase "employability security," not employment security; even if we have to close down because our company fails, we hope that you will have gained some employability security for future alternative prospects for employment — "for both very large global companies and smaller more local ones."

"Actions for quality and excellence: becoming the best in the world." This is what she means by "world-class," basically. It's being as good as any comparable thing anywhere else in the world. "Extend education in quality problem-solving skills to the schools." Notice the implication that boom-all is being done right now in schools in the United States.

Goals for 2006-08. Notice that I'm not suggesting that another dime be spent by the Ministry of Education at Victoria in order to move toward my proposal here. I'm exaggerating; it might cost a few hundred thousand. Anyway, as part of a broad goal to have a world-class city — by that I mean greater Vancouver — here by 2015, which we do not have yet…. If you want to argue with me, look at the footnote on that. We should aim to have in at least several of our local school districts — hopefully, the one for Coquitlam — a world-class K-to-12 system, which probably no district here in greater Vancouver has yet. If you want to argue with me, look at the footnote.

As a useful part of the latter ambition, we should aim to have in such districts by 2006 — in other words, I'm allowing five years to get ready to do what I'm proposing — a new elective termed something like "inventing and innovation." I'll explain that title a little bit later. By 2007-08, have innovation 10 — these refer to grades, of course — and innovation 11. Such courses might well be for just two hours a week, preferably as a two-hour block.

Now we get into, "What do you mean exactly?" and the ifs, ands and buts. What would be the thrust of such courses? The aim would be to enable our young people to be better at — I name three things here that really form a bundle; there's such overlap between them that it's silly to treat them separately — creative thinking, integrative problem-solving and the multistage process of innovation. By that I mean: if you want to put a new car on the market, the specialists say something like seven steps are involved, from your bright idea about whatever new feature you might have in mind to the seventh step of a long-term process where you're actually doing a market launch. From idea to market launch is what I refer to as the process of innovation. From this point on, this paper will imply all or any of the above in the word "innovation."

Now, what would be the bent, the kind of personality or interest, of the teachers of such courses? The learning activities involved should, logically, be led by a teacher who, while she may have her own prime spe-

cialty, is above all a superb generalist. I emphasize that point, and you'll see why later.

Now, why as a separate subject? I spend a little bit of time on this. I'll mention, in an aside, that I did have a little exchange with the deputy minister over this broad theme about a year and a half ago. Broadly speaking, what he told me is: "That's very interesting, Mr. Daykin, but we're doing it now. We're doing it all over the place." I deal with that now.

Why as a separate subject? The shortest answer to this query is a rhetorical question. Where would the discipline of mathematics, for example, be today if it were only treated, even at university, as a thread in other subjects — as just a thread in physics, as just a thread in chemistry or just a thread in social studies and so on? Another answer is this: as should become quickly apparent from any compact cross-section of relevant books, there is a great deal to the subject of innovation and creative thinking. If we persist in treating it only as a thread in conventional subjects, how many years must we wait before most high schools have even one teacher who knows quite a lot about the subject?

Now, recent books on creative thinking, grounded in the shared practices of breakthrough innovators, elaborate a surprising number of component skills and mental habits involved. Moreover, becoming a creative thinker requires much more than mere awareness of such skills. It requires years of practice so that they become second nature to you.

Let me give you an example of one of the 13 skills, from one of the great pairs who are investigating, almost as a life project, the whole issue of how a person, from childhood into middle life, becomes more creative, more innovative. We're only learning now, in the last 20 or 30 years, very much about that. In the past, when scientists or inventors have expounded on their discoveries, they've done it — as the saying goes — to convince but not reveal. They don't reveal how they got there. They just say enough to convince you that they're right.

Well, people like the Root-Bernsteins…. If you have any doubt for a minute as to how deeply they dig, their bibliography runs to about 400 items, some of which deal at the elementary school level as well, although most of those 400 items are for the adult reader. Anyway, I'd better skip what I was going to tantalize you with. I'll leave that.

Take my word for it, though, that the Root-Bernsteins, who made almost a lifework of this question — "How do you try to become more creative?" — elucidate 13, believe it or not, different mental skills, which you can't just learn by deciding today: "I'm going to start doing this tomorrow."

I will give you one example. There was a great scientist and inventor at about the turn of the century. He had a big track record of inventing. Some of his colleagues gave him a rod which was two inches in diameter. They gave him a drill — a big, fat one — that was two inches. They said: "Now, if you divide this rod in two with that drill, how many cubic inches of metal will you have on the table, and what would be the shape of what was left?" Well, they expected him to take several hours with drawings and mathematics and so on, because it's a complicated thing. The result is sort of a lozenge.

He looked up and he thought for maybe a couple of minutes, and he said: "The answer, gentlemen, is 5.33 cubic inches." He was capable of doing what's called imaging. This is one of the things that rank high among the 13 mental skills that need to be developed over time.

I'm going to skip rapidly. You can almost read this faster than I can hold forth.

Why a subject, when it's not even a recognized discipline — you know, an intellectual discipline? Well, this book recently came out. It's put out by a man who teaches a course at McMaster University. It has a title that has the word "innovation" in it. He's been doing it for some years at McMaster University in Hamilton, and he has a pretty good background. He was in charge of R and D at Proctor and Gamble. The fact that innovation is not a recognized discipline in the same sense as chemistry or physics or mathematics shouldn't stand in the way of teaching it as a stand-alone subject at high school.

The case of Singapore and MIT. This is interesting. You know, it's long been thought that the Asians, in business — I'm talking about the Asians back in Japan, China, Singapore and Hong Kong, and so on — have been very good copiers: they've been very good at instituting a new idea, but they haven't been very bright at innovating.

Well, the Singapore people have invited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to act as consultants so they can set up a graduate school of engineering with a focus on creativity. Now, I don't have friends in Singapore, but anyway, I got that out of one of Lester Thoreau's books, which I've cited in the footnotes.

The University of Toronto's new graduation school centre…. This is very interesting. If you want a book that will put you to sleep quickly at Christmastime,

Memos to the Prime Minister. There's an article in here by — I've forgotten his name. He's the one who runs the business school.

He's the dean of the business school at U of T, and he's just got a pile of money from a rich man who doesn't know what to do with it. He's going to set up something called a centre for integrated thinking. That's going to be for his business school. Basically, what he means by that is that instead of the way Harvard Business School has taught business for 92 years — which is: "We teach you marketing, we teach you finance, we teach you engineering, we teach you administration and human resources," and so on — we've got to teach you to think across all that simultaneously. He's taken as his model Southwest Airlines, headquartered in Texas, which has had 25 years of unbroken profits. It's very interesting.

Look, you can just read for yourselves what I propose would be the first steps to get ready to start offering electives in innovation in five years' time. I've made some suggestions at the end of the page there.

R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that terrific presentation, Harold. I really enjoyed it.

I just want to say that a very good friend of mine by the name of Dr. Don McKinnon took his PhD in innovation at UBC, and the district of Surrey was very lucky to hire him. Twenty-eight years ago Dr. McKinnon was talking not only about instituting community schools but about the articulation between high schools and colleges and cooperation between municipalities and school districts. He was 28 years ahead of the pack, and now we're still talking about that today.

Thinking outside of the box is very important. I would like to see something like this. It's a terrific idea.

K. Manhas: Thank you very much, Mr. Daykin. You present some very interesting ideas. It seems you like books very much. You referred us to many. This can go both ways. I'm going to refer you to one myself. There is an excellent book by a Canadian author called The Ingenuity Gap that was published just this past year.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation tonight. We appreciate you coming out.

W. McMahon (Chair): Our next presentation is the Burnaby Multicultural Society, Ray Power. Good evening.

R. Power: Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to come here this evening. I've been looking at the number of people that you've listened to already. The first comment I would make is please don't follow the lettering I've put on there — A, B, C and D — because my alphabet got mixed up. We'll just move along.

The reason why I'm here is to see if we can get some assistance in having the multicultural liaison worker program reinstated in the Burnaby school board. As background, the Burnaby school board, in May 2001, without prior consultation with the key stakeholders in the community, eliminated the multicultural liaison worker service. The reason given was that there was a shortfall because of an unexpected gas bill and an anticipated decline in enrolment. The decline in enrolment did not occur, and in fact, the enrolment in September 2001 has increased by about 400 new students.

When the multicultural liaison workers service came into existence 18 years ago, it was done in response to the multicultural challenge. When we saw a need, the community came together. I'm not reading directly from the text. The Burnaby Multicultural Society took the lead, and we actually got the funding for the first two years. For the last 16 years, that program has been a part of the service in Burnaby schools.

We in the Burnaby Multicultural Society have always believed it's an essential education service. Our current statistics in Burnaby are that there are 30 to 40 percent of the students in Burnaby schools whose home language is other than English. As I say, it has been funded for 16 years. Up until the start of this school year we had six multicultural liaison workers, at a cost of approximately $270,000 out of a budget of $141 million, which was eliminated without consultation in one month, as I mentioned before. The service it provided — and I'd look under D in this one — is still in order.

The service we provided to immigrant and refugee students was assistance with orientation, registration, assessment and placement; facilitating parent involvement in schools; translation of important documents; interpretation of information about students' progress and behaviour; providing cultural and personal information to school administrators, which is something that cannot be done by volunteers but has to be done by professionals; supporting classroom teachers with anti-racist, multicultural lessons and events; helping ESL students and parents understand and navigate our complex education system; and activating a network of

Multicultural workers are the only professional group in the Burnaby school system whose main purpose is to support students in understanding the meaning of global citizenship. This transitional, cultural bridging service is essential until there are a sufficient number of school personnel who can directly respond to the cultural and linguistic needs in the diversity of their students.

The next statement probably speaks for itself. In the Burnaby school district, there is no counsellor who can provide service in a language other than English. If you refer that back to my statement about the number of second-language students we have, it just doesn't seem to balance. As part of the attachment, I've included the Burnaby school district's own statements and policies on multiculturalism. I'll refer to that further down when I get to the point of what we would expect or what we would like from you.

Under G, we have made attempts as a group, as a consortium of many. There are about 45 different groups involved along with the Burnaby Multicultural Society. We've made repeated attempts through the school board and through visits to the district parent advisory council to see if we can't get this school multicultural liaison program reinstated. That takes you right down to today.

I won't go through all the events, but basically, what we have run into is the argument put forward by the school district and by the board that multicultural liaison workers are not part of the education system but that it is a settlement service. It is a settlement service, and there is where we differ with them. As the president of the Burnaby Multicultural Society, our office provides those settlement and integration services. We do not work within the schools, and we do not have the facilities or the funding to work within the schools. Because this service was eliminated as of September, we don't have any such service in the schools.

To follow on the effects of the loss of the multicultural liaison worker service, the major concerns for teachers — and we have attached with this presentation a survey that we did with the teachers — and the questions that arise, are how they will deal with complex cases that require not only language skills but also an understanding of the complexity of the educational system. Attendance of the ESL parents at meet-the-parents nights is greatly reduced without the presence of multicultural workers. Gathering background information to identify immigrant and refugee students with special needs is difficult without the assistance of such workers. The multicultural counselling support for students with behaviour and attitude problems is no longer available, and these children are more at risk and more vulnerable to gang recruitment. School administrators are greatly hampered in the ability to respond to the needs of the ESL students and parents.

I would move on down to the next one, which is suggestions we've got from letters of support. There were 44 of them that were provided to us. I haven't provided all of the letters, obviously, because of bulk and because you could never read through all of them. I have provided the list of groups and individuals that they have come from.

The support letters are asking: to what extent are the parents and the school advisory committees representative of the ethnic diversity of the school? How is the ESL service being provided? How are multicultural and anti-racist resources systematically included in all schools? What mechanism do school districts have in place for monitoring the effects of its policies on multiculturalism? I think that's where our problem arises, because their own policies are not being implemented or enforced. There's been a request that they review the B.C. Multiculturalism Act and clarify its connection with conflict resolution, crime prevention, achievement of human potential and global citizenship. Collaborate with educators on ways to strengthen our access to the English language for all B.C. students.

I will skip down to the part that says your ministry has stated its commitment to equal access to educational opportunities for all students and parent involvement in schools. The minister responsible for multiculturalism has also stated his commitment to supporting multiculturalism in the school system, and we have a letter from Mr. Abbott attached.

We urgently request the Ministry of Education to fulfil its responsibility for overseeing the implementation of the B.C. Multiculturalism Act in the school system by questioning the loss of multicultural liaison service in Burnaby; auditing the implementation of the B.C. Multiculturalism Act in school districts with culturally diverse populations, starting with Burnaby; recognizing multicultural liaison services as an essential educational service in a multicultural school system; providing targeted funding to ensure multicultural liaison worker services are available in school districts with high ESL student populations — we're talking about rolling budgets, but after I see what's happening in our system, I really have a concern about rolling budgets; and providing diversity training for school trustees and administrators to ensure an understanding and responsiveness to cultural diversity.

The elimination of this essential service is a backward step in the evolution of our multicultural society. It's never been more evident than it has been over the last three months. We find ourselves at the whim of elected and appointed officials who have shown that they're entrenched in their positions and unresponsive to the needs of minority parents, citizens, educators and other concerned stakeholders.

We've made every possible attempt to have this service reinstated. I'm coming to you hopeful that there is some solution, that there is something available. I honestly believe that the only way it can be resolved is when this multicultural liaison program is made an essential part of the education program so it cannot be eliminated at anybody's decision — at least, not without some consultation and until we've reached a point that it possibly isn't necessary anymore. We're not going that route right now.

Our immigrant population in Burnaby is growing by leaps and bounds. It's unbelievable, over the last six months, the increase that's taken place. In June alone there were 71 immigrants who arrived at the airport, whose language was not English, who came to Burnaby to live. Some of those kids are now in our school system without any way of communicating. As I told you, not even the counsellors in our schools — none of them — have a language other than English to communicate in.

I've mentioned that there are some attachments, and I would ask you to take the time to read through them. The one from the Vancouver Hanin Development Society, which is a coalition of businesses — primarily Korean businesses — outlines not only the effect it has in schools when the service is not available, but it outlines the effects it has on the business community and investment in the community when the service is not available. It's very plainly stated that they will go elsewhere to seek opportunities if their kids cannot receive the education and the language help that they need.

It's not major to Burnaby, but I can tell you one individual case where one person came and spoke from the Latin community at one of the presentations we made to the district parent advisory council. That parent has since picked up and moved out of Burnaby because the service was no longer available to his children. That's just one, but it's one that we know about.

There are many others. There are others who are fighting their way through and doing the best they can, but I honestly believe that we are not providing the best service that we could to our children in our schools.

R. Lee: Thank you for your presentation. It's mentioned that there was a teacher survey conducted on the effect of the program loss. Can you provide more detail on that?

R. Power: The survey is one of the attachments. There are a number of questions in there, and if you will look at some of the responses…. We received 20 responses, but that doesn't represent 20 teachers, because most of the responses came from groups that got together at the school. They were brought to staff meetings. In some cases, one school would send one response and it was representative of the staff, not just of one teacher.

The teachers are wondering how we're going to discuss with parents complex cases which require not only language skills but also an understanding of the education system here. Nineteen out of the 20 responses that we got have that as a concern. It goes on, and we sort of rated them in the way they were responded to.

J. Kwan: You mentioned in the beginning of your brief that the reason — or at least the reason that was given to you — for the elimination of the multicultural liaison worker services is decline in enrolment and also because of an unexpected gas bill. As far as I'm aware, the gas bill was actually covered in the school budget for education. The other thing is that in your brief it says that your enrolment actually increased as opposed to decreased. Did the school board give you an explanation of that discrepancy?

R. Power: No. The first two or three responses we had from the school board were: "This is a funding issue and we don't have the money." When we took the time to point out to them that there was increased enrolment and the fact you mentioned about the gas bill, then…. If you look at the actions we've taken and the results, the results are that it's no longer a budget issue. It's an issue of settlement and integration, not an education issue. That's the answer we're getting now. They're not talking budget anymore. They're just saying: "I'm sorry, but this is now a settlement and integration issue, so we won't deal with it in the schools."

Do you know if other schools or school districts are faced with the same problems that you're faced with?

R. Power: No. Vancouver has 21 multicultural liaison workers. With their budget and with the same difficulties, they've kept all their workers. Surrey has 17. They've kept all of theirs.

R. Power: We're in the middle. We're the catchment area in the middle, and we have none.

Our next presentation is Sprott-Shaw Community College, Cyril Okoye and Cal Purcell.Good evening.

C. Okoye: Madam Chair and the Select Standing Committee on Education, first of all, let me extend my profound gratitude to all of you for your vision in conducting this presentation across the province and also for giving us the opportunity to be with you this evening. I think it is a reflection of very good government, as well as the display of a democratic ideal in which citizen participation is encouraged, especially in the formulation of public policy such as this. Thank you once again for giving us the opportunity.

I am here tonight with Cal Purcell. Cal will be speaking very briefly on education funding in the private sector. I will go straight into the key item of the presentation tonight. I have given out some of the distributions. I don't know if you have it. I will attempt to walk through it with you as much as I can given the limitation of time.

The issue, as we know, is a very touchy one. It is also very interesting indeed because it goes across the whole gamut of education. When we look at choice, flexibility, accessibility and quality, these are the essential ingredients of education. What happens, however, is that the focus has been specifically, shall I say, on private post-secondary education. The private sector, unfortunately, has been the underdog. The intention is to deal with it and acknowledge it, because I am from the public as well as the private sector.

Now I will take you to page 2. Page 1 is simply the executive summary, which you can probably go through at your leisure. I begin by saying that in discussing public policy, it is often easy to preface any such analysis by anecdotes or the renditions of others. The reason for this is that such an approach gives more flesh and perhaps tells a much better story. You may ask why this is so, when we look at what we are going to deal with or what you are going about collecting information from different people on. I believe that when we take it forward to the arena of the public sector — when I say "public sector," I mean public post-secondary education and private post-secondary education — it becomes a very hotly contested issue, for the simple reason that one of these sectors is looked upon with inferior understanding of what it provides.

This is not new. I came from the public sector myself after many years teaching at a university. Interestingly, one might say, when I was about to leave and join the private sector, one of my very profound good colleagues lamentingly said to me: "Are you crazy?" I responded: "No, I am not crazy." I questioned him about why he would make such a comment. "It's because you are going to bring disrepute to the university as well as to the qualifications that you've earned over many, many years." Anyway, this is just background to show you exactly where I am coming from.

Let me go directly to the issue which is at hand — i.e., accessibility of education. When we look at accessibility — this is on page 4 — I've tried to define accessibility in two ways. One, it is defined in terms of the ease with which learners are able to gain admission into post-secondary institutions. Two, it is also defined in terms of the ability for one to attend an institution of one's choosing without barriers to admission. I have specifically defined accessibility this way to flesh out what problems we face in the private sector. Yet these problems do not at all reflect the integrity of the private sector, nor does it actually say that they are behind the public sector. If anything, they are well ahead in terms of accessibility, reaching out to the community, identifying the needs that are there for education and making those needs become a reality.

Take the case of Sprott-Shaw. I think we all know Sprott-Shaw Community College. Sprott-Shaw, within a period of, say, ten years, has 15 campuses in British Columbia. It's not a quest for money. It is a quest to satisfy the needs that are there in the community — the need to be able to access education where you are, at your convenience and very near to your home. That's what it is, although sometimes we tend to look at it differently. We tend to justify such actions on the business of entrepreneurial spirit. It is true, but it is more than that.

I take you to look at the public sector. There are certain problems in terms of the authority to make things happen. It is bureaucratically wrangled in debates about what to do or what not to do. It's not the case with the private sector. When we look at accessibility, again, in terms of program availability, there is also a very big difference between the private and the public sector. We — when I say "we," I am referring to the private sector — have entrenched ourselves. We have entrenched our roots right in the community, identifying the needs. With this needs identification also comes program identification. There are multiple choices available there for students to choose to progress in what areas they feel free to, at their own time and their own pace.

I'll give you an example. I think he was a cabinet minister, and he made a very touching comment about his son, who was fortunately able to go to a private college, not simply because of choice — from what I understood through some of the comments — but simply because of competence and also the availability of the program that he or she was seeking to do at the time. This is what we are looking at when it comes to accessibility.

Now let's move on, because unfortunately there isn't much time to go through some of this. Let's move on to the next item, which is flexibility. I try to look at flexibility in terms of bridging courses. It also involves what I refer to as WEA. WEA means work experience alternative in the pursuit of one's program.

Going back to bridging courses, I will give you an example and then let you see clearly the difference between the application of the example in the two sectors, the private and the public one. Take the case of BSN, bachelor of science in nursing, in a situation where a registered nurse intends to go back to university, perhaps to get his or her BSN. Normally, the procedure — I hope it's the case everywhere — is that he or she will be given an advanced standing based on his or her formal qualifications as an RN. When this happens, the duration to complete the BSN program will be reduced. That's the case.

Now, when you look at the private sector, it equally applies. Let me take the case of Sprott-Shaw. Sprott-Shaw is the only private post-secondary institution in British Columbia actually approved by the PPSEC, the Private Post-secondary Education Commission of British Columbia, to offer LPN, licensed practical nurse, programs.

We were attempting to make some inroads here, and we did succeed, but the problem we faced in doing it was getting the cooperation of some of the public institutions to make it happen. As I said, I do understand the sentiments involved once you speak of a private school or private colleges. They are very badly frowned upon.

The program is successful now, because we are working on the access program or vision program

whereby those students who have gained qualifications in RCA, the resident care attendant program somewhat medically related to LPN, can easily transfer from RCA to LPN. What that means is that one coming into the program with a previous background in RCA can then complete the requirements of the LPN in a much shorter period. That makes sense.

The problem facing us is one that has been raised here: articulation, the problem of transferability, where a student from the RCA program can equally transfer to an LPN program in the public sector. That does not happen. It is frowned upon, yet when you look at it, those instructors — those teachers, those professors, if you wish to use the terms — are exactly the same teachers that come from the public sector.

I am a good example. I have written; I have published; I have taught for many years. I have been in management. I have been a professor, yet if I teach my students in the private sector, they are not eligible to transfer to the public sector. That's a very big problem we're facing. When you look at private universities or colleges, they are setting standards. I also have been in England. They are making standards over there, setting standards for the public investors to follow. When we come here, it's a completely different thing altogether.

Let me move on to the question of choice. We will also see, in terms of a choice, that so-called private colleges have the tendency to provide more choice to students in terms of the programs they can go into. Not only that, there are other private colleges in British Columbia. I'm sure some of you may have heard of Columbia College, Corpus Christi or Coquitlam College. At the university level, for example, we hear of Trinity University. We also hear of the University of Phoenix from the U.S. and City University. When you look at the course offerings in these colleges or universities, one cannot even start to compare, let alone stand before you to justify them being inferior, being looked down upon, because they are private.

On-line programming or on-line education. I can tell you quite frankly, and I'm proud to say it, that this was first initiated and implemented in the private sector. This is where research money goes. Because of that entrepreneurial spirit, there is the need to seek out the unknown. I'm sure you guys have heard about Harvard. I'm sure you've heard about Stanford University. These are all private universities. If I tell you that they are leaders in research and development, would you believe me? Why can't we have the same thing here? That's my key question.

Alberta has taken the leap. I don't think we should wait until we have mass demonstrations out there before we do it. This is exactly what happened in Alberta. People stood up and took to the streets. Before the government considered it, they demonstrated: "We want education. It is our choice. We want accessibility. It is our right. We want flexibility. We deserve it." I think we are much smarter than that.

I can see the glowing faces, and I think you can all agree with me: British Columbia is the place to be. You have set the standard by this forum by opening up this type of presentation for us to come in and present to you. We are happy for that. There is not much time to go on about the quality and everything. It's there. I am going to simply ask you, when you have a moment of your time, to go through it. One thing I want to highlight is the implications this might have for policy.

Let me go to quality. It's very important. How do you measure quality? You measure quality by the degree of attainment of success by a student. If it's quality that it's all about, that's fine. Now, do we get it in the private sector? Do we get it in the public sector? There is one thing missing. The private sector is rigorously monitored and assessed in terms of quality. Who does it is the PPSEC. Who among us here can tell me the external assessing body of public universities? There is no such thing in existence.

As a matter of fact, a colleague of mine who just retired from UBC as a medical director there, when we were discussing the issue, laughed and laughed. He laughed so hard he fell from his chair. Why? He said to me: "It's a joke." Once you pass the stage of scrutiny, as he calls it — i.e., once you have from three years of experience onwards — nobody touches you. Once you have a tenure-track position, nobody touches you. There is no quality assessment of your work. Your relationship with students is strictly up to you. Some have gone as far as currently using class or course notes about 39 years old in the class. You cannot do that in the private sector.

I came from England. I was a bit shocked in the sense that the public education system there is very, very rigorously monitored by the government. I went through an assessment exercise. I came out of there saying to myself: "Thank God I am still alive." Yet I was at the university. I don't see why we shouldn't. The government and what you are doing — you have foresight, I believe — is the avenue by which we can integrate the private sector and the public sector, as a whole, to collaborate and exchange ideas, to make the very choice we are all seeking available for our students, to make the accessibility we are all seeking available to our students and also to make flexibility much easier for them.

We can begin to do this simply by what I refer to as the BCFACT. It's a recommendation. Once you have time, you can go through it. What I call the BCFACT is simply a British Columbia forum for educational collaboration. There is a phrase for it. Anyway, it's on the last page. Let me read it out to you, because I think it is very, very important that you know about it. It's the B.C. Forum for Advanced Education Collaboration and Transfer. Clearly, what this will do is that representatives from the private sector and the public sector will sit down, not as foes but as enemies with a common goal: to make sure things are okay for the students. That's the common goal.

Amidst that very achievement would be some other things I have also mentioned here. I implore you in the name of humanity to take your time out, go through very quickly what I have written here, then look at ways in which transferability of courses could probably

be implemented between the private sector and the public sector. I say this because there are many qualified instructors, if not more qualified instructors, in the private sector than in the public one.

I also implore you in the name of humanity to ensure in your deliberations the involvement of representatives from the private sector on the transfer and articulation committee, which I believe is still involved now. The minister did mention the education council at one time. In going through that proposal, I saw no mention whatsoever of the private sector's involvement. The inclination was simply to public sector. I think that if in your deliberations you can think about our involvement there, it would also be appreciated.

What I can do, though, because of the constraints of time, is to leave the floor to my friend, Cal Purcell. Cal will speak briefly on education financing in the private sector. I don't know how much time we've got.

C. Purcell: Thank you very kindly. I'd just like to echo a couple of Cyril's comments. I really appreciate the opportunity to come here and speak to you all on this very pressing issue and this issue very dear to both our hearts.

As Cyril mentioned, Sprott-Shaw Community College has quite an expanse in how we do different things. We train approximately 3,000 students a year. With the exception of one area — and my apologies to you, Madam Chair — we represent every jurisdiction at the head table there. I'd like to say that we will continue to expand, so it won't be too long before we can also take a look at your area.

What I would like to say on education and finance would take far too long to be able to go too deeply into. I did notice in the Blues that you have had representation from Anita Zaenker, I think, on November 1, when she talked about the issue of public education and keeping the public in education. We, too, believe in the same thing. We're not trying to say that public education is not for B.C. We're trying to say that there is an area for both of us to be in. There is an area to increase access — as the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation is promoting all the time — and to increase flexibility and choice.

Right now I chair the Canada student loans program portfolio management task force. I am past chair of the Canada student loans program default prevention task force, and I'm involved with a lot of other different associations and different committees that deal with education finance. I will try to put together a paper to be able to drop off to you, because I haven't seen anything on this very important issue, not so far that you have heard of yet. I could have missed something, and my apologies if I did. I will get something to you so that you can take that into your deliberations as well.

W. McMahon (Chair): That would be great. Thank you, and thank you both for being here tonight and for your presentation.

M. Dockendorf: Thank you. Okay, I tried to think of some real highlights about the fact that I got to go last and that you got to sit here for 12 hours.

M. Dockendorf: I have a really good story for you, and I appreciate how long you've been here: all day.

Here's the good news: I'm here to end your evening with a passionate story about a real school that's making a difference in our community. I'm here to brighten up your evening — not that it wasn't always bright. Is this the ninth or tenth day that you've…?

M. Dockendorf: I'm here this evening to make sure you understand — I'm sure you do, but I'm here to be your real-life example — and to reinforce that there are really good and fine things happening in B.C. schools. I am an incredible advocate for public education, and I'm here to give you just a very small story about a very wonderful school that's making a difference in our community.

That's why I'm here this evening. My story is about a school that opened up in September 2000, and I have the absolute privilege of being the principal of this school in Port Coquitlam. The name of the school, which isn't very far from here, is Blakeburn. I'll tell you that it's about rethinking the culture of schools. It's about rethinking what's important. It's about rethinking about what makes a difference. I'm also here to tell you that we need you. We cannot do this alone.

We are very clear about what we value and about what we believe in terms of what makes a difference for kids. Our goal is to create — and we've been working on this for just over a year now — a socially responsible learning community. Our goal is to create a socially responsible community.

We are a school of almost 400 kids. At the heart and fabric of what we're doing is attempting to ensure that all those wonderful human beings who walk through our door every day also leave every day with a sense of social responsibility — a sense of what it means to contribute to our community and to our classrooms, what it means to problem-solve in peaceful ways, what it means to respect diversity and value human rights and what it means to have rights and responsibilities.

We open our doors at 8 o'clock, and we welcome the children in. There are no lineups in our school. We don't line them up. We open the doors, and we welcome them in. We say this one thing: come in.

We're working very hard, and we're not there yet. We're working very hard to replicate family. You come into our building each and every day, and you know that you're important. You know you have a right to learn. You know you're going to be successful. You're not afraid to take a risk, because this is a place that is working very hard on developing an ethos of care.

Without that care, without that love, without that sense of community…. That includes parents. It includes all staff. That means CUPE staff, that means noon-hour supervisors, that means secretaries, that means the administrator, that means that every teacher in the building needs to be a role model for these kids. Every single day we work very hard at representing this ethos of care. You know when you come through that door that you are joyous. You wake up every morning, and you want to be there. You want to come to school. You want to learn. It's okay. It's a building that's safe.

Our focus is not on bullying. It is not a focus on bullying. Our focus is on a proactive stance of creating a socially responsible learning community. Do we teach anti-bullying skills? Of course we do, but that would be only one strand of what we're doing. We are focusing on what are all the things we can do to create a positive, loving, caring community where kids are joyous and want to be there.

There is no question that unless you feel safe, unless you feel cared for, unless you feel loved, unless you feel you can take a risk, unless you feel like you're a learner, the same kind of student achievement isn't going to be happening for you. You know, I question all the time: why do we line them up outside those buildings? We set them up — right? What do you think? Like, I mean: "He hit. She shoved. She pushed."

We open the doors and welcome them in, and we say two things: "Your responsibility is this: to make a wise, independent decision. Otherwise ,you lose the privilege of being in here." The second thing we do is make sure we have wonderful things for them to do when they're in there.

You cannot imagine what a hit the Harry Potter Lego is. They come in, in the morning, and they read books. They play games. They're in the technology centre. They're in the library, and they make wise, independent decisions when they come in there. At the beginning of our day, every day, we gather — and we're almost 400; we've grown — and we start with songs. We sing every single morning, creating that whole sense of community, bringing all of us together. That's a lot in our foyer, I have to tell you. We begin with a sense of community and song every single morning, and then kids simply go to their classrooms.

The next part is a student leader who reads our morning announcements and talks about whatever aspect of social responsibility we're working on. We know we need to work on particular behaviours at least 21 days to make a difference, so for the last three weeks we've been working on the spirit of generosity. What does that look like? What does that sound like? We teach it explicitly. What does it look like to include kids, to include others? We don't have a right in our school not to. You just don't have that right. Your responsibility is to include everybody. What does that look like? What does that sound like?

The whole reference frame we're using are the ministry standards, performance standards for social responsibility. We use that as our framework. It is woven into the fabric of our teaching every single day. We work very hard, and it requires a sustained effort by all. It requires a sustained effort from staff and from students but also from parents. It takes a whole community, and we're working very hard at doing that. The interesting thing, the result of this — and we've tracked and kept very good statistics, which we'd be happy to share — is that the incidence of what I call high-maintenance behaviour continually becomes minimized because of the proactive stance.

The other interesting thing is student achievement. If you don't feel good about yourself, if you don't feel like you can take a risk, if you don't feel you can ask the questions, if you don't feel safe in a building, there's no question that the same kind of learning doesn't go on for children. It just absolutely won't happen. We prize inquiry in our building. We prize the quest of figuring out. We prize questions. We prize making sense, not only of the academics but also of the world. If you don't have a staff and a whole community that prizes that, the same thing doesn't happen for kids.

To end your evening, I am here to tell you there is a real school out there, and it's not just us: there are all kinds of schools in our province. The last school I came from was a wonderful school in Coquitlam — an inner city school — where there's a full breakfast program and a full lunch program. I can't tell you the difference it made when we collectively, as a community, implemented performance standards on social responsibility. It's not enough to be reactive about the bullying. It's the proactive piece that's critically important and will make a difference. I have to tell you that we can't do this alone. We need you.

I caution you deeply. It's not about a test score. That's not enough. It's not about parents or students or staff ticking off on any survey. If you really want to know what's happening in schools, you need to be out there. There's more to it than those test scores. The authentic data is critically important. I'd love to share that with you at our school, because we worked really hard at that. We know it's not enough to say we've made a difference. We've collected the data to be illustrative of what we're trying to do.

I'm passionate about the work we're doing in public schools. I hope that over the time you've visited throughout the province, and I so admire you for doing this…. Now, I started work this morning at about 6:30, as you probably did too, and I care about being here. I care that you leave knowing there are schools out there that are really making a difference for kids — not just a few kids but every kid. Every single student has the right to feel good about who they are as a learner and to know that they, too, have a future in our province, and not only in our province but in our world.

K. Manhas: Thank you very much, Maureen. You know, when I first went to your school when it opened, I was just floored. I'm really glad that you were able to make it out here today.

What I want to know is: do you plan to continue to track your students' success, to measure it, for example, in ten years, compared to the norm? With the environment that you promote and have established in the school, my theory is that because of the extra stimulation those students get, they will in fact do better and perform better. It would be interesting to be able to track that information. I was wondering if you plan to do that.

Also, the performance standards on social responsibility that you were mentioning. Is that what you suggest as a way to replicate your success in other schools, or what is that? How can we do that? How can we replicate that success?

M. Dockendorf: In response to your first question, I'd love you to come over some time, because we have a whole file drawer that has nothing to do with ministry files. They're called school improvement files. The whole purpose of that is to collect data on every single child. In fact, every single child in our school has a separate PEN number that has nothing to do with the ministry. We're actually able to track how our ESL students are doing — which, I might add, is one-third of our population — and how our special needs children are doing. We're able to track all of that based on the authentic data we're collecting. I'm not talking about standardized tests, which in the bigger picture actually only tell you about socioeconomics. It's not the real indicator.

So yes, absolutely. I think it'll take three to five years to actually make the difference we're after. I can see tracking this for at least a minimum of ten years, so you can actually see whether it really makes a difference. I believe it does, but that's not enough. We have to be accountable. I totally subscribe to and believe in being accountable, but I believe in being accountable through authentic means. That's why we have student improvement files. We have the data there, and we have the analysis of that data. We'll continue to do that.

The interesting thing is that we didn't do it for the ministry. We did it because we believe we need to know where we are, what's working really well and where we need to be better. It's for us. It's accountability to our parents and especially to our children.

Secondly, the framework for social responsibility is through the performance standards, which are in reading, writing, numeracy and social responsibility. We need to be really proud in British Columbia. Finally, we have standards that are reflective of B.C., which, by the way, took six years to develop. Absolutely, that's a beginning point and a framework. That ethos of care, of believing in every single human being and of risk-taking and prizing the inquiry are critical to increasing student achievement.

J. Kwan: How long have you had this program in place? I actually don't know very much about it. Is it making the ideology of social responsibility part of everyday experience for the students and the teachers and everybody else? Then, in terms of implementing it, is there a curriculum you apply? I'm just not quite sure how it works, and I wonder if you can explain that for me?

M. Dockendorf: Sure. Jenny, the framework we're using is the framework of the ministry performance standards in social responsibility, which includes four categories: contributing to the school and the community, solving problems in peaceful ways, valuing diversity and human rights and democratic rights and responsibility. They're actually performance standards. The language of the performance standards — for those of you who with your busy schedules, I'm sure, are not familiar with them — are these: exceeding expectations, fully meeting expectations, meeting expectations and not yet within expectations.

Let me put that in the context of social responsibility. If you picked up garbage off the field, and you just bent over, you saw that somebody had littered, and you picked it up and put it in the garbage can, that would be fully meeting expectations. If you saw the garbage and walked by it and did not do the socially responsible thing, that would be minimally meeting expectations. If you actually took your granola wrapper and threw it on the field, that would clearly be not yet within expectations.

If you, as Jessica did, made a presentation to our staff two weeks ago…. She decided that there really should be a committee of students that got together and looked after this and set up a schedule. You know, garbage was increasing on our field, and beautifying our community was something they needed to work on. She took that on herself and actually led up that committee. She's grade 5, by the way. That would clearly be exceeding expectations.

That's the language, as you well know from the FSA, that we're using to evaluate students in reading, writing, numeracy and social responsibility. Clearly, in social responsibility it's exactly the same thing. There's the framework, but it's woven into the fabric of everything we're doing.

Let me just give you a small example. Our wonderful kindergarten teacher said: "Maureen, I'm just not sure that's going to work." I said: "Let me come in and try it." I took Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This is the language we use. If you walked into our school, Jenny, and you asked any child, they would tell you. If you asked about our school goal, they would tell you it's to create a socially responsible learning community. If you said to them, "What does that mean?" they would tell you. Generally speaking, they could clearly tell you what that meant.

In terms of kindergarten or any grade, we integrate that into the curriculum. If you're dealing with grade 4 social studies, you're looking at Christopher Columbus. Where do you rate him on the scale of social responsi-

bility? And, I might add, you need some evidence. They've got the scale, and they'll rate those explorers. If you're dealing with Goldilocks and the Three Bears — and I was in the kindergarten — where do you rate that?

"Oh, Ms. D., I think Goldilocks clearly is not yet within expectations." "And why would that be, Karen?" "Because she ate that porridge, and it wasn't hers. She broke that chair, and she should not have done it. She slept in that bed, and she didn't ask. She went into that house, and she wasn't invited. That's my evidence."

If you come into the school, you need to begin with that contrived language. Every single child in there could tell you. You begin with that contrived language, and of course, what you're hoping for in our world is independent application. We're not there. It'll be three to five years before I really believe we make a significant difference.

Brandon, whose house was robbed, came to school and said — again to Evie, who's the kindergarten teacher: "Ms. Silver, our house was robbed. They took everything. They took my bike." They took this, they took that. Ms. Silver — Evie, the kindergarten teacher — said: "That's so terrible. I feel so badly for you." He said, "Yes. You know, Ms. Silver, that burglar was not yet within expectations in social responsibility."

Those are the small glimpses and the small stories — right? It's woven into the fabric of whatever we do. Every week we have a focus, and teachers weave that in in various ways. We live it; we breathe it. For example, on rainy days, what we do in schools is put them in classrooms and wonder why they hit, punch, do various things — right? It's about us.

We're thinking about what we're doing in schools, so we invite them down the halls. We put them out of classrooms during rainy days. You should see rainy days at our place. They're up and down the halls with board games. They're in the library dancing. They're in the technology centre on the computers. They're in the gym — open gym. They're in the office area, building with Lego, building with Connect-O, playing all kinds of games, reading a whole variety of things. They're actively engaged.

Here are the rules. Make a wise, independent choice. If someone comes up and asks you to be included in the game, your response is this, "You can play as soon as we're finished this round of Snakes and Ladders," or whatever. You don't have the right in our building to not include. You don't have the right to retaliate.

Have we had parents who have been angry about that? Yes. I'm not afraid to stand up for what we value and believe in. I'm sorry, but in this building these kids do not have a right to retaliate. You're not trying to build a culture and a community of people who retaliate. Look at our world right now — okay? So no, they don't have the right here. But steps are in place, Jenny. Here are the steps — step one, step two, step three. It's crystal clear — right?

T. Christensen: This all sounds so wonderful. The question that is jumping to the forefront of my mind is: why are you able to do this, and it's not being done in every single elementary school in the province? What's the catalyst to this working? Obviously, you are part of the catalyst, because you're a dynamic person.

M. Dockendorf: Tom, it's so simple. It's because I'm not the Minister of Education. Okay, I'm being facetious.

I can't speak about why it's not. All I can speak about is what it is. I've been involved in education since the early seventies. I worked at SFU. I worked for the ministry several times. I worked as a private consultant, a district consultant, and I'm passionate about making it work for kids. I'm telling you that every single person who walks into that building — that includes staff and especially includes children — has the right to feel valued, respected, cared for, loved and supported. Everyone one of them and everyone of us is on a learning journey. It doesn't matter to me where you are. My job is to move you on. Mediocrity is not what we're after; excellence is. Wherever you are on that journey, it's our job to move you along.

I can't speak about, although I know there are lots of really fine and wonderful schools. I can say, and I'm here tonight to tell you, that there are schools out there that work, and we're one of them. I'm proud of it and invite any of you to come and visit.

B. Locke: Just really quickly, Maureen. Is your school a neighbourhood school, or is it a choice school?

M. Dockendorf: It's a neighbourhood school. For me, I can't tell you how passionate my work was in inner city. The only reason I moved to this new school was because I wondered what that would look like. Always, a dream for me had been to see what it would look like to create a culture that didn't exist before, or I'd still be in inner city, so this is not about the neighbourhood I'm in. This is about the 1925 school in Coquitlam where we began really working with this. We keep refining and refining and keeping figuring out what makes a difference. It's the correlation between kids feeling safe, that ethos of care, that respect for each and every child and student. There's no question; there's a direct correlation.

B. Locke: Just a quick supplemental to that. Are you saying, then, that you couldn't accomplish it in the inner city school?

M. Dockendorf: No, I'm saying that where my work began was in inner city. I actually would love to be in inner city again. I mean, I remember the first day being there where those two kids came in. They'd beaten one another up, and there was blood coming out of their noses. You know, that had been the norm. Two years later it was no longer the norm.

It requires committed leadership. It clearly requires a shared vision, and it clearly requires community. You cannot do this alone. It's a sustained effort by all. Add community. It has to be the parent. The parents will tell you wonderful stories.

I can tell you a story about Jan, a parent at our school, who came to me and said: "I've about had enough of your social responsibility." I said: "What do you mean?" Paige, her daughter, said to her: "Mom, you know, the laundry? It's not done. Mom, that's not yet within expectations. There's no clothes for me to wear to school." She said, "Okay, that's it for me. I've had it with your…."

It really requires parents as well. I might add that it requires parents acting socially responsibly — right? — in our schools and in our community. We are role models for those children, and I am passionate about the fact that everyone in the building will demonstrate care, respect and love for everybody in the building.

R. Masi (Deputy Chair): Just a quick question. I understand it's a new school. Were you able to choose your own staff and involve them in the philosophy of the school? The second part of that is: what about supervision and union contracts relative to starting at 8 o'clock in the morning, supervision over noon hour and things like that on rainy days? How do you cope with all that stuff?

M. Dockendorf: The first question: was I able to choose my own staff? Absolutely not, because of contract and seniority. Reni, the truth is that they were able to choose me. You have a certain reputation as an MLA, as an administrator, as a teacher. I certainly do have a very clearly articulated philosophy and vision about schools. They post in just like they would in any other district. So no, I didn't make that decision, but they did get to pick whether they wanted to be there or not. I think that is a factor.

The other factor for me was: what does that look like when the culture doesn't exist? I was able to cause them great cognitive dissonance before they even knew it. We have no bells in that building. I never turned them on. I never turned them on because we don't walk through our lives with bells ringing every 40 minutes. I'm trying to replicate what we do in the real world. We don't walk down halls in lineups saying: "You're first. She's last." We're trying to replicate what we do in the real world and act in a socially responsible way.

We had a new teacher who arrived there this year, and she said to me: "The kids said they don't have to line up in this school. Is that true?" I said: "That's true." She said: "The kids said they can walk down the halls and talk. Is that true?" I said: "That's true. It's kind of like what we do as adults."

It's hard. Change is hard for people — right? Putting trust in children, believing in children and making it crystal clear that they make the decisions…. Just because you choose technology centre doesn't mean you stay there on rainy days. If you're finished there, push in your chair and move somewhere else. Just because you're at the Harry Potter Lego, which would currently be the hot spot, if you're finished there, put it away and choose another place. Make a wise, independent decision. These are lifelong skills that we're attempting to teach the kids.

Supervision at 8 o'clock in the morning. That would be me. I open the doors, and I invite them in. The interesting thing is that nobody can argue with that in terms of teaching staff because I'm the one who's doing it. In the beginning, it caused them great dissonance. What they began to learn was: that kids come in, they're reading books, they're talking with one another, they're having conversations and making wise decisions. There are no issues because the trust is in those kids.

In fact, what I've learned is that the less controlling we are of children, the more control we actually have. We don't hand out rewards. We don't give you a bug and pull a name out of a jar for wonderful behaviour. It's the expected behaviour in this culture. It's the expected behaviour. We're not pulling names and bugs — no. It's the expected behaviour. You'd be amazed how those wonderful kids live up to it.

I might have to say that I've had to have a few conversations with adults, because I have absolutely no tolerance for disrespect of children from adults. We've had to have a few conversations about that. We've had to work with the noon-hour staff who came from different cultures and believed that was the language you used with children. They have had to be part of everything we've done. We're on a journey. We have a long way to go, but it's just amazing to see, when you put the trust in kids, what they're able to do and what they're able to achieve.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thank you so much, Maureen. It was definitely a very interesting presentation.

Before we leave tonight, could we just have a meeting of the committee for a few minutes before you go — because we're still on the record — before we take a picture.

We would like to hire a consultant to write our report for us, to help us through the process of writing our report. What I need is a motion from the committee, a mover and a seconder, to approve that motion. No, I don't need a seconder, just a mover. Brenda moved it. All in favour?

J. Kwan: Pardon me, Madam Chair, before you vote — not a question but a comment in terms of the hiring of the consultant. Actually there was a subcommittee that was struck, and I was advised that I was on it — through the Clerk's office, I think.

When we met, I expressed my concerns with respect to the hiring process. There were two names that were somehow solicited, and they submitted their résumés. I expressed the concern that there needed to

be an open and fair process, and, of course, to open the competition to invite people who would do this report. I just wanted this on record in terms of my concerns with respect to that.

W. McMahon (Chair): And also on record, I would say that we had two names come forward, and we asked you if you had any names to put forward, too, and you didn't present any names to us.

J. Kwan: Yes, and my rationale for that was that I didn't think it was appropriate for me to be submitting names but rather that it should be an open process for names to be coming forward — not from committee members, for that matter — from the broader public and for there to be a fair competition within that process.

R. Stewart: I'm curious as to what constitutes an open process. This isn't a large contract. I don't think it's a public tender sort of contract or a call for proposals, is it? Perhaps I could ask the member what her suggestion would have been.

J. Kwan: I suggested that we could have invited résumés from people who would be interested in this contract through some advertisement, perhaps, or through an even broader invitation through organizations in the community, who may have people who are knowledgable and would have expertise in the area. The other piece I suggested, of course, is to look internally within government to see whether or not we actually had people who had that kind of expertise.

R. Stewart: Regarding the former suggestion, I'm curious because the government in the past has always had contracts such as this that have gone out in somewhat less than the open process that has been described, including two contracts I myself took from the ministry that was once headed by Minister Kwan, as she was then. It wasn't an open process. It was simply an invitation, and I think in this circumstance it seems an appropriate way to do it. I'd support it.

J. Kwan: Not to prolong the debate but rather to simply state clearly, from my personal perspective, that I do feel there is a need for a process to be in place. In fact, if you ask the auditor general, he would actually, I would think, support such a process. We did have such a report in the public accounts committee, talking about the need to ensure that there be a process in place with respect to hiring. Albeit, it may well be that in previous governments, perhaps from time to time, that process had not been followed. We're in the new era, as many of you suggest. The new era, I think, should ensure that there be a fair process.

J. Kwan: Madam Chair, before we adjourn, I actually have one more item, if I may, to put on record. I have received a number of phone calls from people who are interested in making presentations to the committee, particularly in the Vancouver area. I understand, at least the last time I checked, that there were at least 30 names on the record from people who were not able to speak to the committee. People have asked to see whether or not there's an opportunity for that to happen, so I'd like to move a motion that we extend the committee's work one more day in Vancouver in order to hear from the public.

R. Stewart: I must say, along the same vein, I know that out here in the tri-cities, there was also a lot of interest in having another day. I hate to have to open it up, though, to going around the province again. I know that in each one of the communities we got to, we'd have exactly the same issue. It's going to be a challenge to gather up the information we have.

People have the opportunity still to submit in writing, so I'd suggest, rather than to open it all up again and go one more round around the province, we've done our rounds. Let's invite those people to make written submissions.

J. Kwan: Just on the question in terms of the Vancouver location. My suggestion is not meant to be that it only be restricted to people from Vancouver to make presentations. Clearly, in all of the travels we've had, people actually travelled…. Even today there were folks who came from Abbotsford, amongst other places, to be here to make presentations. The limitation, of course, would not be restricted to just Vancouver residents but rather to open it up to anybody who wishes to make a presentation. As I said, I understand that about 30 names are still on the list in terms of expression of interest. For them to come and make a presentation to the committee is the thrust and the rationale behind my motion.

K. Manhas: I just wanted to make a comment. In terms of what we've done and being able to travel

around the province, it seems to me their philosophy was to try to at least be able to get to each area. Today, being in Port Coquitlam, our scope was in fact the Abbotsford to Burnaby and New Westminster corridor. The fact that we got people from that entire corridor is a credit to the process. I know, talking to the committee, that in all of the jurisdictions, there were lots of people who wanted to present. I think that in fairness to the amount of information we have and the process that's been undergone, we now solicit written submissions, otherwise we could do this for another year.

E. Brenzinger: I think it's important to note that we've been around the province, up north. Unfortunately, Jenny, you were unable to attend, but it was very valuable. I'm sure you've had a chance to read all that data to catch up with the rest of the committee. I think we've been trying our best to reach as many people as possible within our time frame. We are starting to hear the same things over and over, because we are hearing from different associations.

We're finding a lot of the recommendations to this committee very similar. I personally think that the amount of data we have and the information we've heard from the public, even to this day, has been quite sufficient for us to be able to write our report. I'm looking forward to tomorrow and to hearing the final recommendations. I think we've done a really good job of getting to people and making sure that they come out.

J. Kwan: Just a last comment, then. I recall in the beginning, when I first moved the motion, that originally the only public hearing in the lower mainland was going to be held in Surrey. I moved a motion that we actually branch out elsewhere. I remember there was quite a bit of debate around that. The discussion suggested that if there was interest, we would actually move back to facilitate that. Clearly, there is interest; there's an overwhelming amount of interest.

True, to a certain degree there is some repetition in terms of presentations, but even today in probably one of the last few public hearings we're going to have, we heard new information and new presenters who came before us. I think this is important work that we're doing to be thorough and ensure that there are optimal opportunities for members of the public to make their presentations to the committee in person — which also has a different kind of impact — rather than just reading a written submission.

W. McMahon (Chair): Thanks. I'll call the question. All those in favour of an additional day for hearings? All those opposed? One is in favour and the rest are opposed, so it was defeated.

J. Kwan: Madam Chair, one last question for the Clerk. I'm wondering whether or not the submissions that have been put forward by individuals and organizations are posted on the Internet?

A. Stokes: They're not as of yet. Once they're presented, they become a public document. Once the report is written, the list of submissions is posted on the Internet along with the report, and the information will be available. In the meantime, research staff in the committees branch are preparing summaries of each submission, oral and written. I do have the first set for the first few days of public hearings with me now, as a matter of fact, to hand out to members so you can see the summaries to date of the submissions that have been made.

J. Kwan: Is there a reason why the submissions from the public will only be posted after the report is written?

J. Kwan: The reason I ask, actually, is that I've also had people come up and speak with me about that issue, wanting to make sure their submissions are indeed posted on the Internet.

A. Stokes: The text itself would not be posted. The name and submission and when it was made would be posted.

J. Kwan: The people who submit written submissions…. The only way, then, to access that…

R. Stewart: I'm going to take over the chair for a second. As clarification, I imagine the only way they could be put on the Internet is to redigitize them.

A. Stokes: Scanning of some sort would be the means — I would think, anyway. There's a tremendous amount of paper. There's a tremendous amount of material. The information would be available. The oral presentations, obviously, would be available through Hansard, and the written ones they would have access by calling in to the office.

W. McMahon (Chair): We're going to have our picture taken. The meeting is adjourned.



CONTENTS

		Page

Presentations		705
	K. Wagner	705
	P. Johnston	707
	S. Chambers	708
	M. Suto	708
	G. Begin	709
	T. Buzza	710
	M. Marbach	710
	L. Thorburn	711
	K. Williams	713
	K. Thomson	714
	S. Psota	717
	T. Stobbart	719
	K. Shong	721
	S. Dyck	722
	S. Boisvert	724
	S. Turner	724
	J. Shirra	726
	D. Oborne	729
	E. Grant	731
	J. Graber	734
	M. Mott	736
	Y. Price	737
	J. James	739
	M. Martin	740
	H. Ho	742
	V. Taylor	742
	C. Taylor	743
	J. Ho	743
	A. Uhl	745
	C. Shiau	747
	M. Hardie	749
	S. Bartleman	751
	B. Bartleman	753
	R. Stock	754
	B. Vriend	756
	B. Hobson	759
	L. Doerksen	761
	H. Daykin	762
	R. Power	764
	C. Okoye	766
	C. Purcell	769
	M. Dockendorf	769

Chair:	* Wendy McMahon (Columbia River–Revelstoke L)
Deputy Chair:	* Reni Masi (Delta North L)
Members:	* Elayne Brenzinger (Surrey-Whalley L) * Tom Christensen (Okanagan-Vernon L) * Richard Lee (Burnaby North L) * Brenda Locke (Surrey–Green Timbers L) * Karn Manhas (Port Coquitlam–Burke Mountain L) Sheila Orr (Victoria-Hillside L) Rob Nijjar (Vancouver-Kingsway L) * Richard Stewart (Coquitlam-Maillardville L) * Jenny Kwan (Vancouver–Mount Pleasant NDP) * denotes member present

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE
ON EDUCATION