Fifth Session, 41st Parliament (2020)
REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(HANSARD)
COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY,
SECTION A
Virtual Meeting
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Afternoon Meeting
Issue No. 2
ISSN 2563-3511
The HTML transcript is provided for informational purposes only.
The PDF transcript remains the official digital version.
CONTENTS
| Committee of Supply | |
THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2020
The committee met at 1:32 p.m.
[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]
Committee of Supply
Proceedings in Section A
ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
(continued)
On Vote 21: ministry operations, $6,657,927,000 (continued).
The Chair: If we can proceed, I will give it over to the Minister of Education to resume progress on the Ministry of Education.
Hon. R. Fleming: May I just say that your robes look exceedingly good this afternoon. Thank you for supporting phase 2 of the restart plan and the dry-cleaning industry. It looks great.
The Chair: Thank you, Minister.
Unless there are any opening remarks, I will go to the minister once more.
Hon. R. Fleming: For the purpose of the record and also to the critic and those participating in Committee of Supply this afternoon, I wanted to do some introductions of Ministry of Education personnel who are supporting me through this process and are here to answer members’ questions.
I have with me Scott MacDonald, deputy minister; Reg Bawa, assistant deputy minister, resource and management division; Jennifer McCrea, the assistant deputy minister of the learning division; Melanie Stewart, who is the ADM of the education programs division; Eleanor Liddy, the acting ADM for services and technology; Keith Godin is here, ADM for governance and analytics; Cloe Nicholls, executive director who is leading up the COVID-19 response in the education system; Tamara McLeod, executive director and chief financial officer for the ministry; and Joel Palmer, executive director of the capital branch.
D. Davies: I was going to ask the minister earlier on about who he had there for staff — glad to know.
Hello to the staff, and thank you for your participation today as well.
I would like to go back to a question I asked the minister just before my last couple of colleagues were on there around David Livingstone Elementary again. Over the lunch break, I grabbed some documents on my question so that I can now have the numbers here in front of me. The Vancouver school board has budgeted, for their 2019-20 school year, $26.8 million in capital spending for that school.
I guess the question comes up as there was a government news release done right at the end of January. I’m not going to read the whole news release, but the number part of it is: “The government of B.C. is providing up to $17.3 million for seismic upgrades at David Livingstone Elementary.” My question earlier was just basically on the discrepancy between the two costs that we’re looking at. It seems like there’s a bit of a shortfall of about $9 million. Have things changed on that school?
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for the question. It’s very difficult for me to offer an explanation. It could be anything, from the VSB posting the wrong figure on their website…. Clearly, the award and the costs for the seismic upgrade at David Livingstone are $17.3 million to complete the upgrade.
D. Davies: Okay. I guess we’ll have to do some follow-up on that as well. Just another, regarding some school project announcements in Surrey — Sunnyside Heights, Morgan Elementary, White Rock Elementary — the projects seem to be $13 million more than what was budgeted nine months ago. I’m just wondering if that can be explained exactly. What’s gone on with those three schools in Surrey? It’s about a 16 percent budget increase on those projects.
Hon. R. Fleming: The correct number is the one that has the approval. That was released from the ministry about three weeks ago, when we made that announcement. Anything before that is a high-level estimate or a figure that was used, perhaps, in the planning stage. The correct final figure which will be used in the bidding and the construction stage of the project is the one that is approved.
D. Davies: Can the minister tell us what the percentage of the school district capital projects that meet their approved schedule and budget is forecast to be this year?
Hon. R. Fleming: To the member’s question, there had been a period of cost escalation pre-COVID. We talked this morning about some of the cost and timeline pressures of projects that are underway in the COVID-19 period and where we’re landing on some of those and that the impact, fortunately, was much less than had been anticipated.
As the member will recall, prior to COVID we had cost escalations on projects of every kind, both private and public. So about a year and a half ago, January 2019, in the ministry, we updated our unit rates. That better reflected the current market conditions at the time to keep project estimates more accurate as to what final costs would look like. That change that we made, that update in unit rates, produced good results. We, of course, have three major project offices. Surrey, Richmond and Vancouver all have project offices funded by the ministry that are using the updated unit rates, as are other districts.
I think I have, perhaps, an answer to the member’s prior question about David Livingstone. Something just came in. What I think he’s referring to is perhaps the 2019-20 VSB, Vancouver school board, capital plan. A submission at that time…. There was a cost estimate — a placeholder, in other words — in their capital plan that was not based on a business case but just a placeholder cost estimate of $26.8 million. That was well in the preapproval phase. When it was finally costed, it came in at $17.3 million, and that’s what was approved.
The Chair: Just to remind members, if they want to have the floor, please raise your blue hand.
D. Davies: I’m not sure…. I’ll be asking questions the whole time, Chair.
The Chair: Okay, thank you, critic. I certainly will endeavour to just acknowledge you as the main holder of the floor. However, just to note that if there are others who want to ask questions, I will, of course, watch for the blue hand, as it is your right.
D. Davies: Great. We’ll try. I certainly appreciate that, Chair. I will have other colleagues that will be coming in a little bit later, and we’ll definitely utilize that then as well.
To the minister also…. This might be a similar case as the Livingstone school as well. Vedder Elementary School in Chilliwack budgeted $11.8 million for 240 seats, and in May 2019 the school district estimated $15 million for 250 seats. Again, I’m not too sure if that’s a similar situation. If the minister could clarify that.
Hon. R. Fleming: For the member’s benefit, this is the same kind of scenario as the Livingstone example, although winding up the other way. Again, that was a placeholder figure before the final business case was done and then approved. The project, to fit the scope that was decided upon, came in at $15 million.
D. Davies: Great. Thank you for that, Minister.
Does the minister have targeted performance rates — I know we talked about this a little bit in the portables — for capital projects to meet their approved schedule and budget throughout 2020? If the minister could share those rates with us.
Hon. R. Fleming: I’m recalling this question from March, so I think it’s similar, but maybe the member is interested in whether that has changed post-COVID.
The targeted performance rates are for every project to be on time and on budget. That isn’t always the case, but one of the pressures we faced two years, 2½ years, three years ago was cost escalation of about 1 percent per month. So the problem we encountered there prior to updating the unit rates, which I discussed in the previous question-and-answer from the member, was that no sooner had approvals been made that when we went out to tendering, they weren’t aligning well.
We’re now in a period where, having adjusted those unit rates in January of 2019 to be much more contemporary and reflective of the market, the project approvals, the budget, is meeting the tendering that we’re getting from contractors. So we have made a lot of good progress on that.
Of course, the member will know that the school districts manage the budget for a project that is approved by the ministry. It’s the school district that manages the design, the procurement and the delivery of the project, and ultimately they’re accountable for the project budget.
D. Davies: Just a question — and I did ask this question back in March; I just wondered if there’s been any change on it — regarding community benefits agreements. Are any community benefits agreements on any of the construction projects in the province right now, or plan to be?
Hon. R. Fleming: Yes, thank you. I do remember that question as well. The answer is the same as back in March. It’s no on the first question, and no on the second. It doesn’t meet the CBA threshold of government.
D. Davies: Just a couple other questions here. The third-quarter capital update shows that school districts didn’t spend $8 million of their capital budget. Just wondering if there’s an explanation for this.
Hon. R. Fleming: The figure that I think the member was quoting related to third-quarter slippage, if you will — capital that was budgeted that wasn’t or couldn’t be spent. It’s important to understand that that money doesn’t disappear. It just means that it can’t be spent in the current fiscal year. It moves forward to be spent in the following fiscal year.
He mentioned $8 million in the third quarter. You have to bear in mind that we’re on track to spend over $700 million in the ’19-20 fiscal year on school capital. This will represent by far the highest rate of capital investment in 20 years, and significantly so. The next best year, if you will, would be in the low 400s of millions.
In other words, 2019-20 is a very good example of a year where our government, having increased capital budgets immediately upon taking office, was starting to see the spending be possible — projects breaking ground, money being spent and invested. Of course, the utilization was very high, which is a good thing. It means that government was, in effect, meeting its timelines, meeting its budget estimates and building the schools and projects that are part of our capital plan.
D. Davies: Kind of along the same path, and just looking at table 4.3 here. Over the next three years of the budget, it shows K-to-12 capital spending is actually decreased here. I’m just wondering if the minister can explain that, following his last comments as well.
Hon. R. Fleming: To the member, what Budget 2020 has is a significant increase over the previous budget, tabled in 2019, and all three budgets introduced by our government since we took office.
In the ’19-20 year, the budget that we discussed at estimates last year, we had $788 million budgeted as our capital expenditure for this fiscal year. For Budget 2020, which is tabled, the numbers are $880 million for the ’20-21 fiscal year, then it rises again to $885 million in the year ’21-22. The member is correct that in year 3, which is the out-year, it’s positioned at $705 million. That’s the ’22-23 fiscal year.
To put that in context, though, these are three years built on top of a previous year — four years, if you will — of record levels of capital investment in school projects in British Columbia. There might be a difference in terms of how things are spaced in the three-year capital plan. But when you aggregate the investment at $2.8 billion, this is a staggering increase from where we were in the 2013-2017 period of time, for example.
It’s all good momentum. It’s all vastly increased investment that will help us sustain the momentum that we talked about earlier today in the estimates, which is good.
A final point I would make, too, is that Budget 2021 allows us an opportunity, as every budget year does, to update the third year, or the out-year, of the current budget that we’re debating today. So I would suggest to him that the 2022-23 figure of $705 million can change and is certainly likely to change.
D. Davies: Thank you, Minister. Also, to the minister and for staff, that actually does conclude the capital questions that we had. I thought we’d have a few more, but you kind of covered some of them in your answers — other ones. So we’ll move on to some operational questions now for the remainder of the time.
Minister, I’m going to start off with…. I did have an opportunity to ask a question yesterday in question period around IDL, independent distributed learning. Of course, I want to go back to this letter here we have from the Premier, who wrote the Federation of Independent School Associations and very, very explicitly said: “We do not have any plans to change the existing funding for independent schools, nor the legislation that governs them.”
This has been said in a number of different statements. The Premier also said, in 2017: “B.C.’s New Democrats fully support a parent’s right to choose the education stream for their children, whether it be in independent, faith based or public schools. We recognize each family has different needs and believe they have the right to choose the school that best suits those needs.”
My very direct question to the minister is: does the minister, then, consider this a broken promise?
Hon. R. Fleming: I most certainly do not. In fact, I would point to the significant new investment that has been made in independent schooling in British Columbia since we took office. It’s $145 million higher annually, across all independent schooling categories, in the province of B.C.
If we broke our promise, it was because we didn’t actually specifically promise that we would raise, for example, special education funding, of which IDL students get to keep 100 percent. We raised it by 35 percent.
We’ve actually seen independent distributed learning funding grow from $64 million annually, during the last year of the previous government, to $80.9 million in the 2019-20 year. As I mentioned in question period the other day, the funding for the IDL sector is not going down next year; it’s going up again by 4 percent.
The supports we put in place for complex learners in either school system have been significant. I’m sure the member will join me in applauding that — long overdue. Certainly, it was a priority to support vulnerable students, no matter where they study, in the public or independent system. Therefore, when you read the Premier’s letter again and you look at the numbers around investment in independent schooling, I think you’ll see that this promise wasn’t broken. It was exceeded.
D. Davies: There are 16 independent distributed learning schools. The organization representing these independent schools, FISA, 10,000 students and many more thousands of parents would completely disagree with the minister on this statement. It is absolutely deceitful — the comments being made that the independent distributed learning students’ education was not cut when, indeed, it has been.
They were told, point-blank, that there would be a $12 million shortfall, effective July 1 of this year. These independent distributed learning schools have been scrambling to make up for this budget shortfall in the coming year, now having to charge extra tuition for many parents that are single parents.
Many children, again, have diverse needs. I appreciate the minister for the special ed funding. The fact remains that while there is still this pot over here that they would receive anyway, this pot over here that was taken from is still contributing to each of these individual students’ needs to allow the parent to educate them in their own way.
I just don’t understand how the minister can state that 20,000 people in B.C. have read this all wrong. The fact remains that $12 million has been cut from independent distributed learning.
Again, I go back to the question: why was the $12 million cut from independent distributed learning right at the start of the next budget cycle?
Hon. R. Fleming: Undoubtedly this won’t be the last question the member asks about this. Let me give as thorough an answer as I can to his question.
First of all, the rate change that was made was done in terms of trying to have some kind of equity and rationale in the independent learning system, in the independent school system. As the member knows, we have two historic categories: group 1 and group 2 schools.
Group 1 schools typically represent recognizable independent school systems like Montessori, Catholic, Anglican, Sikh, the Jewish schools that we have in Vancouver and other parts of the province. All of those would be funded at 50 percent of the public rate. Group 2, at 35 percent, bricks-and-mortar schools, would mostly represent what we call university prep schools, so St. George’s, St. Michaels University and Shawnigan Lake and those sorts of schools.
That has been consistent for a number of decades. I can get the precise origin of that policy if the member likes, but I think it dates back to somewhere around 1977. Perhaps it was the early 1980s. I can’t quite recall.
There have been slight adjustments to independent distributed learning over the years. The member’s party, when they were in government, included a number of them. They put a cap on financial supports that were given to students registered in the IDL system. That was capped. The previous government also put a freeze in place, in 2012, on certifying IDL schools. So there has been some concern about inequities between bricks-and-mortar independent schools and independent distributed learning for some time.
Again, I would dispute some of the numbers the member has used there. This is not a $12 million cut. Next year, and in Budget 2020, we are forecasting a 4 percent, nearly $4 million, increase to IDL schools — those 16 schools that the member cited. So funding continues to go up for IDL as well as to independent education more broadly.
I guess it’s a public policy discussion that we may end up having a difference of opinion on. That’s fine. But the fact of the matter is that the independent school system does not expect and, to my knowledge, does not even advocate that government pay 100 percent of their operating costs. I’ve never heard St. Patrick’s and some of the schools that I’m familiar with in my region demand that. It’s never been the case. There has always been an expectation that there is tuition and that there is some revenue generated internally to run the school.
Bricks-and-mortar schools, the member will understand, obviously have higher operating costs than something delivered electronically. So it becomes very funny that the rate, which was at 63 percent — not 61, not 67 but 63 percent, however that was arbitrarily picked — has been out of alignment with what the rest of the independent school system has been used to and has received consistently, across governments of all stripes, for a very long period of time.
In terms of, again, the equity argument, it is bricks-and-mortar independent schools that have higher operating costs — all of those costs associated with heating and maintaining a building and operating a school that actually has a footprint and a property and assets, versus those that deliver services electronically — that somehow received a lower rate.
I would put the question, really, back to the member, if he thinks it’s fair that independent schools that have higher operating costs are on an inequitable footing with electronic versions of these schools.
D. Davies: A lot to digest there. A lot of it was quite off topic. I’m going to pick through a couple of things.
I see that you’ve now started admitting that it is indeed a cut and a reduction….
The Chair: If I might, Member. The only “you” in this room is the Chair, and I’ve admitted no such thing, as I’m just chairing the meeting. Thank you.
Back to the member for Peace River North.
D. Davies: Thank you, Chair.
The minister has admitted now that this is indeed a cut. I’ll also make reference to…. I find it quite humorous, actually, to say it any other way. It was initially sought out by the minister to say that this wasn’t a cut. My math is wrong, and the math of the 16 IDL schools and 10,000 students and parents and everyone else is wrong.
We even go back to the minister’s letter, which he wrote to the schools, that was initially announcing this. It was one of the final sentences. This is one of the questions I also have for later, but this fits in here now. “There are no further cuts planned at this time.” That was the final sentence. That was the minister’s letter.
Obviously, the minister is admitting that this is a cut in his letter. He also just mentioned, a few moments ago, that this is indeed a cut to the independent distributed learning. We go back to the Premier’s letter here, who said that there are no plans for this. So I’m a little baffled.
I know that there are lots of parents and teachers that are watching these debates right now that would love to really understand why you’re singling out…. I don’t for a second…. You made a comparison between the university prep schools and….
The Chair: If I might just remind the member again, through the Chair to the minister. Thank you.
D. Davies: Sorry.
The minister mentioned the university prep schools and made a comparison with IDL. That’s comparing watermelons and dump trucks. It’s not a comparable.
Again, I know the minister has received many of the same letters that I have. I’m sure he has received the phone calls. These are single-parent families that have had their kids…. Most all of them have tried it in the public school system.
I think it’s important to understand that this is not a…. Nobody is out there…. I can speak from personal experience. I come out of the public school system, as a student as well as a school teacher. This is nothing about bashing the public school system.
Most of these parents’ children have tried the public school system. They’ve tried public DL. It does not work. This is a choice that they have made. Many of them have sacrificed an unbelievable amount of their own personal time — given up jobs, given up one of the partners’ careers — and the incredible amount of out-of-pocket money that is not covered, to do what is best for their child.
I would say that 100 percent…. Of the 400 or 500 letters that I’ve got, every one of them is a unique success story. I could sit here and read, for the next eight hours, those letters. I know that you have those letters, Minister, because you were cc’d on them, the minister’s address. My question again goes back to you. Parents are expecting an answer as to why the minister made these cuts. I would be really…. We’ve already got the…. It’s been admitted just now by the minister, as well as in the letter, where he said it was a cut.
Why is this cut happening to IDL students? And especially, why now, right at the very start of the next budget year? IDL schools are, pardon the term, caught with their pants down, not being able to make plans for September, which is already an incredibly unstable environment that we’re moving into with all kids’ education. It doesn’t matter what you’re in. I’ll ask that question of the minister.
Hon. R. Fleming: A couple things are problematic. One is that the member keeps quoting a figure about a $12 million cut, which is totally inaccurate. He’s going to have to revise that number. That’s just not accurate. He also quoted a letter inaccurately. The letter that I wrote did not say government isn’t contemplating any other cuts to the independent schools. It talked about funding changes not being envisioned to be changed at all. It would be better to quote letters accurately and figures accurately.
The reality of the matter is — as I’ve said, I think, two or three times now, and probably will say again this afternoon: independent distributed learning as a funding category is scheduled to go up in Budget 2020, 4 percent in the next fiscal year. When funding and revenue are growing and not being reduced, that is not a cut. That is a growth in revenue and funding overall.
Again, we can have some philosophical differences about the rate adjustment. Perhaps the member can even enlighten me on how it went from 50 to 63 percent in first place. I know that it wasn’t under his watch. It was under Marc Dalton, I think, who was around at that time. Look, the independent distributed learning sector remains well resourced. It remains better resourced under this government than under the previous government.
Every time we raise the investment to the school system writ large — to the public school system, in which this member used to work — it benefits the independent school system. When you have a government that inherits an underfunded school system, which is exactly the situation that we had in British Columbia in 2017, and that begins to offer, develop and sustain, over the three years we’ve been in office, the most significant funding increases we’ve seen in public education in decades — four times the rate of investment in the school system that we’ve seen in other provinces — it raises all boats, if you will.
There have been significant benefits to independent schools under this government — both bricks-and-mortar and distributed learning — which would have never happened under the previous government because they’d held down the level of per-pupil, per-student public education funding previously for so many years. I’m happy to say that Budget 2020 adds an additional $2 billion, over 2 billion new operating dollars in the public school system. As he well knows, given the formula, that will be of benefit to students, parents and administrators in both school systems.
D. Davies: Well, the minister is correct that this is probably a philosophical discussion on many aspects. But the minister alludes, just moments ago, that this was a cut, reducing funding to bring it in line. It doesn’t matter how you slice it or how you cut it; it’s a cut. It just amazes me that the minister can continue to tell everybody who has written him letters, and all these schools: “No, things are rosy, you’re all wrong.” It’s absolutely mind-boggling for myself and, I can imagine, infuriating for many, many people across the province.
I touched a second ago on timing of this cut. To say that IDL schools were blindsided by this cut would be an absolute understatement. We’re only a couple months away now from the new school year. So staffing has been put in place, and all these budgetary decisions have been put in place. Can the minister tell me what kind of consultation was done with IDL schools prior to this?
Hon. R. Fleming: Just a couple things to respond to. The member keeps calling it a cut. Again, I will refer to Budget 2020. It is scheduled to be a 4 percent increase.
Let’s go back to the last year his party was in office. Independent distributed learning funding was at $64 million. In Budget 2019, which we debated last year, independent distributed learning funding was $80.9 million. So that is a massive increase in resources going into IDL that likely would never have been seen if government hadn’t changed and hadn’t begun investing hundreds of millions of dollars more in education for K-to-12 school-aged children and the school system — both school systems — provincewide.
It is not going down next year. The 16 IDL companies or schools that he refers to are going to see a 4 percent funding increase. An increase is an increase is an increase. It is going up, and yes, it’s helped by a 35 percent increase to special education. Parents in both systems get to keep 100 percent of those new resources that our government has supported. That, I think, is probably worth correcting on the record in Hansard. It’s not a $12 million cut; it’s a 4 percent funding increase for IDL next year.
I think that there have been a number of other numbers that have been erroneous as well, including the numbers of students. I am advised by one of my ADMs, as well, that the idea that most IDL students come from the public school system is also not correct. Only about one in ten do. In other words, nine in ten IDL-registered students have never been involved in the public school system.
It’s a small portion, and that is what choice is about, which is good. Parents who have not had a positive experience in the public school system can continue to choose the IDL system if they want to. They can do so knowing that funding in that sector is going to increase 4 percent again next year, having gone up by about $16 million since we formed government in September 2017.
D. Davies: We’ll return to IDL schools here shortly. I know that I have a couple of colleagues that have queued up online here for some questions. Once they are done, I will return to my questioning.
Chair, with that, I’d like to turn it over to Prince George–Valemount.
S. Bond: I really appreciate the opportunity. Again, good afternoon to the minister, and thank you to the critic. I have a couple topics that are related to the operational side.
This morning we had a chance to chat briefly about infrastructure. A number of years ago, funding was allocated for the shoulder tapper program in northern British Columbia. There is a decided need for us to mentor and encourage young people to consider a career in the skilled trades. The program has been incredibly successful. Funding is currently being dealt with through a partnership with Northern Development Initiative Trust. Today I’d like to ask the minister if he’s prepared to commit to continuing the funding for the shoulder tapper program.
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for the question. I will endeavour to get some additional information on the shoulder tapper program, specifically.
What I would offer by way of comment on strategies to successfully transition more K-to-12 students into trades programs and post-secondary education more broadly is that it’s exactly what has been driving the government to begin retooling a comprehensive career strategy. We engaged the business community in every part of the province, post-secondary institutions, of course, and those who work in the K-to-12 system specifically on things like dual-credit programs and partnerships.
We have convened a number of meetings and received great feedback from employers, organizations and others and organized labour on what a more successful career strategy might look like. Additionally, our focus on student outcomes, which has been at the centre of our strategic planning as a government and as a ministry, has really put an emphasis on what strategies we can take to increase graduation rates — and within those student outcomes, specific groups of students who have historically had much lower graduation rates than other students.
We are reviewing best practices of programs that are in existence in different parts of the province as part of our career strategy overall. We are using that to make decisions as a government for new and continuing investment, both for our own ministry and in partnership with the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training.
We have seen some good progress that suggests good momentum in the school system overall. In other words, the adults in the school system are doing a really good job mentoring kids, I suppose, in the spirit of the shoulder tapper program itself. We have also hired hundreds of new school counsellors that help kids look at their opportunities, plan their graduation strategy, get in touch with some of the unique partnerships and programs that are out there.
The transition right now to public post-secondary education within five years of graduation is 75 percent in the province of B.C., which is a very good number and showing continuous improvement.
Again, I’ll thank the member for the question and endeavour to get some more specific information about the Northern Development Initiative Trust program.
S. Bond: I thank the minister. I know his staff that he has with him would be well aware of this program. I believe, eventually, that 15 school districts were engaged — a significant program. The government provided the money. It was in a partnership with Northern Development Initiative Trust. I know it’s an important component. So I’m hopeful that as there is a discussion about best practice, certainly, this will be one of the programs that the minister and the staff consider.
My next question relates to…. I wanted to talk a little bit about the impact of COVID-19 on rural school districts. I’m wondering how the ministry is monitoring or looking at the unique impacts that might be felt in school districts that have connectivity issues, that have smaller schools trying to manage those issues. So a little bit about what attention is being paid to rural school districts in light of the hybrid model.
Related to that, I know that today the minister announced a steering committee that will deal with preparation for September — what schools will look like and what will happen for our families. I’m wondering if he could assure me that there are members…. I looked diligently to try to find the names. There were sort of categories of who might be on the committee. I would like to be reassured that there are rural representatives on that steering committee. Our situation is unique and very different.
I would like those two questions on rural and sort of COVID-related issues, connectivity — how is it working; were there unique challenges? Secondly, do we have rural representation on the steering committee that was announced today?
Hon. R. Fleming: Two good questions packed into one large question. I’ll do my best to answer it.
The steering committee which has been struck is a representational committee of all of the major stakeholder organizations in the K-to-12 education system. I’m pleased to say that our discussions with the partner organizations, in terms of who they’re going to have represent them, are very, very mindful and interested in making sure that rural representation is part of who represents the provincial association.
I’ve heard that directly, for example, from the B.C. School Trustees Association. I know that the B.C. Teachers Federation, as well, is going to want to see the remote learning experience in rural B.C. and the technological challenges — that perspective — be delivered by one of their executive members or one of their leadership members who comes from a part of the province where that’s a reality. Similarly with the B.C. School Superintendents Association — they want to have large and small districts represented. And I know BCCPAC will want parent voices from rural communities as well as urban.
Additionally, this was brought to our attention throughout the pandemic by a couple of organizations that will be represented on the steering committee, namely, the First Nations Education Steering Committee and the First Nations Schools Association.
What I would expect will happen when the steering committee begins to contemplate all the things it will be busily working on this summer is the possibility to have a number of sort of ad hoc working groups underneath the umbrella of the steering committee. I would expect that the issue around COVID-19 impacts on rural and remote communities might be one of the areas of work that they break off to do a number of thinking and recommendations and action items on.
Hopefully, that answers question one to some extent.
On the issue around connectivity, existing digital gaps and deficits in rural and remote communities in B.C., it’s one of those things that really came to a head during the need for bandwidth to stay connected during the lockdown period — during the period when in-class instruction was suspended. To this end, we loaned out about 23,000 devices — computers and others — through school district lending programs.
I’m not familiar with district 57 specifically, if that’s one that the member is interested in. I am very pleased to see that the attendance in June, under the limited part-time return to school, in district 57, which of course includes some remote communities, was higher than the provincial average at about 35½ percent of all students. That’s K to 12. This is a very good thing and suggests that those schools got their transportation networks up and running and made an effort to have both Prince George and smaller communities make them available to parents who chose to return to school.
Ongoing work, though, that the pandemic, I think, has accelerated is around the NetWork B.C. program and, for us, the NGN. That will be work undertaken by the Ministry of Education but also led by Citizens’ Services and the Jobs Ministry.
We did see some great examples from Internet service providers like Telus and Shaw, where they were alerted to the fact that some kids had really poor Wi-Fi connectivity. We saw some partnerships on First Nations reserves, for example, where they made investments and were able to create learning centres on reserves and in some remote communities. I know that Citizens’ Services and the Jobs Ministry will be continuing to work with those large providers.
The last thing I would say, too, is that when we had an all-of-B.C. approach to stage 3, the restart plan for schools on June 1 — which will be completed tomorrow, on the last day of school — we worked with a number of small districts that have a very different reality than the cities.
You have some schools in B.C. that have ten or 15 kids across many grade levels. Often their schools are built for 100 kids, so they didn’t have a student density problem around physical distancing. We allowed for exemptions where remote communities could ask if all of their students, for example, could return and have a modified schedule. We worked with local teachers associations to make sure that they were good with that, and there were a number of exemptions that were passed to make it fit the reality of rural and remote communities.
S. Bond: Thank you to the minister for that. I’m very encouraged to hear that the stakeholder groups are considering the importance of rural and other — a more diverse steering committee that reflects the province that we have to work for and serve. Districts, as I know firsthand, are very different.
Thank you to the minister for letting me sort of bundle questions. I’m very aware of the look of the critic. He has given us a time limit. So I’m going to bundle my last questions, and hopefully, the minister can just give us some sort of short, snapper answers, if at all possible.
There are going to be ongoing budget challenges for districts in the province. I wanted to raise the issue of international student revenue — which will, obviously, impact our district and many others. I know that our critic is going to cover that off in a more fulsome way, but I did want to raise it. Then two other issues, I think, are making a difference for school districts, some challenges. I know that they appreciate the fact that support staff increases are being covered. The issue is benefits and whether or not there’s going to be additional funding to cover off…. Are benefit costs going to be covered? You know, we increased wages; we need to think about the benefit side.
My last comment. I know that the minister can address the international student issue when he deals with the critic, but my last issue is around compression when it comes to wages and salaries in school districts. We continue to see and I recognize the importance of increasing wages to unionized staff. I think that there is an ongoing issue — it’s not a short-term issue; it has been building up over the years — of compression for principals and vice-principals. We continue to see those wages below them increased. We expect them to do extra work and be educational leaders. If the minister could just address whether or not that is on his radar screen.
So two things — benefit costs and the compression issue for exempt staff.
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for Prince George–Valemount. Another good question. Probably not a short, snapper one. I’ll do my best.
I also would direct her to the estimates for the Ministry of Finance, because, of course, the short answer that I could give her is that PSEC sets all public sector senior management compensation. That is in their mandate, and of course, they report to the Minister of Finance. That includes principals and vice-principals.
But to her specific point around some past problems where benefits were starting to become inferior for principals and vice-principals, to manage compression, and really becoming a bit of a barrier on recruitment and retention for school leadership positions, we did address that on a couple of fronts.
The salary grid did increase. I believe that was in 2018. That had been held down for a long time. I can’t remember if it was six or eight years. We issued guidelines to local districts that had a salary grid increase at that time.
Also, there was an issue that the B.C. principals and vice-principals brought to my attention as a relatively new minister, which was the issue I spoke about a moment ago. A lot of teachers who wished to become vice-principals, for example, knew that they had to make a choice, in taking on that leadership position, of having inferior, for example, health and dental benefits than they did as a unionized teacher.
So we linked the benefit package available to exempt principals and vice-principals to the one that is available for those in the B.C. Teachers Federation bargaining unit. There is no discrepancy anymore. Their benefits have seen improvements.
The Chair: Recognizing the member for Penticton.
D. Ashton: Mr. Chair, thank you very much. You’re greatly appreciated.
To the member from Peace River, thank you for the opportunity.
Minister, always a pleasure to see you. Thank you, again, for allowing me a quick question.
Minister, two schools in the area that I represent, school district 67, were proposed to close a few years ago. And you, sir, to my gratitude, were very adamant and very vocal about why they should not close. With the government of the day, rural funding was put through. I think it was called REEF at the time, if I remember correctly. However, that is due to expire in about a year, if not towards the end of this year.
What I would ask is if the opportunity for review could take place. It’s also my understanding that there are no schools to be closed in the ’20-21 year in school district 67. However, a school district elected official was quoted. “There are nearly 2,000 fewer full-time-equivalent students in school district 67 today than there were two decades ago, and that means it’s time to consider facility closures again, says one of the trustees who went through the process just four years ago.” That’s a quote out of the Penticton Herald.
I would just ask that, if at all possible, you would make notes of this, have a good look at it and work in conjunction with school district 67, because the West Bench School is a small school that serves not only residents from West Bench but also from the Penticton Indian band. What they are after is a designation of a rural school. I know the importance of the school in Trout Creek. To be fair, I live in Trout Creek, but I’ve seen, actually, a demographic change here over the last two years, with lots and lots of young, young children now, with new homes in the subdivided areas of Trout Creek, coming in.
All I would ask is that an opportunity for a good discussion take place with the ministry and the school district before any schools would be considered to be closed in this area. Thank you, Minister.
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for the question. It’s good to see him again. Also, I do regret that he was on other parliamentary business when I had the occasion before the pandemic hit to visit his constituency and see the Penticton school district create a very good partnership with the francophone school district, a good partnership that put money into the pocket of his school district — which of course, has had some financial difficulties, transitions in recent years — and that also helped our government meet its commitments to the francophone-language minority.
It’s very exciting, in his district — where he’s correct, enrolment had been on the decline but there’s a growth in enrolment — for francophone rights-holders to have education services in that community.
Anyway, the long story short is that we hope the Penticton example is instructive to school districts like Vancouver and Victoria. This morning we talked to Sea to Sky as well. We want majority districts to negotiate and work with the francophone school district to fulfil their Charter, their constitutional rights.
In terms of rural or remote school funding, let me just give you the broad strokes of what we’ve done as a government over the last three years. When we came into office, the unique geographic supplements that had been built up as a program or part of the funding formula stood at $322 million per annum. That was not enough in many communities, as he knows, to stop the threat of school closures, although really that was more related towards funding that didn’t adequately increase for many, many years.
Just on this supplement alone, though, it has gone up $50 million since we have formed government. So it’s an 18 percent increase. That should help districts like Penticton and, really, all over British Columbia where that supplements category of funding can recognize unique schools.
As for the REEF program, it was very complicated. Well, not complicated. It was a little bit cumbersome, if I could put it that way, in terms of how you applied for it. You had to basically say, “We are going to close the school,” put the community into turmoil — you know, petition campaigns, backlash, fight back — and then if the district decided not to close it, they could apply for REEF funding. This was a lot of process for what is only a $4½ million annual fund.
We haven’t cancelled the REEF program. What we’ve done is taken the historic high of the REEF funding, which was about $4½ million, and rolled it into the block funding. It continues to exist as money that’s transferred to school districts. It just doesn’t have a whole set of rules to access it. It’s distributed to the districts.
D. Ashton: Again, to the minister, thank you. I, too, am sorry that I didn’t have the opportunity. I really would like to say thanks on behalf of the community, about the sale of McNicoll school and that money being attributed to the school board, with the creation of a francophone school and the money from the sale being diverted through the school board to Summerland Secondary to replace a gym that was old when I graduated from there in the early ’70s.
I know that there’s a huge community thrust behind it for the new gym, but also, in conjunction with the school board, Interior Health and the municipality all working together, there is an opportunity to expand just beyond the existing property — of where the gym is currently located — to the west for additional support services for the city of Summerland.
I sure hope that the government will take a look at the requests that Summerland has asked to be looked at. I know the government is, at this point in time, working with the district of Summerland and school district 67 and, hopefully, Interior Health, because there is a great opportunity for Summerland Secondary.
Again, Minister, thank you very much for the attention paid to this. These are just flags on the field for the future. I would just ask you to keep it in mind and to keep it front and centre for this area. I greatly appreciate the opportunity for the question.
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for his comments and for his advocacy for Summerland Secondary School. I will commit to him that, as I receive information — including from his school district’s capital plan submission, which we expect to receive no later than the end of July — I will have occasion to update him.
Thank you, again, for your comments. I hope that the answer to this and the previous question are helpful.
D. Barnett: I have a couple questions for the minister. Thank you to our critic for allowing us this time, and thank you to the minister.
My colleague from Prince George–Valemount hit on a couple of my questions. I would just like to maybe expand on those. One is broadband for rural and remote communities.
Has the minister received any extra funding from the COVID funding to help with more expanded broadband for rural and remote communities?
Hon. R. Fleming: Yeah. We’ve had some discussions in estimates with the critic and one of her colleagues about broadband and how critically important that was during the period of remote distance learning when schools were suspended.
The Ministry of Education has a program, which I suspect the member knows quite a lot about, called the next-generation network. I was very pleased, as minister, to have had the honour to complete that network — in other words, to ensure that all 1,500 B.C. public schools had broadband access of a certain speed and a good standard — a couple of years ago. The next-gen network is supported annually by about $22 million from the ministry and another $16 million from school districts to continue operating.
Our responsibility, as a ministry, is for K to 12. It’s for the schools themselves. It is Citizens’ Services…. I might direct her to that set of estimates. I think it’s coming up, and she has an opportunity to ask the same question there. They run the NetWork B.C. program, which covers broadband for communities like the one that she represents. So I would suggest, respectfully, to maybe make note of the schedule of estimates and ask those questions to the Minister of Citizens’ Services.
D. Barnett: Thank you to the minister. I had planned on doing that. I was just wanting to double-check to see if there was any other COVID money that had been put into the ministry.
If I may, another question that I have is open learning, independent learning and the benefit it is to our rural and remote communities and what a great asset it was during the closure of our schools, the pandemic. It was amazing how these children were able to carry on and learn so much.
I know that the funding has been cut, but I must ask, on behalf of my constituents…. I have a lot of them, Minister, who are very concerned about their future. Will the funding be re-established for the independent learning schools?
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member. I will say that the critic and I have canvassed this quite extensively — and perhaps we’re not done yet — during this set of estimates.
As I explained to him earlier, the independent distributed learning sector has been very well supported since we took office. In fact, funding has increased by over $15 million annually. I know that the opposition is characterizing the rate change as a cut, but I would think maybe the point that I left off with, with the critic…. I don’t think we agreed on this.
My characterization of it is that independent distributed learning is projected to increase by 4 percent next year. It’s pretty healthy funding there. It has gone up significantly since we formed government, growing from about $65 million a year to over $80 million as a sector, with enrolment being pretty much unchanged.
The independent distributed learning sector has benefited from investments in the education system that we have developed and sustained and enhanced ever since we formed government. When you put an extra billion plus a year in operating dollars for the school system, it lifts all boats, if you will, both independent and public, because the formulas are linked.
That is our record as a government and, going back to Budget 2020, is what the funding looks like for next year. IDL schools — and there are only 16 of them — can expect to share a 4 percent overall funding increase.
D. Barnett: Thank you to the minister for his response. I know it’s only 4 percent, but it’s a huge 4 percent in rural British Columbia.
I do have another question, if I may, to the minister. A great, huge issue in my particular riding — it’s brought to me very often — is the shortage of special needs assistants and educators. In this budget, is there extra funding for special needs workers and teachers in British Columbia, particularly in rural B.C., where there seems to be a real lack of this profession?
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for the question. I know she represents school district 27. I could endeavour to get her a specific breakdown of the new teaching positions that have been added in her district, both from the memorandum of agreement with the B.C. Teachers Federation, as well as the successful renewal of the new collective agreement, without any strike or disruption, that preserves that funding.
As she’ll probably recall, we’ve hired an additional 4,500 teachers, approximately, throughout the school system. For district 27, I’ll try and get exact numbers of what that might mean. But of the 4,500 new teachers, new positions provincially, 700 of them were special education teachers, so those types of specialist teachers that I think she’s interested in. We have 200 more teacher-psychologists in the school system today as well. So each district can expect a share of those new positions.
As I mentioned just a moment ago to her colleague from Penticton, who was asking about some smaller schools there in his district that have been at risk, five or six years ago, of closure because of budget pressures, we have increased something…. I think this will be of interest to the member.
There is a funding supplement in the overall funding formula for the school districts called unique geographic supplements. School district 27, because it represents a number of unique schools, rural and remote communities, would get a significant portion of that, relative perhaps to urban districts, of course. That unique geographic supplement was about $322 million when we came into office, and it’s grown by $50 million over the last three years — in other words, an 18 percent increase since 2016-17.
That’s money where there are no strings attached. It helps stabilize rural and remote communities, recognizing they have a higher cost structure of delivering education. It can be used to hire special education teachers. It can also be used to hire additional educational assistants.
Lastly, I would note that as a result, again, of the Supreme Court ruling but also our own funding initiatives, we have about 1,200 additional educational assistant FTEs in the school system today.
D. Barnett: I would appreciate that information. It would certainly help me answer some questions when my door gets knocked on.
I have one last question. My colleague the member for Prince George–Valemount brought up the topic of this committee that you’re putting together. And you assured us that we would have rural and remote representation on this committee, which is great. Thank you very much. But I would also ask…. I hope you will have some open learning and some parents, because I think it’s vital that we’re all in this together, that we are inclusive of parents and the open learning institutions also.
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for the question. We are pushing for all the K-to-12 stakeholder organizations to make sure that they have a well-represented rural perspective when they determine who they would like to represent their organization on the steering committee.
The B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, representing most parent organizations in the school system around B.C., is actually one of the organizations that absolutely wants to make sure that rural voices are there at the table.
Finally, to the member’s question around remote learning and technology, we have the opportunity to put in some well-recognized experts who have been doing a number of studies about what is effective in terms of engaging learners in a pandemic scenario where people have to remain isolated to be safe and rely on technology to deliver education services remotely. We will be involving that kind of expertise on the steering committee as well.
J. Thornthwaite: Thank you very much, Minister, for taking my questions. I’ve got about four or five, almost all of them to do with mental health in the schools.
Last year there was a wait-list for psycho-educational assessment, which was about two years, and an 18-month wait-list for a neurodevelopment assessments. What are the wait-lists this year?
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for the question. Knowing that she has, as she said, four or five questions, the answers are only going to improve as we get through them and as my assistant deputy minister for the learning division arrives. Sorry. We had intended to transition from capital to operations to specific areas like this, but the member’s timing is good.
With regards to the psych-ed assessments in the school district, every school district has their own practices and policies regarding how those are applied for and delivered and how they determine the ordering of psych-ed assessments. So it’s very difficult to get an aggregate of waiting-list times.
I would note that the Ministry of Health has put additional targeted resource money for kids on the autism spectrum to get these assessments done, and that’s reflected in the various regional health authority budgets. She may wish to pursue some additional information from the Minister of Health when his turn on the estimates roster comes up.
In terms of broad parameters around funding for kids with complex learning needs, we’ve talked a little bit about this in estimates so far. I’ll repeat some of it for the member’s benefit.
The operating grant numbers for special education in Budget 2020, which we’re debating today, stand at $627.4 million for that specialized area of funding. That’s up 35 percent since 2016-2017.
I’m very pleased to say, too, in terms of a group of students who have historically been underserved, to put it mildly, by the school system — I’m referring to Indigenous learners — the ability for districts to have dynamic, innovative Aboriginal education programs that help kids stay connected to school, feel more comfortable in school, be successful in school and be represented in terms of graduation and transition to post-secondary education, we’ve also increased Indigenous education funding by 34 percent since we formed government. That is money that allows for the innovation I’ve spoken of.
I am aware that last year for the CommunityLINK funding program, about 64 percent of the budget — roughly $34 million — was expended on staffing for positions such as youth workers and counsellors who work with kids and support the social and emotional well-being of students. Those are really, really valuable positions in the school system, and that program helps make sure that they’re funded and in place in the districts around the province.
The Chair: The member with a supplemental.
J. Thornthwaite: I will endeavour to ask my question, then, to the Ministry of Health.
I’m going to ask you a series of questions based on the situation that occurred to one of my constituents. Not only did she write me, but her daughter also wrote me to tell me what happened to her when she fell through the cracks.
This is a situation where she was identified as a behavioural problem in the school, and the mom reached out to the teachers to get help. She was bounced around from counsellor to counsellor. They got a psychologist in there, and a psychiatrist. Then she was put on the wrong meds. She was misdiagnosed. She ended up in the hospital three times and was borderline suicidal.
It wasn’t until another psychiatrist spent the time that was required that she was properly diagnosed, and now this kid is doing really, really well in school. But if it wasn’t for the advocacy of that mom, this kid could have been one of those kids that shows up on the street.
The first line of defence for kids is often the schools. So this mom asked me to find out what we can do to improve this situation in schools. I’m going to read what she said: “All of the teachers….” I did ask her how old the teachers were, because I wanted to see whether or not they were new teachers coming out of school or ones that had been around for a while with more experience. She said most of them were under 30.
“All of them toed the politically correct line. ‘We do not like to compare children.’ When I asked about my child and what was going on, this was the standard answer when trying to figure out her intelligence as well as her anger.” This is her daughter. “This needs to change. There needs to be better education for teachers in the areas of mental health so that they can recognize early what’s going on.”
My question to the minister is: what is being done to educate teachers on mental health literacy? I’m not suggesting that they become counsellors or psychologists but be able to refer the children to a specialist who would be able to determine. What is being done to educate teachers on mental health literacy so that they know that this kid is having problems and needs help? Stop telling the parent that we don’t compare kids.
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for her questions. I know that she has been able to participate in some of the big conversations we’ve been helping to drive in the K-to-12 school system around mental health awareness. We planned and organized the first-ever all K-to-12 educational mental health conference. I think she was there at the first and then the second one.
Typically…. I think that conference actually grew to about 600 front-line people that are connected to mental health and mental well-being in the school system. It included social workers, educators, school leaders, pediatricians, counsellors, safe schools coordinators — all of those folks that play a part in increasing and developing the mental health literacy that the member speaks of and that will help the constituent that she described and people like her who encounter difficulties from people and who just don’t know what to do in the right situation.
I think she’s right to speak about it. We’ve already talked, in this set of estimates, about the number of teacher-psychologists that we’ve added to the school system. That’s very good. But I think this member’s point about having…. The more generalists, if you will, who are aware and literate on mental health issues, are familiar with social-emotional learning techniques and are able to represent trauma-informed practices and to implement those with their colleagues and their peers in the school system, the better.
That’s really the sort of cultural shift that we’re trying to drive throughout the school system, and we have put some targeted dollars in place to help build capacity and to have that training and professional development that the member speaks of. I announced an $8.8 million grant, a fund for school districts,to do exactly that — to build up that kind of capacity.
We’ve got a really great team here in the Ministry of Education that’s been working with the school districts, pursuing ideas that flowed out of some of our mental health conferences. We have sent some fact-finders to New Brunswick, which has a really interesting integrated service delivery model for mental health, partnered with the school system. On the basis of understanding more about New Brunswick, we came back and created some partnerships with two school districts — soon to be five — that have an on-the-ground integrated service delivery model. We announced the one in Comox and in Maple Ridge, and there are three more districts coming forward shortly.
Those, I think, are some of the kinds of initiatives that we’re taking to be able to do a better job at having more people, more qualified adults, in the school system. It’s the responsibility of every adult who works in the school system to be mindful of the kids — to know where to go, to know how to put kids in touch with the right resources, to be able to give them that education.
I would also say, just as a last point, that those teachers who will be coming into the school system through teacher education programs at our universities…. We have heard, and we have involved the deans of education and others in the faculties of education at B.C. universities in making sure that the teacher licence — the bachelor of education degree or specialized degree — has a much more significant component around social-emotional learning, trauma-informed practice and mental health literacy.
J. Thornthwaite: Going on in that vein, the other question I wanted to ask is: what is being done to better educate parents, again, in the school system, so that parents know what to look for in their children and how to access resources, how to interact with teachers to become a team in helping their children?
This comment was: “I see on many parent forums that parents view teachers as the enemy and fight against the system as well. This needs to change. If teachers were well educated in this area, then parents might learn to trust teachers better as well.” Again, what is being done to better educate parents?
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for another good question around how parents get connected to identify more things where their kids may be experiencing mental health and stresses in their lives that are creating anxiety. This is obviously a huge topic in British Columbia, across Canada and in many, many parts of the world.
We have had some partnerships with the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils and others to include parents in awareness-raising. We have had, I think, 80 social media education sessions delivered to…. I know it’s thousands of parents. I’m going to say over 5,000 parents, something like that, since 2017. I can get the member an exact note later.
That’s ongoing. Those kinds of resources remain constant. They’re in Budget 2020, which is good. I think the SOGI collaborative process also has had a very positive impact, because a lot of LGBTQ students disproportionately report the impacts of bullying and very, very stressful situations in their lives that can lead to mental health issues.
The SOGI 123 website is very, very well utilized by parents as well as educators. I think we have had something like 260,000 unique visitors to the SOGI 123 resource website. That partnership with the ARC Foundation remains in place. It’s a very, very strong partnership.
Then lastly — I think we talked about this a little bit more — the number of teacher-counsellors we have, which has increased, is a very positive resource that can work individually with students in schools. It’s increased from 740 in 2017 to 867 positions in 2019. So there are more counsellors available for students.
Maybe the last item I would mention, Mr. Chair, with your indulgence, is the Foundry centres — not directly funded by our ministry, of course, but they serve young people and adolescents aged 12 to 24. There are now 19 Foundries in communities across British Columbia, and were we able to hold the mental health conference this year before we had to cancel it due to COVID-19, I know that Foundry centres were going to be one of the spotlighted resources.
We want to continue to drive more connectedness between the counselling — the free counselling resources — the drug, alcohol and substance abuse resources, and the mental health resources that are offered by Foundry centres to young people. We want to make that connection even stronger with the school system so that it’s about getting them the help they need but also keeping them engaged in school and being successful there.
J. Thornthwaite: My last question, relating to this mom and this child, is about better education for kids on counselling and seeking help so that they can self-recognize and come to understand — if they have a problem, to reach out. She says: “Currently our school has a counsellor, and both of my kids view it as shameful going to see her. Seeing a counsellor, a psychologist or a psychiatrist needs to be viewed as being as normal as seeing a GP. Nobody is embarrassed by seeing a GP.” So her question, I guess, is: what is being done to better educate children on mental health literacy?
Because the minister had mentioned Foundry, I’ll bundle that question. Last year when I asked a question in estimates, it was specific to North Vancouver. I’m not making a statement specific to Foundry, but to Foundry in North Van. There was a lack of communication. Some kids were falling through the cracks and having to leave Foundry because their issues were not getting dealt with, with the Foundry counsellors.
My question is: what mechanism is in place to ensure that if a child turns up at Foundry and is seen, this information is passed on to the school counsellor or the school district so that the kid doesn’t fall through the cracks and so that there is a sharing of information so that the kid doesn’t have to tell the same story over and over again and is getting consistent help from the system as opposed to having disjointed systems that don’t talk to each other?
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you again to the member for this conversation this afternoon. I think that, in terms of avoiding the situation that you described, where there are a lot of young people who feel the stigma of asking for help and therefore don’t ask — they feel there’s a certain shame in it — that’s long been identified as one of the problems, not just for kids but for society at large, adults as well. In recognition of that, the ministry has spent a lot of time with all of our partners and also doing the curriculum redesign in British Columbia to introduce mental health and mental well-being topics at a much, much earlier age.
For example, when you look at the physical and health education curriculum that’s mandatory for K to 10 students, it teaches kids at a very young age how to recognize stress and anxiety in themselves and recognize that one of the ways to help manage that is to talk to people about it. Of course, that’s reinforced with even more complicated emotions as the students get older.
But there are a number of curricular inclusions now that are good, that are strong. I mentioned earlier the participation rate around parents recognizing signs in their, say, teenagers and the social media workshops that are available with our partners and will continue. We created a pandemic partnership with the WE organization to create a new mental health online tool and resource that was rolled out here in April in British Columbia, and we are very proud of that partnership.
In terms of Foundry centres…. We started to talk about that as well and the member’s experience around perhaps not the best experience for one of her constituents in the North Vancouver Foundry centre. It might be of interest for her to talk to the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions during that set of estimates just to talk about information-sharing protocols.
What I would say as a general comment, though, is that the Ministry of Education typically meets with Foundry centre representatives in the regions around British Columbia about every four to six weeks to constantly assess and share information on what their caseload is like, what some of the issues are that they’re dealing with, what their referrals and in-house supports are, and their integration with other service providers and the school system specifically.
This is the thing: we’re in the early days, in some parts of the province, of driving towards an integrated model. An integrated model means that counsellors and clinicians involved with kids who are experiencing significant issues in their lives and are registered students in a school district or a school…. The grownups, if you will, in the school system and the Foundry hub centres talk to one another and look out for the well-being of that child and share information that would be relevant to one another.
The Chair: We’re just going to have a little bit of a shift change here for the Chair, so I thought it might be appropriate to ask if we can take a five-minute recess — give everybody a chance to freshen up. We’ll be back shortly. We’ll be back in approximately five minutes. Thank you, everybody. This committee is now in recess.
The committee recessed from 3:59 p.m. to 4:07 p.m.
[S. Malcolmson in the chair.]
J. Thornthwaite: I just have one more question for the minister. It’s to do with sexual assault policy in schools.
The minister was kind enough to meet with me and two of my young friends, who had some very good advice for the ministry on how they can improve the education on preventing sexual assaults in the schools or around the schools with young people. One of the recommendations was to implement consent policies in elementary school, grade 6. I’m wondering how that is going. If the minister could give me an update.
Hon. R. Fleming: Nice to see you again, Committee Chair.
To the member’s question, I want to begin just by thanking her for bringing those two pretty remarkable and impressive young women to a meeting that we had in downtown Vancouver. It was some time ago now, but I am pleased to say that as a result of that meeting, we were able to take some of their suggestions and others we got from different student forums that are interested in healthy relationships, sexual education and issues around consent. They were able to give very valuable information to the ministry that helped us develop a guide called Supporting Student Health.
The guide was developed for both elementary and high school teachers. It focuses primarily on sexual health and mental health. It includes topics around consent and safer sex. Indeed, I think there was a gap in the physical and health education curriculum that needed to be addressed. Also, teachers were also requesting the kinds of things that are in the Supporting Student Health guide to be more effective at addressing those parts of the curriculum in PHE.
We’ve also, in continuing that, looked at additional opportunities for older kids. This was a point I took from those two young women who I met with, along with yourself, around mandatory PE class, as we used to call it. PHE class ends in grade 10. We’re looking at career life education to help also add some content that will reach grade 11 and 12 students.
I know that there’s been a significant debate and some really good leadership amongst post-secondary college and university presidents with their student support teams, where they had some very terrible incidents that put a spotlight on how healthy relationships…. Issues around consent with partners were leading towards things like sexual assaults and unacceptable behaviours on campuses and off campus. So that’s an area for ongoing further development in grades 11 and 12.
That Supporting Student Health guide, if the member hasn’t had an opportunity to see it, is something that we could certainly, outside of estimates, send to her attention.
S. Furstenau: It’s great to be here in Education estimates. I want to pick up where the last question left off, but before I do that, I want to just really commend the Minister of Education, the school districts, principals and teachers, who have really stepped up in this time and done the very best they can in these really difficult conditions of COVID-19. From our experience in our valley, the school district has just been remarkably responsive, first in dealing with issues like ensuring that children and families are getting meals and food and then really meeting the educational needs of students in this time. I want to just say thank you to all of the people that made that happen.
Following up on the member for North Vancouver–Seymour’s question, there’s a video that’s making the rounds. It’s a public service advertisement from New Zealand. Iit’s focusing on the risk of young children accessing pornography, without the kind of parental discussions around expectations of what are healthy sexual relationships and consent, as the minister was just talking about.
I think that in this era of Internet culture, studies are showing that…. One Swedish study shows that 98 percent of all 16-year-old boys and 54 percent of 16-year-old girls have seen pornography and that the sexualized content in pornography is often quite violent, particularly towards women.
Here in B.C., we had a consultation with an expert in this field, and he says that research shows that children refrain from speaking about pornography with their parents. Parents are unaware that their children are exposed to it. As more and more of our work and learning moves online, we see increases in domestic violence.
So my question. To follow up on the previous question to the minister, are there specific efforts or specific work being done on teaching children about sexual relationships but with the recognition of the access to really explicit digital content that children are probably seeing right now? What’s being done to address that in particular?
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for the question. She may have caught the discussion with the member for North Van–Seymour. We talked about a resource that was very recently developed and made available to both elementary and secondary school teachers, the Supporting Student Health guide, which fills in a lot of gaps in topical areas around consensual relationships, healthy relationships, online safety and cyberbullying, as well as safe sex practices.
I think the emphasis now that’s in the physical and health education on healthy relationships is a good emphasis to have in the school system. There is specific content about the responsible use of technology by students in the physical and health education curriculum now. As I’ve mentioned, it does deal with topics like sexting and other related topics.
I know in practice that schools often have a relationship with organizations that are community based and that come in and specifically do workshops and speak to students about some of the issues she raised with pornography and violence and how that affects students’ mental health and the perceptions of healthy relationships and those sorts of things. There has been a big emphasis on social media training awareness through a number of programs in the ministry that I think has been really been valuable.
Maybe if I could take something away from the member’s question, it would be, as I regularly speak with the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils and know their president very well, to see if this might be an area of focus that they would wish to develop further with the ministry. I think she raises a very good point.
We also engaged young people who helped us write and develop the ministry social media guidelines that are now included in the curriculum. We would probably look to engage young people again around the readily available scourge of pornography through digital devices and how that is impacting the mental health of students and the safety of, in particular, female students at school and see if young folks that advise the ministry on a regular basis and BCCPAC would like to work with us on putting an additional emphasis there.
S. Furstenau: Thanks to the minister for that response.
As you point out, there are PACs that are doing great work at bringing in some really terrific educators. Kerri Isham up in Cowichan Valley is an excellent example. I think that, hopefully, the goal would a consistency across all the districts — that students would be getting that level of really high-quality education on this front.
I really appreciate his response and the steps he’s talking about taking. It’s really great.
I’m going to switch gears and kind of go back to umbrella questions here. Apologies if these have been touched on by the official opposition critics. We’re doing our best to kind of stay on top of things, but with a caucus of two, it can be a bit tricky.
Clearly, this pandemic has had deep and significant impacts on education in B.C. We know that teachers have done a great job under very trying circumstances, but there are a lot of concerns. I’m aware that the BCTF and the province are talking about approaches to the fall and how to ensure that teachers aren’t stretched so thin trying to juggle both the in-class and the online learning that we might be facing again in the fall.
I guess my first question is: does the province intend to hire more staff to accommodate for both the in-person and online learning? If so, how many more teachers and other staff?
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member from Cowichan. I think there are a lot of elements to her question there. At first glance, it was straightforward enough. But things have become very complex, and we have learned very well on the fly. I appreciate her remarks earlier thanking all the herculean efforts from teachers, support staff and administrators — principals and vice-principals — to keep families and kids safe, to successfully reopen schools on a part-time, limited basis for the last four weeks, which has been, I think, fantastic and a testament to their commitment, their energy and their caring to be able to do so.
I would say that in terms of staffing levels and COVID response, what we’ve asked districts to do is to make a note of any additional COVID-related expenses that they have encountered in terms of operating under this pandemic, as well as savings. Because, of course, some expenses were reduced for services that were suspended.
We don’t obviously direct school districts to directly hire. They’re the employer. Some of them have made shifts in their employment practices.
What we did do though, as a ministry, is we did direct every school district to work in close consultation and collaboration with local teachers associations on the issue of workload. So I think the member was getting at this idea of trying to sustain both an in-person teaching practice as well as continuing to serve the remote distance learners.
We’re at the stage right now where we’re learning everything that we experienced in June to have a stronger restart in September. Of course, we’re on track, through the incredible leadership of Dr. Bonnie Henry and the provincial health office, to have a much stronger restart in September. I think we will benefit immeasurably from having gone into what we call stage 3, as I said, for the last four weeks of the school year. The aim is to have as many kids back safely as possible after Labour Day. September 8 is the first day of school next school year.
The science of the epidemic will inform what we’re able to do. Districts are planning for a number of contingencies that will fit the assessment of where we’re at in terms of community transmission and how well the pandemic is being managed.
S. Furstenau: Thanks to the minister for that answer. Questions always tend to be more complicated than they seem on the surface, I guess.
Further to that, can the minister let us know what he thinks the expected changes to the ministry’s budget will be to COVID-19? Will there be more money in order to accommodate the additional resources needed to ensure, for example, equity for at-home instruction?
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for the question. The most succinct answer I could probably give this afternoon is that all school districts are working within the Budget 2020 $6.7 billion allocation out there into the field. They’re part of the estimates today. We’re working with the B.C. Association of School Board Officials, the secretary-treasurers and other administrators, on tracking costs, as I mentioned earlier — additional costs related to the pandemic for supplies, for other modifications.
Districts are tracking those right now. I wouldn’t say we have a consistent idea of whether there are additional upside costs at this point yet. We also know that those would be offset, to some extent, by potential savings from services that were suspended — transportation, for example, and those sorts of things.
Once we continue to work in this fiscal year with the BCASBO, who represent the school districts, on what it all looks like, we would, on that basis, have a discussion with the Ministry of Finance — look at additional opportunities, for example, for the Ministry of Education to play a role in the economic recovery of British Columbia overall. I can say that some of those discussions are happening, proposals being developed currently, where our ministry will, in fact, play a role in that regard.
It’s probably an ongoing conversation that I’m certainly willing to have with the member in the months ahead.
S. Furstenau: Yeah, it’s an important and ongoing conversation. Of course, education is so essential in a time like this when we are going to have to learn a lot of new skills, new ways of doing things. That learning very much starts in our education system.
On the COVID topic, in a related way…. There’s an intersection of a particular type of student, a student who may be vulnerable and may have health or disability issues that mean that as long as we’re in this pandemic, that student is maybe not safe or comfortable to go into an in-class learning environment but at the same time may not have the resources to really effectively further their education at home.
It might be a lack of access to high speed. I know other members have asked about this high-speed Internet or lack of access to materials. I do know that school districts have stepped up in this time, but I’m just wondering if there’s a bit of a longer plan — given that we don’t know how long we’re going to be in this pandemic situation — for the ministry to be really focusing on promoting inclusion for these particularly vulnerable students who will be working from home.
Hon. R. Fleming: Just to go back to the previous question, I did want to say something about the budget and one of the signals we sent that was most important. I mentioned that we telegraphed out to districts that the $6.7 billion in Budget 2020, knowing that the world had changed to a significant degree after we’d tabled that in February 2020, would remain constant.
I think that stands in pretty stark contrast to some other jurisdictions in Canada. It’s not to pick on anyone in particular, but Alberta, next door to us, removed about $150 million from school district funding envelopes at the very outset of the pandemic. Nothing of the sort occurred in B.C. We wanted to give that guarantee and that stability to the school system.
In terms of the member’s question around vulnerable students who may not be in a position, or whose family deems it’s not a good, safe idea for them, to return to school in September, for example — I’d imagine that could include immunocompromised kids, or a family situation where that’s an issue — there will be accommodations made, as there have been already.
We’ve heard pretty clearly the commitment from school districts that if there’s a child with an individual education plan that calls for certain resources and strategies for them to be successful learners, those need to be adapted if they’re not physically coming into school for in-class instruction. I know that’s easier said that done, but there are ways to do it, as we’ve learned. It can be remote learning. It can be formal online learning programs. It can involve, maybe, teachers the child hasn’t worked with who are non-enrolling teachers, or who do regularly work with or are involved in supporting a child remotely, not just the classroom teacher.
I would note that one of the positive takeaways from June was that kids with complex learning needs who were specifically invited to come back, not on a part-time but on a full-time basis, for the month of June and prior — along with the children of designated essential workers — did in fact return to the school system at a much higher rate than kids who don’t fall under one of those categories. That’s positive. We made that outreach. We directed school districts to survey those families specifically, and they did return in greater numbers.
We talk about pandemic discoveries that have to be digested and that can lead to innovations or change of practice. We did find that some parents of kids with complex needs or very specific mental health conditions actually thrived working and studying from home. That’s been confirmed by the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions. That’s interesting. That did occur during the pandemic reduction in in-class instruction. That might be a preference for some of those families going forward as we begin a new school year.
S. Furstenau: That actually segues right into a very specific question I have, raised by some constituents of mine, with a situation that connects to what the minister was just talking about.
These constituents are both qualified teachers, certified teachers, and also parents of a profoundly disabled child. That child had been getting at-home instruction through a contracted service. When the isolation orders came in, all of the contracted services were stopped, as well as additional supports through MCFD and before- and after-school-hours care.
These parents reached out to the ministry to request, since they were in fact meeting all of the needs of the child under his IEP, that they be contracted and in some way compensated for being the instructors and meeting his IEP. There’s an understandable clause about not contracting parents to teach their own children. However, as we know, in bricks-and-mortar schools, it’s not unusual that a child may well find themselves inside a parent’s classroom. That does happen.
I’m just wondering. Given the circumstances of this pandemic and the uncertainty that may lie ahead, would the minister be considering revisiting some of those policies in consideration of some of these, I would expect, rare but not completely impossible situations that parents might be facing — where they become not only the primary caregivers but the primary instructors of their children, to ensure that they’re meeting their IEPs?
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for the question. Obviously, a lot of parents learned a great deal about their kids through the pandemic and played a much bigger role, I think, in most cases, than they normally would in supplementing the efforts of their teachers, engaging them and keeping them focused on learning.
We tried to make that effort easier by putting a number of resources together. The Keep Learning B.C. website was just one that was very successful — hundreds of thousands of visits there, with a pretty wide variety of good suggested content and learning resources that are available and internationally recognized for excellence. We will continue to update that.
Specifically to…. I should say that we also funded Shelley Moore. I know that the member is familiar with her excellent, humorous and effective communication skills. We contracted with her to put together videos — I think a couple per week — on how to recognize your child’s learning style and help them be successful during the lockdown remote learning period and keep them interested in learning and how to be of assistance to make their learning experience more [audio interrupted] really, really well received and widely circulated. That was a good, little mid-pandemic partnership that we might revisit.
I would direct the member to maybe formulate some questions for the Minister of Children and Family Development during her estimates. She rolled out a program during the pandemic to support families, an emergency relief support fund, $225 per month, to families that incurred additional costs related to helping their kids be successful. I know that the number of ordinarily eligible families for this type of funding increased by about 50 percent. My understanding is that that program was widely subscribed and has been extended until September at this time.
I don’t have too many further details, but she may wish to talk to my colleague the Minister of Children and Family Development.
The other thing — last point — would be that on an ongoing basis and in considerable earnest right now, school districts are developing at-home learning plans continuously and looking at, again, lessons learned from May to June, working on a peer-to-peer basis with other school districts to make sure that they’re all looking at a better remote learning experience based on the feedback they got during the early stages of the pandemic.
S. Furstenau: I think we’ll follow up through my constituency office, which I believe is already on this particular file, but the specific question is about parents being able to be contracted if they are certified teachers for providing educational instruction for their children at home when others had been contracted to do that but couldn’t during the isolation part of the pandemic. But I’ll follow that up directly through our constituency office.
The last little set of questions here.
A lot of my constituents, and I know constituents around the province, were reaching out to their MLAs about the changes in funding to the independent distributed learning schools. In question period the other day, the minister spoke about the specific supports for more vulnerable students and children with special learning needs, and it would be really helpful if he could elaborate on that.
That’s one of the biggest concerns that I’ve heard from parents. Parents of children with special needs feel very distressed about losing access to programs that have been very successful for their children when other programs or schools have not served the needs of their children.
Then just a question about…. In approaching that decision, was the Federation of Independent Schools consulted? Were they aware of the changes that were coming before they were announced? If not, why not?
So those two questions on the changes to the independent distributed learning schools. Thank you.
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you, and I see Minister Mark has joined us. Good to see you.
To the member from Cowichan: I appreciate your question. Let me try and make this as simple as possible. We have canvassed this extensively with the Education critic earlier today.
We did adjust the rate back to where it was for many, many years, which is 50 percent of the public distributed-learning rate. That’s very consistent with the funding groups that have been in place for many decades, as it relates to group 1 and group 2 schools and how they’re funded in relation to their public school district counterparts.
That category, for the vast majority of independent schools — be they Catholic, Anglican, Sikh, Montessori, etc. — is 50 percent of the per-pupil rate for the public schools. When all is said and done in Budget 2020, independent distributed learning is going to see a 4 percent increase. There’s not a cut. It is an increase in funding next year.
While we’ve adjusted the rate on IDL as relates to its public counterpart, what parents of special education students who enrol in IDL schools have particularly benefited from is a significant new rate of investment for special education students across all funded categories. Of course, as the member knows, they keep 100 percent of that funding. There is no distinction between public and independent as it relates to special education funding categories. So 35 percent more funding since we formed government for special education categories of all kinds.
What it actually means is that the last year the previous government was in office, the IDL sector in total, both special education and their funding rate, was at about $64 million. In the 2019-20 fiscal year, that funding, under our government, had risen to $80.9 million. As I mentioned, it will increase again next year by 4 percent or about $3½ million to $4 million again.
I think the other part of your question was really around how we worked with FISA. I think it would be absolutely fair to say — it’s certainly something I’ve made a priority for myself — that we have had very good relations with the Federation of Independent Schools in B.C. and meet fairly regularly with their executive director and their president. We’ve included them, for example, on all of our COVID-19 responses. They were advised quite regularly during our funding model review that I’ve had the privilege of briefing the member from Cowichan on. So that working relationship is strong.
Of course, there will be some disagreements with this decision. I understand that. But we did notify the 16 IDL schools in May. Sure, they probably would have preferred more notice in terms of their budget-making. It’s very difficult to share information that, in some cases, has a degree of cabinet confidentiality until it’s able to be released publicly. But I can assure the member that as soon as we had cleared that hurdle, we were very transparent and met directly with the IDL schools to explain the change and to work with them on the new rate.
D. Davies: Thanks to my colleagues that took the time to ask the questions. What an incredible segue the member for Cowichan Valley provided me to go back to my IDL questions that I had mentioned to the minister.
Just a couple of things here. I keep hearing the minister mention about this 4 percent increase that is coming. The reality is that 4 percent increase of overall funding to these schools is purely based upon increased enrolment numbers. So if we look at the per-pupil number, I think that is where we have to keep looking, because that is what the parents are going to be feeling at the end of the day — that per-student funding number.
I do have a couple of quick questions here, if the minister could tell me what the per-student funding rate for IDL students was in the 2017-2018 year, please.
Hon. R. Fleming: I’ll give the member some of the numbers that I think he’s interested in here that explain how it is that IDL funding will, in fact, increase by 4 percent more in the 2020-21 fiscal year. It’s not very related to enrolment growth. In fact, IDL enrolment growth since 2014-15 to the current school year has been about 3.2 percent. So divided over six years, that’s much lower than overall student enrolment growth in the school system writ large. So it has been very modest around enrolment growth.
What has grown tremendously in the last three years is the special education funding that is accessed and utilized by the 16 IDL companies that the member is talking about. That’s grown from $29.7 million annually to $44.2 million in 2019-20. That’s about a $15 million increase for IDL schools that enrol special education students.
Annual funding also has increased on the operating side. But it’s been pretty flat going all the way back to 2014-15. That year had a slight spike, definitely related to the five-week disruption caused by the strike and labour dispute with the BCTF, because we saw independent enrolment go up in bricks and mortar and IDL programs that year. But since that significant labour disruption, it’s receded again and is stable but not growing tremendously, and not growing at the same pace as kids in all school systems — the public school system, in particular.
As I say, at the end of the day, the projection for overall IDL funding is scheduled to increase by 4 percent next year.
D. Davies: Okay. Just so I can get it on the record here — I just want the minister’s response — I’m looking for the per-pupil, per-student funding amount for IDL students for the 2017-2018 school year, please.
Hon. R. Fleming: To the member’s question, the per-pupil amount in independent distributed learning in 2017-18 for special education and non–special education students was an average of $7,491 per pupil.
D. Davies: What was the per-pupil funding for students without the special needs?
Hon. R. Fleming: I mentioned the blended rate was $7,491 per pupil. The base rate in 2017-18 was $3,843 per pupil. That would be based on a 63 percent IDL rate.
D. Davies: Great. Thank you, Minister.
Can you also, then, give us the per-pupil rate without the special needs piece, the lift, for 2018-19 and 2019-20, please?
Hon. R. Fleming: I’ll say some of these numbers slowly because I know that the member will want to create a table, perhaps, or write them down. He has asked me for a number of figures here.
Let’s go back to 2017-2018. We may have covered this already. The blended rate for special education and base for IDL is $7,491 per pupil. The base within that $7,491 is $3,843 per pupil.
For 2018-2019, the blended amount for special ed — the per-pupil rate is $7,874, of which the base rate is, again, $3,843 per student.
In 2019-2020, the blended rate goes up again, this time by close to $600, to $8,523 per pupil, of which the base IDL is $3,843.
The projected number for 2020-2021 will see the blended rate increase — again, by 4 percent, as I mentioned earlier — to $8,864 per pupil, of which the base amount will be $3,050.
D. Davies: Thank you, Minister, for those numbers.
I just want to bring up a couple of things. If we look at the base rate — which is, again, what the majority of IDL students are utilizing — it’s $3,843 from 2017-18 right through to 2019-20. Then, in the proposal moving forward, it has now dropped to $3,050.
If we look at this in any other way…. I’ll even read a dictionary reference to what a budget cut means. It’s a reduction in the amount that a department within a company or government may spend over a given time. Budget cuts often result from reduced revenues, sometimes prioritizations and other sources.
This has been a reduction. There is no other way to put it. Per-student funding was $3,843 from 2017 through until 2020. It is now $3,050 per-student funding for the majority of IDL students.
I know the minister has said this isn’t a cut. I’ve got my math wrong. My numbers are wrong. I know the minister has said that there is going to be a 4 percent increase, which is a blend between some of the students that have special needs as well as enrolment numbers.
The per-student funding on most of the students…. These parents are going to see a $793 reduction in the money that they are using to educate their children. I don’t know what more to say. A budget cut is a budget cut is a budget cut. This is a cut in funding — period.
Hon. R. Fleming: I guess I have a different definition of a cut than the member, when funding goes up, as it has significantly under our government — you can thank us for that — in the IDL sector. This seems to be forming the majority of your questions on the entire estimates for the entire education system.
When that goes up significantly, as it has under our government — and it will continue to go up next year, by 4 percent — this member’s argument is that even though funding is increasing for 16 organizations that will split $3 million to $4 million more next year than this year, it would have gone up even more. So that’s a cut?
Funding is going up, Member. That is the reality. You can continue to dedicate…. I don’t want to tell the opposition how to do their job; I never would. You can continue to ask questions about this, as is your purview, but I’ve given you the numbers. I’ve shown you how the funding is in fact increasing in the IDL sector.
I mean, how about a question on how our government has systematically worked to fix the damage caused by 16 years of underfunding of the public education system? How about that? When you were quietly raising the rates for IDL, you were telling the school districts that there was low-hanging fruit — I think that was a term coined by Christy Clark — and she ripped $50 million out of the public school system.
Look, we have worked to address hundreds of millions of unfunded, downloaded costs that are the legacy of the previous government. We have worked to increase compensation for support staff and teachers who have long deserved to be much closer to the Canadian average for compensation, and we’ve done that. We have raised the funding for students in British Columbia — which was getting close to $2,000 below the Canadian average — by $1,400 per student. So we’re getting closer to the Canadian average. We have undone a lot of damage by the previous government, from their underinvestment in education, in just three short years.
The Chair: Thank you, Minister. I’ll encourage you to speak through the Chair, as opposed to “you” statements. Thank you for your response to that, which was not actually a question.
We’ll return to the member for Peace River North for his next question.
D. Davies: Chair, I’m not here to pat the minister’s back on the budget. I am an opposition critic, and my job is here to critique the budget. Looking forward, I’m looking at today’s budget that’s in front of me, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. On the minister’s comment that I’m spending the majority of the time on this, I find that quite interesting, as we’ve got about six hours under our belt at multiple areas of the budget. We have, roughly, spent maybe an hour on independent distributed learning, and I’m not going to spend much more time on it, because we obviously have much different opinions on what a budget cut is.
Again, I know that the minister has received the hundreds of letters that I’ve received, not only from parents — I could hold up the stack, and I could read them out — but from independent distributed learning schools that have reached out to me and the minister. All of these organizations will be feeling this cut of $793. There is no other way to split it, and it absolutely baffles me that the minister sees this differently.
I’ll even read a…. This is from the budget consultation for 2021 here, in one of the presentations done by Heritage Christian Online — which is, I think, one of the largest IDL schools in the province: “We’re thankful for how the province has funded diversity and inclusivity in the education model up to this point. However, on May 4, we were notified that funding to IDL schools was being cut by 21 percent, effective July 1.” This is just that one school.
Is the minister, then, saying all of these schools are lying about this? Are they being incorrect? I would like to know what the minister has to say to the independent distributed learning schools out there — and the parents — that are going to be feeling this very serious impact to their students, their child’s learning.
I would like to hear what the minister has to say to these students, the schools and the parents.
Hon. R. Fleming: Listen, I’ll just go over the numbers that I think tell the tale that really belies the story that the member opposite is trying to tell here, and that’s how funding has increased for independent distributed learning since we formed government. Yes, in large part, thanks to our progressive special education funding increases that were long overdue, that had been held down for way too long, and which support the majority of parents who I am receiving letters from about this funding rate category.
I’m not sure that the IDL school administrators are telling them that we have increased special education funding for their child by an average of 35 percent across categories. I don’t know. But I will say this, for the benefit of Hansard and the record. In 2017-2018, IDL funding went up 4.47 percent. In 2018-19, it went up 8.87 percent. This current fiscal year it has gone up 10.48 percent, and next year — the year that this member says there are cuts to IDL funding — it will go up 4 percent. That’s a 28 percent gain over four years.
I have a hard time believing that IDL schools, whose enrolment, as we discussed earlier in these estimates, is growing very, very modestly — certainly at a slower rate than every other part of the school system — and have 28 percent more revenue to operate their schools…. They use 100 percent of government resources to cover 100 percent of their operating costs. There is no other branch of independent education in the province of British Columbia that does this.
I think if the member is interested in equity, he should go tell the Sikh, Jewish, Anglican, Catholic, Montessori schools why this very small sector should get a higher rate than they do as it relates to the funding formula that they enjoy for public education. But when all is said and done, as I’ve said so many times during this session of estimates, funding for independent distributed learning — after all the bluster from the member opposite — is going up another 4 percent next year under our government. So there you have it.
D. Davies: Well, a far cry from bluster, but we will not follow that comment. I’m not going to dwell on this point. Obviously, we’re not going to move beyond what a definition of a cut means.
There are bigger comparisons to make when we compare the public school system amounts versus the independent schools, brick-and-mortar amounts. As is, there are huge differences between the online public DL versus the online independent distributed learning. Like I say, we cannot compare apples to apples, because there are quite different funding levels. Independent schools are funded greatly less than public schools, and IDL schools are funded at greatly less amounts than the public distributed learning schools.
Moving on to another question. I do have a few more on this. I think the Green Party member spoke earlier regarding notification and letting FISA know and letting the IDL schools know about this at the time. My question’s kind of around whether there were any discussions with FISA directly leading up to this, I guess. Was FISA offered a seat during the funding review that recently took place?
Hon. R. Fleming: I think my answer would be exactly the same as when the member for Cowichan asked this question not terribly long ago. And that was that — well, two parts here. With regards to the funding model review, we absolutely, as a ministry, kept FISA very well informed and apprised of the comprehensive funding model review that was conducted.
As this question relates to this decision around the rate adjustment, we sat down with FISA and the 16 IDL schools in May. We transparently shared information about the adjustments and answered all of their questions with as much notice as we could give. They probably would have preferred more. There’s no doubt about that. But that was the timeline that we were afforded.
Don’t forget that we were in the middle of the pandemic. We were attending to lots of very urgent issues in a $6.7 billion education system. This is a small but important component. I understand that. We did have our staff engage with the 16 independent distributed learning schools in as timely a manner as possible.
D. Davies: Thank you, Minister.
You said FISA was kept apprised of the funding review. Why were they not offered a seat on the funding review?
Hon. R. Fleming: The member will probably recall the terms of reference for the funding model review. It was explicitly about public education, but we kept FISA apprised of both the structure and the content of the report. He’ll recall that the funding model review was done in a number of phases.
We had an expert review, then we had a series of working groups that took the major sets of recommendations and grouped them. We did advise and brief FISA along the way. Of their own initiative — and I think this was appreciated — they did their own sort of funding model review for their own sector and submitted it to the ministry. I’ll offer that just as an example of how closely we work with FISA.
I certainly, as a minister, have taken every opportunity I can to have a very strong relationship with them. I have to thank both their executive director and their president, in particular, for being very valuable partners during the entire pandemic in terms of closing schools to in-class instruction way back on March 17 and then working for about six to eight weeks, coming up with the stages document and working with WorkSafeBC and the public health officer to allow for a gradual staged reopening on June 1. They performed admirably.
We never made a distinction between public and independent when it came to pandemic response. They worked well with the education partners in both school systems.
D. Davies: Was the…? I’m going to call it a cut. I know you use a different word. I don’t know why, but anyway, we won’t go there. Was this as a result of the funding model review — these changes to the independent distributed learning?
Hon. R. Fleming: First of all, I call a 4 percent increase a funding increase. And the answer to the specific question is no.
D. Davies: In a letter, there was a response that was sent out to parents and others as they wrote — quite an impersonal response, I might add. We have children and parents writing their hearts out — letters to ministers and MLAs across the province — who are absolutely scared about what their future of education looks like, and they got a “Dear recipient” letter.
There’s a piece in here that…. I mentioned it earlier. Again, I used the word “cut,” but we won’t go into what that definition is. There’s a sentence here that says: “No other funding changes are envisioned at this time.” If I were hearing from someone who used the words “at this time,” to me — with any question, I might add…. You know, if my mom says, “You’re not in trouble at this time,” I know that something’s coming down the tube. I think there are a lot of people that are looking at that open-ended sentence: “There are no funding changes proposed at this time.”
Will the minister go on the record right now and say that there will be no further changes to funding to IDL schools?
Hon. R. Fleming: The critic is quoting a very good letter from one of my assistant deputy ministers. I recognize the precise, accurate, clear language that comes from somebody who has studied public administration and works in public service. That’s how a letter should be written to those who inquire about things.
I have had conversations with FISA’s executive director and president, and said to them explicitly that we have no other funding changes contemplated at this time. I don’t think anybody says forever in government, but as I have said during this set of estimates, I respect that the 50 percents, the group 1 rate — which I’m most familiar with in my constituency that is used to calculate funds for the Catholic, Anglican, Sikh, Montessori and other denominational schools — has been around for a long time. Certainly as minister I have maintained that, and we committed to do so as a government. I know those feelings are shared by the Premier as well.
So that’s what it means: no other funding changes are envisioned at this time. I suspect when his mother was not upset with him at this time, that that could have meant two years, five years, ten years. But sooner or later, I’m sure the member did have his mother get upset with him. But I could be wrong. But I think what he can take away from this letter is that at this time there is a commitment that FISA has heard from me directly, and I think they’re quite comfortable with that.
D. Davies: Well, I can let the minister know that it was pretty quick after my mom said that.
Moving on to some further questions here. I’m just also being aware of the time as well.
Funding around COVID. I know it’s been touched on by a couple of my colleagues and such. Just looking at how funding — if there are numbers associated with how the budget is directly changed on funding increases that have been put out to school districts as a result of COVID-19, if the minister has that number.
Hon. R. Fleming: I think we have covered this one fairly well, but I’ll just go over the broad strokes of my response.
What the Ministry of Education did very early, as it was clear that we were going to see a significant disruption to school services, facing a very frightening and uncertain pandemic with a lot of social restrictions coming into being that also included the school system, as we announced on March 17, was we sent out the signal to the school districts who had just become aware that they were going to benefit from a record $6.7 billion operating budget in February. When we tabled that budget, just prior to the pandemic, we told them that that money was there for certain.
Obviously, school districts here look at other jurisdictions across Canada, most notably our neighbour next door in Alberta, which immediately stripped out, I think, $150 million to $200 million and issued tens of thousands of layoffs to education staff and made it clear pretty early on that they didn’t intend to support continuous learning for many of their students, at least not with a full complement of staff.
We took a different course, and as I have said earlier in this set of estimates, we have worked with school districts and sent them instructions to their secretary-treasurers. This has filtered down to board chairs, and of course, the superintendents are aware of this. Districts are to keep track of any unanticipated COVID-related expenses and report them to the ministry. I think it’s fair to say they’re tracking those right now.
Don’t forget the fiscal year started April 1, so those are in the early stages of being tracked. And also to make note of any savings, because obviously some services were suspended. Gasoline and transportation services for buses, as well as other overhead costs, were voided during the two-month, worst part of the pandemic.
Having said that, we have asked them to track it because if there are unanticipated costs projected later in the school year, we will make the case to the Ministry of Finance that the school system and the Ministry of Education wish to participate in the economic recovery plan such that additional expenditure may be necessary. And we’ll request it if and when necessary.
D. Davies: It’s kind of reverse then. School districts will be logging, keeping track of expenses and then submitting that report for any coverages as needed in the next fiscal year, presumably something like that. I would assume it would look like…. Did I get, kind of, the gist of that?
Hon. R. Fleming: This might help the member, just to give him some phrasing of what we instructed the school system to do as it became clear that we were entering a prolonged state of emergency and a health emergency in the province. We sent a note that “each school district must establish a process for tracking its own COVID-19-related costs and provide specific direction to staff to facilitate reporting out as required regarding costs incurred or forecasted. Costs identified must be directly related to the COVID-19 event or incremental to the cost of normal operations or unavoidable operational expenses.”
As I mentioned, we’re not even…. We’re early in the fiscal year. We’re living with a higher degree of uncertainty than, I would suggest, we ever have. But we’ve been pretty clear with the school system that the money that was in Budget 2020, the $6.7 billion, was secure. There will be fluctuations in additional costs as well as savings, if you will.
I know that it might be different in different districts, depending on their circumstance. We don’t know, for example…. Because tomorrow is officially the last day of school across British Columbia. Did schools see a significant reduction, for example, in the use of substitute teachers or TTOCs? How much did they realize in savings when the yellow school bus transportation services weren’t offered? Were there buildings that were largely closed and unheated? Those sorts of things versus expenses on, maybe, cleaning supplies and other things that were in the health and safety protocol.
Although I would add that we used the FocusED consortium. Formerly, we used to call that ERAC. They’ve done a rebranding there. FocusED has coordinated across school districts to realize efficiencies when it comes to bulk purchasing and procuring of supplies necessary for the provincial health office health and safety protocols.
D. Davies: Understanding that…. Again, we are in an interesting time of flux and uncertainty in many ways. I know some of the school districts that have reached out, or I’ve reached out to as well, have some concerns around…. There will be some expenses. I know there are many classrooms that don’t have sinks. Some teachers or certain schools require extra PPE, handwashing stations, as I mentioned.
Those things quickly add up if you’re looking at a number of schools that you have to do this to. Is there a plan to have any funds set up outside of reporting back — a grant fund that schools or districts can apply to the ministry for to get these supports up front?
Hon. R. Fleming: What we did, and why I think the “dry run” in June is going to be so important for September, is that by reopening schools and working within a health and safety protocol that was developed by the provincial health office in consultation with the school sector and WorkSafeBC, we learned a great deal about additional costs. We did require every school district to have their restart plans approved and measured against that health and safety protocol.
What that meant is that all districts had to very clearly answer that they had, for example, PPE for situations that required it, for workers whose job duties require that, that there were adequate cleaning supplies, that there were things like hand sanitizer or hand-washing stations. We were able to get those approved.
We are still in the process right now, or really beginning the process, of learning the granular details of that effort across 60 school districts. We have a structure in place — we’ve talked about that during these estimates — that we’ve just set up that involves every K-to-12 stakeholder organization in B.C. The steering committee is helping us plan for the fall and also to do a number of exercises that will help us to have the strongest start possible in September and to communicate those, as information becomes clearer throughout the summer, to parents and others.
The steering committee very much has an ad hoc function, or a group within the steering committee, that is focused on health and safety and the issue around whether there are incremental costs that will come into play at some point during the fiscal year.
But for now, we don’t have the information that suggests that the $6.7 billion budget for the school system this year was somehow insufficient. It has proven to be part of a very sustained increase that, prior to the pandemic, was producing record levels of surplus in school districts, putting them in a very healthy fiscal position.
We fully funded all developments that have happened since the pandemic and since Budget 2020 was developed — for example, the recent successful negotiations with the 45,000 teachers who are members of the B.C. Teachers Federation. All of the benefits and wage improvements there are fully funded. The districts know that when it comes to major cost pressures, government will continue on its record to fund them and not to engage or indulge in the downloading practices of the previous government.
D. Davies: Just a quick clarification question too. I probably should have asked this a while ago, but it just jumped out to me. Has the Ministry of Education received any additional funding from the Minister of Finance beyond the $6.6 billion?
Hon. R. Fleming: The answer to the member’s question is: not at this time.
I see my colleague the Minister of Advanced Education there. I think the instruction to ministries like ours, where we have had a change in how service provision is delivered and where there may be additional costs, is to monitor and record those now and see where we’re at. It’s very difficult, in the period of uncertainty, to forecast every unanticipated expense. There may be some. I think what the Minister of Advanced Education and I, as well as other colleagues in cabinet, were told is to make note of those.
Government will entertain that, if there are special grants required to meet the disruption caused by the pandemic and to service continuity, we’ll work with the Minister of Finance on those sorts of things. As I’ve said, right now we’re in the tracking and monitoring phase. I’ll be very interested, actually, to see which districts are “ahead,” in terms of spending that they had anticipated but didn’t incur, and if there are any districts that have found themselves in the months of March, April, May and June where they have exceeded expenditures that they anticipated. I’m just simply not sure at this point in time.
D. Davies: Thank you, Minister. Of course, seeing the Minister of Advanced Education online here, as well, kind of leads to another question that I have. We’ve seen, obviously, many changes. Grade 12 students have seen changes in how their graduations looked. I know that there were exams cancelled. Every student was told that they would be graduating.
I guess my question is — I’m sure that this will be canvassed, as well, when the Ministry of Advanced Education’s estimates are up: has the Ministry of Education been in close contact with the Ministry of Advanced Education on how these students coming out of the grade 12 system are going to be intertwining, leaving from one different system and now coming into a system that looks different than it did before? I just wonder what those discussions have been like and if everything has been taken care of.
Hon. R. Fleming: I would be more than happy to pass over to my colleague the opportunity to respond, but I don’t know if that’s allowed. I’ll just try and maybe speak for both of us. The answer is yes. Obviously, we made the assurance that any student on track and eligible to graduate at the moment of the pandemic and disruption would graduate.
We sought to build remote learning supports that would keep those students engaged in learning and focused on courses that they were completing that are really, really important for them based on post-secondary studies that they anticipate enrolling in. We have promised that we would see no interruption in transcripts.
The Minister of Advanced Education helped focus the minds of presidents of colleges, universities and institutions as to the unique circumstances of the pandemic and really got them to make the commitment, which they fully willingly did, that no student should be punished just because they happen to have the misfortune of being in the class of 2020 as it relates to this unusual year.
I’m happy to say that my colleague was able to sort of bring a focus of mind from the university and college sector to really create a culture of generosity. If anything, admissions offices are going over and above in terms of flexibilities and making transitions to higher education institutions next year in British Columbia even easier and more understanding of circumstances.
D. Davies: Again, this question will probably also come up in the Minister of Advanced Ed’s estimates. Has the Minister of Education had any contact with colleagues in other provinces, the Ministers of Education throughout Canada, talking about these transitions? A lot of our students from B.C. will go to post-secondary institutions in Alberta, Ontario or wherever. I’m just wondering — if there’s been some kind of discussion happening within, probably, ministries across Canada — what this transition might look like.
Hon. R. Fleming: The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada — CMEC — has been pretty instrumental in springing into action to coordinate a provincial-territorial level of coordination, knowing that every jurisdiction was trying to, basically, figure out the same things and that we are one country in terms of the transition to post-secondary education. As the member has described, lots of students study out of province, and lots of students come into the province, here in British Columbia, so we share areas of common concern.
What I can tell the member is that almost on a weekly basis, the deputy ministers of the provinces and territories communicate. That’s both Advanced Education and the K-to-12 system. The ministers have had a couple engagements. I haven’t been able to attend all of them, because they have fallen on cabinet meeting mornings, but I have also got the cell numbers of a number of Ministers of Education across the country. Certainly, we have had occasion to have a number of conversations individually, one-to-one, with my counterparts in different jurisdictions in the country.
D. Davies: Have there been any — kind of two questions here — changes to extending any schools, summer school programming and such like that, that have been decided and supported by the ministry?
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for the question. He’ll know that less than half of the 60 school districts offer summer programs, typically. The school districts that typically offer summer school programs, for the most part, intend to carry on but with some modifications. We’re, of course, still in stage 3 as it relates to the school system. So facilities that they would use would have to follow the physical distancing requirements, etc., and all the other protocols.
Some school districts have grades 1 to 7 summer school and senior secondary school courses as well. We’ve asked them to prioritize their summer program offerings, in this unusual year, to focus on kids who have struggled and have complex learning needs, those who need remedial courses and those who need courses to be eligible to graduate.
I don’t have information on what each individual district is planning right now for the member. It may be difficult for me to get it. That’s the beauty of our decentralized education system. But I do know that most of them are planning to continue their summer program offerings, albeit in compliance with the new reality and making it much more targeted on students that need it the most.
D. Davies: Thank you, Minister. Now that the province is in deficit, I’m just wondering how this will impact the ministerial holdbacks.
Hon. R. Fleming: That is not a ministry-specific question. I would encourage the member to request that his colleague who is the critic for Finance ask the Finance Minister. That’s likely where he would get an answer.
D. Davies: Okay, thank you. Does the minister — and, again, I know this is moving; every day things change — have any enrolment projections for each school district that have been updated due to COVID?
Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you to the member for the question. It’s a good one. I think the analysis that we expect at this point in time is that while there are some variables, they may offset one another. I mean, we probably have a pretty good idea on what domestic growth looks like. We don’t know what in-province migration might look like, which has accounted for some of the enrolment growth we’ve seen in recent years. It could be more. It could be less. It could be what we project.
The same goes for impacts — and delays, I suppose — on immigration processing. It could have an impact. By law, districts are required to give an update on their enrolment forecast projections in February. We have required them to give us an additional enrolment update of their projections this July. The reality is that you never know exactly what enrolment growth is until you get the enrolment head count confirmed September 30.
D. Davies: Early on in the COVID-19 crisis the Premier said that he expected no teachers would be laid off and that they would, in fact, likely need to hire more teachers. Does the minister still believe that this is to be the case moving forward?
Hon. R. Fleming: Yes, I do. I do, based on what I have heard in conversation and in public statements by superintendents and school board chairs in districts like Surrey and Coquitlam, where they’re confident that the layoff notices that are required under the terms of their collective agreements with teachers will sort of be a wash, with hiring requirements that they have in the fall. I think that’s what we’ve typically heard.
We have some districts being more prudent than others. Some are projecting that 75 percent of their international student program will remain intact. Some are projecting 50 percent, that sort of thing.
But when you look at factors like teacher retirement, we do have some end-of-career teachers, quite a few of them out there, that are in the sort of 60-plus category. They’re eligible for full pensions and all those sorts of things. There’s a rate of retirement that’s quite predictable, and we have a lot more workforce intelligence that is giving us information about exactly that.
When you look at enrolment growth, as we’ve just discussed, there will be demand for more teachers, both replacing retirees and arranging classrooms to teach more kids in the school system. I think we’ve got a really good supply-and-demand equilibrium right now with the teacher education programs at B.C. universities. New student teachers are coming available and being issued their teaching certificates, so there’s all of that happening. I think that at the end of the day, we will have more teachers next year than we have in the current year, for sure.
D. Davies: The minister briefly touched on retiring teachers. I’ll make this, kind of, two questions. I’m just wondering if the minister has an idea of how many teachers, percentage-wise, across the province will be retiring and if there are any updates — and I know that school districts are probably doing some updates now — or an idea of how many teachers will not be returning to the classroom due to their own choice. I’m just wondering if the minister has those numbers.
Hon. R. Fleming: What I would say to the member is that we don’t expect anything unusual in terms of the fairly stable, predictable rate of retirement of teachers leaving the system because they’re eligible and wanting to retire. We expect that to be constant. As I’ve said, we have a pretty good equilibrium on a new supply of teachers trained domestically.
It may well be the case that, we expect, we’ll continue to see lots of out-of-province teachers wanting to make a career and build a life for themselves in British Columbia as well. We’ll continue to benefit from that.
I think, if anything, we have some new recruitment and retention tools, where the word is getting out. I think there was a sort of bad reputation after wages were held down for more than a decade here in B.C. B.C. is starting to move toward the Canadian average and beyond in terms of the compensation we offer. So we’re becoming more competitive, not less competitive, on wages and benefits.
I would note that the way the final agreement with BCTF and BCPSEA was structured created some good wage grids that will help move the starting salary for new teachers in B.C. significantly higher, so we will actually move from ninth in Canada in terms of starting salaries to fourth highest by June 2022. That’s quite a significant jump over many provinces in terms of what the starting salary looks like.
At the top end, for somebody with a standard BEd degree, the gap between B.C. teacher compensation and Alberta and Ontario is being significantly reduced. Someone with what we call category 5, their salary at June 2022 will have risen to $87,000 and change. That’s a pretty big jump of over $6,000 of the lifetime of what is a pretty short three-year collective agreement.
D. Davies: I know a couple of my colleagues have touched briefly on international students. I know that you briefly just mentioned it as well.
Numbers. I know that the minister is very aware that 3½ percent of all students are international students. That’s 23,000 students across the province. Tuitions range anywhere between $14,000 to $15,000 annually. It’s, overall, approximately $345 million in revenue.
Some school districts, and even my local school districts, are going to be impacted by this. The school districts in Coquitlam has a $36 million impact; $26 million for Vancouver; Burnaby, $23 million; and $18 million for Richmond.
These are possible shortfalls that these school districts are going to have to come up with some sort of a fix for and, again, in short order, as we are already moving into the next school here very shortly.
I’m just wondering what the ministry’s plan is in regard to scrambling assistance for some of these school districts that are going to be faced with some pretty dramatic challenges.
Hon. R. Fleming: We certainly have been working closely with school districts since this revenue risk to, you know, this source of revenue that districts generate. It is important to state that these are not ministry funds. These are own-source revenues at the district level. And it is quite inequitable, because of course, a lot of districts do not have international student education programs.
We have tried to mitigate to the greatest extent possible, under difficult circumstances, because it is a pandemic. We have had closed borders and cancellations of international flights, and our airports look nothing like they did 100 days ago. We have tried to bring as much certainty and clarity as we can from our federal counterparts who, of course, hold the key to admission to this country.
What we have seen that is encouraging is grade 10 and 11 students. Typically, most international students are of a high-school age; they’re here to get a Dogwood diploma. A lot of them have stayed with their host families. They did not return at spring break. They stayed here, and they’re staying here until September. So they’re good. It’s the ones who did return that would seek to come back and continue working on their high school, or new recruits.
What we need from the federal government is some clarity around the issuance of student visas — under what conditions. We have offered, I think, to do this very safely. We are looking at how we can have self-quarantining organized prior to — if anybody does arrive internationally before they’re billeted or residing with a host family.
There are some unknowns at this point in time, but I will certainly keep the member apprised of what we hear from our federal counterparts that will enable us to recover, as quickly as possible, some of the impacts that we may see on international student enrolment.
D. Davies: Just looking at the time, there’s probably time for another one or two questions, maybe. We will carry this off in the morning.
We had talked about retirees and hiring in the fall and such. I’ve been shared with a few stories that teachers are being laid off at the end of the school year but said that they will return to fill required vacancies.
Is the minister able to guarantee that those teachers will have jobs in the fall and, basically, none will have been laid off?
Hon. R. Fleming: I would, again, reiterate what we have heard from school districts and what we have heard from local teachers association presidents. They expect there is a lot of work for members and that layoffs that are issued in respect of rules under the collective agreement will, in fact, in the fall, be teaching positions that will be filled, teachers who will be rehired. There are a lot of reasons for that. We talked earlier about the operating budget of Budget 2020. There is an extra $100 million in the classroom enhancement fund. We’ve got record-low class sizes. We’ve got enrolment growth.
For the things that we’ve canvassed in these estimates that provide some degree of uncertainty around international students, those actually may turn into a significant opportunity for the province. I think B.C.’s reputation as a safe haven and an exemplar jurisdiction for pandemic management is being noticed by parents internationally.
Look at the major sources of foreign students to B.C. Besides China, you’re talking about India, Brazil, Mexico — all places that are kind of exploding with COVID, where families may welcome the opportunity to move heaven and earth, if you will, to get their kids to British Columbia. So we do need clarity on that one.
But the 60 school districts are the employers, and every comment I’ve heard from the employers and many local teachers association leaders is that they expect layoffs that are not unusual, not abnormal — that are, in fact, seasonal and regular — and will lead to the rehiring of their members in the fall.
One last point I would make, though, is that if there were a position or two in a school district where there was somehow a reduction in enrolment and, therefore, teaching positions — or something like that that was unanticipated — there is unprecedented mobility. It’s another benefit, I think, for both parties, the Public School Employers Association and the B.C. Teachers Federation, that came out of the renewed collective agreement. There is more seniority that’s now portable, so there’s less disincentive or penalties for teachers who are in the mid or even late stages of their career. They can move to another district and take all of their seniority with them.
That’s something that both parties wanted. Also, I mean, I don’t expect it will come into play in the context of the question this member has asked, but it is good that government and unions were able to agree that labour mobility for professional teachers is a good thing in B.C. We now have more flexible rules to allow that.
D. Davies: Chair, I’m not sure if we want to go into more questions with two minutes left. Do we have time for one more?
The Chair: Yep, if you can make it fast.
D. Davies: Okay. I’ll do a real quick…. Probably a one-liner to the minister.
Moving into return to school in September, I know there was a release done today. I’ve just kind of glanced at it, haven’t looked at it fully yet — kind of what things are going to look like in the fall. Is it going to be mandatory for all students to return back in the fall, or is it going to be a blended return? Is that still the plan?
I’ll make that my last question.
Hon. R. Fleming: What we have said is, consistently…. We’ve had discussions about the steering committee and all the communications to come throughout the summer. I know that parents are eagerly awaiting the significant updates as we get closer to the end of summer. But we have released the stages document, and we have released some new information, most recently today — a letter jointly signed by me and the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, just on what to expect and when to expect it.
What I advise any parents who, heaven forbid, are still listening to this…. What I will advise in media appearances, and consistently, is that they should register as they normally would with the school system they choose and the institution they choose, as they normally would. I think that’s a message that I, as minister, and school trustees and superintendents and principals and vice-principals…. Everyone is saying: “Look, we’re planning for a strong restart. We want as many kids back in school as possible.”
This will be a science-led decision from Dr. Bonnie Henry. We’ll have more to say about exactly what it looks like in the fall, but we’re planning for each and every possibility.
The Chair: Minister, will you please move the motion?
Hon. R. Fleming: I will indeed. I move that the committee rise and report progress on the estimates of the Ministry of Education.
Motion approved.
The Chair: This committee now stands adjourned.
Members of the public, we’ll see you back at 9:30 tomorrow morning for more review of the budget estimates of the Ministry of Education.
The committee adjourned at 6:31 p.m.