It was back to school for a host of would-be North Vancouver and West Vancouver MLAs April 27.
The North Vancouver school district hosted an all-candidates forum at Carson Graham Secondary on the subject of public education. The questions were submitted by attendees, many of them teachers.
The invite was extended to all candidates running in North Vancouver-Lonsdale, West Vancouver-Capilano and North Vancouver-Seymour, and drew all but two candidates. North Vancouver-Seymour’s Jane Thornthwaite was the only Liberal candidate who attended.
The B.C. Green Party and the NDP took the opportunity to attack the Liberals over what they characterized as 16 years of austerity budgets, ongoing labour disputes and a costly court battle with the teachers.
“To treat education seriously, we need to actually seriously fund it. That’s why the B.C. Green Party is committing to extra funding in the amount of over $4 billion over four years, as soon as we get elected,” said Richard Warrington, Green candidate in North Vancouver-Lonsdale.
Bowinn Ma, NDP candidate in North Vancouver-Lonsdale, noted schools have a lot less to offer today than they did when she was growing up here in the 1990s and said her party is also pledging more funding.
“There were always supplies in the cupboards. There were teaching assistants on hand. There were always special classes for students who fell behind and special programs for students who wanted to get ahead,” she said. “Parents have enough to do on a daily basis than to fundraise for basic school supplies that should be provided by the government.”
But Thornthwaite defended her party’s record on education, pointing to the 2016 Programme for International Student Assessment standardized test results.
“We are the best in the world. We are No. 1 in reading. We’re second in science and we’re sixth in math. This is British Columbia ... and this was an international study,” she said. “This was all done with significant increased funding over the years with decreased enrolment, and the graduation rates have never been higher.”
The two Libertarians, North Vancouver-Lonsdale’s Donald Wilson, and party leader/North Vancouver-Seymour candidate Clayton Welwood, had the unenviable task of marching right into the belly of the beast, a public school gym, to sell their idea on a voucher-based public/private hybrid school system, in which parents and students choose which schools they want to go to and fund.
When asked about the most pressing needs B.C.’s schools are facing, and how the Libertarian party would address them, Welwood rejected the premise of the question.
“This isn’t really a question for me to answer. This is a question for you, the students and the parents, to answer. The whole problem with the system we’ve set up is that somehow it’s up to politicians or school administrators or school board representatives to determine the answer. It shouldn’t be,” he said.
Wilson put the Libertarian philosophy in a much more stark light during his opening remarks.
“Every year of my entire adult life, the size of government has grown faster than the economy. Taken mathematically and indefinitely, this is literally a recipe for totalitarianism,” he said, adding that government can’t be relied to fix all of society’s problems.
Getting down to specifics, district superintendent and debate moderator Mark Pearmain added his own question to the mix, querying the parties on where they stand on capital funding for the full replacement of schools at risk of collapse in the an earthquake, particularly Handsworth Secondary.
In the last term, the Liberals funded seismic upgrades to older schools, but the added cost of a full replacement fell to the local school district. In North Vancouver’s case, to build a new Argyle Secondary, that meant selling closed school properties for redevelopment.
North Vancouver-Seymour Green candidate Joshua Johnson, a 19-year-old who only recently graduated from Argyle, said his party would support full replacements, because they tend to be cheaper in the long run and can be done quicker than upgrades.
“It was clear to me the school should have been replaced about 10 years before I got there. There’s asbestos in the walls. Every time it rains, the ceiling leaks,” he said. “I strongly support funding replacements for schools rather than seismic upgrades. I think it makes a lot more sense in the long term.”
And, he said, school districts should be building new schools bigger than the ones they are replacing.
Thornthwaite responded to the question by quoting from a letter from a ministry of education staffer, acknowledging that the “seismic mitigation of Handsworth Secondary” plans were still being finalized and that a decision for funding from the province was pending.
“I understand from the school district that they have submitted that on time and are currently waiting for the minister to get back to them,” she said.
For West Vancouver-Capilano NDP candidate Mehdi Russel, the question was personal and he accused the Liberals of foot-dragging.
“All my kids went Handsworth and my youngest is still at Handsworth and I’m worried about her safety. We support replacing Handsworth. I’m quite surprised, as a wealthy community, why do we have to postpone and say ‘this year’ or ‘another five years?’”
On the matter of reducing or eliminating the per-student funding the province currently gives to private schools, none of the parties showed an interest.
