Paying for Phys Ed Class
The seed for this idea was sown when I wrote two $11 cheques so that my children could participate in a Hip Hop dance class at school. In turn this led to a memory, now a few years old, that there had been a fair bit of press (example from the CBC) about how schools in British Columbia are charging money to have children participate in what some thought were activities that are part of the curriculum. The Supreme Court of British Columbia voted that school boards would no longer be allowed to do this.
My children are students of the Vancouver School Board. To date we have disbursed about $180 during the 2008/09 school year (and I just got another notice this week for $14.50 to cover the costs of a field trip) for field trips, school supplies, special programs and a school phone directory. I am not including the incessant requests for a buck (or five) for various fund raising activities. Those likely amount to another $20 or so, so far. It does not end.
On the surface hip hop would definitely appear to not be part of the curriculum, I agree, so why the concern? The issue is that the school has made it part of the curriculum. How? By having the five hip hop classes occur during the school's regularly scheduled phys ed classes. If I had decided to not pay the $22 would my children have been deprived of phys ed on those days? Would they have been able to have their regular phys ed class? An other recent example was money to have somebody come in and speak to the class about owls. Was that not part of science class somehow?
The Supreme Court ruling did provide parents an out regarding payment. It is now optional to pay and we are told that the requests are do help defray the costs of the activity. Fair enough...the VSB has no choice, given the way they are currently managed and given their current efficiency levels.
Listen, I think that having someone come to our children's schools to teach them about owls and to teach them different dances is great. So don't misinterpret what I am saying. My beef is not with the amounts nor with the content. My concern is with the way these public schools are funding their activities. I'll lay the blame across three groups - in increasing portions of blame the groups are the parents (myself included, by the way), the school boards and the provincial government.
We the families of British Columbia, the consumers of the education, just accept the service and the status quo. We don't speak up. Not enough of us let our employees (the school board) know what we think about the job they are doing educating our children.
The school boards and the provincial government likely have, as most large organizations, many places where they could find fat to trim, expenses to cut, deadwood employees to fire, etc. Of course I have nothing to back this up. It is just a hunch - though probably a good one.
The provincial budget for education this school year is $5.675 billion for the entire province. Of that about $430 million or so goes to the Vancouver School Board. In the 2007/08 school year that left an approximately $30 million shortfall which the VSB had to close via fees, rentals and other income. I assume this scenario is repeated throughout the province.
So again...the VSB has no choice given the status quo. I just think that we (parents, school boards and provincial government) all need to question the status quo. That we challenge it so that, rather than complain that we need more money, that we look at what we are spending it on and determine whether we really need to ask for more.
Of course we could just have the teachers play soccer dodge ball, basketball, soccer, tag in phys ed class. We could also have the teachers find another way to get the job done on owl education rather than have them pawn it off to someone else.
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