As report card time approaches, teachers are trying to wrestle with another downloaded decision, backed up with no support from the provincial government. The decision to change the entire public school system over to a new computerized data and information system, called BCeSIS, is yet another example of the government’s lack of understanding and heavy-handed style.

Parents may notice changes in the report cards, and, changes in the ways teachers communicate (emailing reports home with the new system is almost impossible), and even changes in the frequency with which some teachers can provide regular updates about student progress to parents since the web-based BCeSIS has a habit of gagging, hanging, losing information and in general, frustrating almost everyone who tries to use it.

Communicating with parents is a major priority for most teachers. Many local teachers have commented that BCeSIS has made the job of getting current assessment information to parents and students far more difficult than it was with the previous programs they used. The provincewide system is not even provincially implemented. School districts all over the province use it in varying degrees and some areas don’t use it at all or have given up on this ‘white elephant’.

The province has spent millions on purchasing the software that is supposed to do everything from records, report cards, attendance and demographics, and downloaded the implementation onto local districts. Local school districts have received no funding to implement the software and have, in most cases, downloaded the responsibility onto teachers.

Teachers have been sent a clear message. Learn the new software and do it on your own time. This is another demand on already busy teachers who would rather be teaching, planning lessons, communicating with parents or coaching. Instead of supporting teachers and students, the government has imposed a computerized system that is expensive, full of flaws, but at some point will allow them to collect data from all over the province (apparently at the click of a mouse if the system works) and use that data to tell the public what a great job they’re doing spending your money and running our province. Meanwhile, classes are overcrowded, students with special needs don’t have adequate support, money for sports and field trips has been slashed — but the new number crunching system will be used. How much did it cost? At this point conservative estimates say $80 million a year.

I know many teachers are frustrated by the new BCeSIS system, I wonder if parents feel the $80 million was well spent? Remember when you receive that report card that the government decided that a new system of number crunching was more important than all the other needs in the system. It is decisions like BCeSIS that allow this government to claim that they spend more on education than ever before. Perhaps all parents could ask the Board of Education here in Okanagan-Skaha to tell the government we’d rather have money in our schools than an $80 million computer program that doesn’t work.

Kevin Epp, president

Okanagan-Skaha Teachers’ Union