Dear editor,

As well as causing chaos and stress for many students, parents, and staff, bad decisions by five school trustees will soon put the career prospects of future SD71 graduates in jeopardy.

Until now, abundant course choices and high-quality teaching at Highland, Vanier, and Isfeld have enabled students to try a wide range of courses, identify career interests, set goals, and graduate well-prepared to compete successfully against top students from across Canada for university and college admission, scholarships, apprenticeships, and jobs.

Those days are about to end.

Turning Lake Trail into a fourth senior school will soon force all SD71 high schools to cut crucial academic, arts, pre-trades, and job transition electives, diminishing students’ learning opportunities, their motivation to graduate, and their ability to succeed.

Smaller school populations can be beneficial for elementary and middle schools, but are disastrous at the senior secondary level.

Here’s why.

Under the B.C. government’s inadequate funding formula, principals are forced to consider cancelling any course with fewer than 15 to 20 students to prevent oversized classes elsewhere in the school, where the norm is 30 per class.

By 2010, the retention of 200 Grade 11 and 12 students at Lake Trail will reduce the Grade 11 and 12 cohorts at the other three high schools below the danger point, causing the termination of courses that many students require for university, college, apprenticeships, and entry-level jobs.

To protect secondary program choice and quality, the 2005 Trillium Report on SD71’s future recommended running just two senior schools. Perversely, these five trustees have mandated four high schools, at a time when their own enrolment projections call for continued decline. All students will be deprived of essential opportunities but, as an example, consider the negative consequences for academic students.

The trustees’ blunder has jeopardized academic students’ basic right to have access to Physics 12, Mathematics 12, Calculus 12, Chemistry 12, Biology 12, Geology 12, Geography 12, French 12, Literature 12, and History 12 in their own high school.

Already, with 150 students in Grade 12, Isfeld offers three of these courses only in alternate years.

When its Grade 12 cohort drops significantly in 2010 because of Lake Trail, more senior science and humanities classes will either go on life-support, or simply disappear.

Similar course cancellations will occur at Highland and Vanier, and Lake Trail itself will never come close to offering all the academic courses students need.

Acceptance to a faculty of science requires high grades in English 12 plus four other specific senior academic courses. The board’s ill-conceived scheme will leave many students, including those aiming to become scientists, engineers, doctors, nurses, or dentists, without enough course credits to even apply for university admission.

As a “solution” to this mess, the district will tell students to take the cancelled senior academic courses by correspondence through NIDES, which until now has served as a convenient alternative for younger students who are ill, home-schooling, or travelling.

The teachers at NIDES are capable, but most are generalists assigned to teach multiple subjects and grades.

Even worse, the lack of daily face-to-face classroom interaction will undermine students’ ability to gain the confidence, depth of understanding, and grades they need in highly challenging senior courses.

At a time when trustees should be strengthening course options, educational standards, and real-world relevance for senior students, trustees Proudfoot, Dawson, Charlesworth, Rowe, and Grinham have weakened them, but they will not even acknowledge or discuss these problems, let alone solve them.

They seem to have lost sight of the key objective of our schools: to produce graduates with a clear career vision, and the motivation, confidence, skills, and knowledge to pursue it.

Voters can take back public control of our schools by electing trustee candidates Barr (Area C), Goldberg (Comox), Fowler (Area A), Weber (Area B), and White and Caton (Courtenay) in the school trustee elections Nov. 15. These thoughtful, competent individuals are all committed to listening to the community, solving problems, and graduating students who are well prepared to succeed in their chosen fields.

Brent Reid,

Courtenay