Trustee electors can send clear message

Thank you for your excellent article ‘Trustees play critical role in school funding.’ (News, Nov. 5)

The article highlights the impact of provincial underfunding on public schools.You quote SFU education program co-ordinator Colin Chow: “Trustees are essentially the hatchet men and women for the provincial government.”

Frustratingly, this describes our current Greater Victoria School District trustees too well. For the last three years and longer, they have been quietly administering provincial funding cuts by overcrowding classrooms, closing schools, selling public lands and charging students user fees for educational programs. I do not believe this is what electors voted for during the last school trustee election.

Nov. 15 is our opportunity to elect a new Board of School Trustees in Greater Victoria and this time it can be different.

There are real differences between the candidates. Electors need to make themselves aware of what candidates will do in response to provincial underfunding. Will they put pressure on the province to adequately fund our public schools? Will they make restoring provincial funding their top priority?

H.L. Mencken once said “In a democracy the people get what they deserve.” Our community deserves a school board which will insist on full provincial funding to meet the needs of our students, schools and programs.

We don’t deserve hatchet men and women. We need a change in our school trustees.

Electors can send a message to the board and the government that we expect full funding – not overcrowded classes, school closures, or user fees.

Patrick Schreck

Victoria

Setting the record straight on VPEC

Re: Volunteerism vital to our public schools (Letters, Nov. 5)

The letter by retired teacher/principal, Maurice Preece was misleading. As someone who mentored against disingenuous and false information he now resorts to the same.

His assertions that the Victoria Public Education Coalition (VPEC) is a front for the Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association are incorrect. I sit on the executive of VPEC and am a retired clergyman. I’m not and never have been a teacher – not that I consider teaching a profession made up of self-serving people. VPEC is a majority ‘lay’ organization with people from all walks of life – including some teachers.

His second error was to suggest that VPEC and its three trustee candidates would stop parents from volunteering in their children’s schools. Nothing could be further from the truth and Mr. Preece should know better than to suggest it.

The central issue is the provincial government’s underfunding of public education. Education Minister Shirley Bond and her associates have used every trick in the book to strip resources and funding from school districts, forcing school boards to make up the difference through school fees, fundraising by PACs, and resulting in understaffing of special programs and activities.

Translated, that has meant parents and teachers either must volunteer their services or programs can’t be offered.

Rev. Dale Perkins

Victoria

Electric car concerns surely overstated

Kudos to Esquimalt council for approving the use of electric vehicles (News, Nov. 7).

Had the naysayers gathering to reject this idea given the matter a moment’s thought, it would surely have occurred to them that, although bicycles make even less noise than electric vehicles, we have not, as yet, seen any epidemic of blind people hurling themselves in the path of passing bicycles.

Future generations will regard those who fear electric vehicles with the same pitying bemusement that we reserve for the lawmakers of a previous generation, who thought that horseless carriages ought to be preceded at all times by small boys waving red flags.

Robert Smith

Victoria

Mayoral candidate’s vision puzzles reader

How is it that after 35 years in Victoria, I have to bear witness to what seems to be a worsening situation in electoral politics here? Rob Reid is most certainly part of the problem.

How, I wonder, can a man with a successful business and long history of involvement in Victoria, have virtually no grasp of the issues? Is it that perhaps the issues don’t resonate with him at home in Oak Bay?

I wonder if in Oak Bay taking homeless people jogging a couple of times a week to help them get on with their lives seems like a completely reasonable idea.

Is it acceptable for the potential mayor of any city to acknowledge that he doesn’t have a firm grasp on the political process?

It shouldn’t be the case in Victoria, Oak Bay or anywhere else for that matter.

I’m even more baffled by his suggestion that businesses start a “one-on-one mentoring/sponsorship program …” as if they bear some sort of special responsibility for this problem.

Perhaps if he took a good look at the empty storefronts or the price per square foot in town, he might come to realize that it’s already pretty expensive to run a business here, and maybe it’s not prudent to be asking someone for taxes plus the cost of his great idea.

This city needs a leader, someone who has a grasp on the problems and experience in dealing with them. A leader who will fight to get the federal and provincial support we so desperately need right now.

A leader with actual ideas on how to finally get us there after such a long ‘Lowe.’

Darryl Clark

Victoria