Editor:
I am the father of children who attend school in Canadian Rockies Public Schools at both LGMS and Canmore Collegiate.
I am hoping you realise that education is the single most important way to move a society ahead, or keep it on an upward trajectory. I work in health care and have lived and worked in many provinces and countries. I have seen this for myself, and of course read about it.
Overall, I have been very satisfied with my children’s education at the local level. I have a few comments and thoughts listed below.
I have an issue with fees. I feel that there should be no fees, but am also realistic enough to see that this will not change. However, it appears that fees are again going to rise. This is very unfortunate in that it really affects those families already struggling with making ends meet.
This, of course, in the end, further disadvantages the children of those families and makes it even more difficult to raise those in our society that need the most help, let alone widens the gap between have and have not.
I also have an issue with student to teacher ratios. This again relates to the importance of educating the population. I believe that almost every study will show you that teacher to student ratio is the most important factor when it comes to educating children.
This thought holds true with funding related to special needs. Both my sons have taken advantage of the IPP, and this of course benefits them and in the end all of us.
Finally, I have an issue with funding. I am quite familiar with this in both the post secondary environment and health care.
The bottom line is that you cannot offer more education to more people with less money each year, and decreasing administrative support, (which states to administrators that they are not busy enough), infrastructure repairs, etc. It just cannot happen.
In education, we are beyond realizing cost savings and efficiencies, and to the point where more needs to go in. It is disingenuous to put budget increases to the public, but in reality there is less money because of cutbacks. Honesty is the best policy.
In the end, I often feel that governments and CEOs are mortgaging our future for personal gain or re-election, and this in just not fair to our children. We appear to be good at lip service to caring about the future, but our actions too often do not relay this. As adults, we should be investing in them, even at a cost to ourselves.
I do not believe this to be just a Conservative Party issue, I believe all parties would make similar myopic funding decisions in regards to education. So please take this for what it is meant to be, an open letter pointing out that you have the opportunity to keep Alberta and Canada at the top of the game in an ever challenging world economic environment.
Dave Bateman,
Canmore
