While the province continuously states that Surrey's schools receive plenty of funding and they are still playing catch-up from decisions made under the previous government eight years ago, those statements are not cutting it for the school board.
"The current government, the NDP has been in power here in B.C. now since 2017, and I think they need to start looking at their own record in terms of what they are providing towards public education and stand on those merits or lack thereof," Surrey school board chair Gary Tymoschuk said during an interview with Peace Arch News on Tuesday morning (May 13).
"It was almost nine years ago now that the previous Liberal government was in power. Perhaps there were some shortcomings in that period of time, but they鈥檝e had a long period of time now to make progress on that."
Tymoschuk was speaking in response to comments made by Premier David Eby at the end of last month, when Eby sat down with Peace Arch News for an interview on Surrey's school issues. In that interview, Eby pointed blame yet again to the former Liberal government for not investing more in public education during their time in power.
"When we formed government, we had one of the lowest per-student funding levels in Canada. Now we have one of the highest; we've dramatically increased per student funding well in excess of the rate of inflation," Eby said.
He did, however, acknowledge that Surrey faces immense pressures with not just schools, but in all infrastructure areas due to population growth in the province, especially south of the Fraser River.
"There are two things that can be true here. One, school boards are facing the pressure of inflation just like everybody else, and the other is that we expect school boards to manage their budgets within the funding we provide to them while maximizing the educational experiences of the young people they are responsible for," Eby said.
"But also Surrey has seen a hugely disproportionate investment in new school construction, expansion, more than 10,000 seats, and we're going to do even more."
To Tymoschuk, this only makes sense given Surrey being the largest district in B.C. and by a "significant margin."
"Things the provincial government does not cover are increases to hydro, increases to the heat, the Fortis bill, increase to supplies, they don鈥檛 cover necessarily the specific inflation in those areas," he added.
"And then quite often government will come out with directives 鈥� for example, I got an email from the minister of education shortly after she became the minister to make sure that we are doing our part with regard to cyber security and we had a conference call on that. I asked them 鈥榃ill there be money for this?鈥� and the response was 鈥楴o there won鈥檛, you need to figure it out yourselves.鈥� So those are not covered within the budget."
Surrey is facing a $16-million budget shortfall, leading to many cuts throughout the district, affecting students and staff. From bus service cuts, to ending, learning centre closures, cutting of up to , another and more, many programs and services are feeling the pinch.
To the board, all of this pressure comes from the direct lack of adequate funding from the province, they've stated many times.
Many schools are even struggling with affording enough paper through the funding they receive from the district based on their student population. This has even led to $5,000 worth of printer paper and $5,000 worth of paper towels to several schools, through the Surrey Fire Fighters Association.
"I heard the paper story and thought 'What the hell is going on?' and looked into that and found out they were just inappropriately distributing the resources that they have. There's enough paper for the Surrey school board," Eby said.
"I do understand, and the school board's right to advocate for additional resources for students. There's no question that additional funding would mean additional services available for students, but it's also true that the school board is seeing a record level of per-capita funding that they haven't seen before.
"I would encourage the Surrey school board to look carefully at budget decisions that they're making and where they're putting their money to ensure that kids are supported in the classroom."
To hearing this statement, Tymoschuk let out a laugh.
"We do, that鈥檚 exactly what we do, thank you Mr. Premier, appreciate the advice," he quipped.
"I鈥檓 not really sure what he means by that, but that鈥檚 obviously what we do in our budgeting for several months, and we try to make the decisions we hope will have the least amount of negative impact on the most number of students, and that鈥檚 what we鈥檝e tried to do all along."
The board chair says this is leading to "innovative" changes upcoming in Surrey to create more school space for students, an ongoing issue.
"Over the years, we鈥檝e built elementary schools and secondary schools on large pieces of land and in many cases, one-storey elementary schools. Well, those days are gone," Tymoschuk said.
", and those are the kinds of structures we鈥檙e going to have going forward. We鈥檝e got to go up and we鈥檝e got to do it on smaller pieces of land."
More concrete details will come at a later time, he added, saying currently the plans are still being developed between the district and the provincial government.
While there are disagreements, some positives from Eby's plans and promises were seen by the board.
Eby also spoke about the newly announced legislation that, if passed, looks to reduce red tape and speed up approvals for infrastructure projects. Additionally, he said he's been speaking with the minister of infrastructure, Bowinn Ma, on standardizing school designs to "build them fast and more affordably."
"Any time we can try to eliminate or significantly reduce red tape, that鈥檚 a good thing," Tymoschuk said in response. "That鈥檚 great legislation, that鈥檚 fantastic, but the fact remains, there鈥檚 still no new money coming forward for some much-needed infrastructure for the City of Surrey."
The premier reaffirmed one of his election promises, which is to ensure educational assistants in all K-3 classrooms across the province. This work is being rolled out right now, he said, adding that other plans are coming soon.
In particular, he noted a strategy from some school districts on the Island to hire and retain EAs, which has proven to be a challenge.
"This process also involves rolling out a before and after school program that allows EAs to work the full eight-hour shift as opposed to just part-time and have to have another job, which makes it really hard to keep and hire these EAs."
Funding for this initiative will be included in this upcoming budget, he noted.
Another promise he says the public will see from his government is the construction of schools alongside the construction of homes to reduce capacity pressures on existing schools, which in Surrey, are nearly all overcrowded.
"We see that pressure in Surrey. You can see it in hospitals, you see it in traffic, in schools," Eby acknowledged.
"We're not in that place yet in Surrey, we're still playing catch-up with the massive growth we've seen. ... Our goal is still to eliminate portables in Surrey."
To the district, this is good news 鈥� and news they've been waiting on for a while.
"That鈥檚 been one of our complaints over the years," Tymoschuk said.
"We see new subdivisions and new homes going up, still happening in Surrey, of course, and the schools aren鈥檛 coming alongside at the same pace. The neighbouring schools end up becoming over-populated before we have that new school, so I think it鈥檚 a great idea and I would certainly support that."
