About Us
This website was created by Dawn Steele and Helesia Luke. Dawn and Helesia aim to facilitate the sharing of information and organizational support through this website. They have named this initiative a ‘coalition’ to reflect the growing group of thousands of parents and public education advocates who started coming together on the Facebook site, Stop BC Education Cuts, to support each other and coordinate grassroots local actions to stop another round of education cuts in BC.
Dawn and Helesia are long-time public education advocates and helped to create Vancouver’s Save Our Schools Network in 2002.
Contact us:
- email: bcpubliceducation(at)gmail.com
- phone: 778.858.0553
About the Education Funding Crisis
At the core of this unprecedented funding crisis is the growing number of downloaded costs that the province has so far refused to cover in provincial education funding grants.
These include
- increases for teacher salaries and benefits under contracts that the province negotiated;
- new provincial carbon tax and carbon offset charges;
- increases to provincial MSP and WCB premiums;
- implementation costs of new provincial requirements like Bill 33 and all-day kindergarten; and
- general inflation, which the provincial funding formula also does not cover.
BC school district secretary-treasurers anticipate a $300 million funding shortfall for BC school districts this year to maintain status quo.
The provincial government will present its budget for 2010-11 in early March and has to date refused to consider new funding to cover these new costs, leaving districts projecting the largest deficits seen in a decade, and cuts that will seriously impact students.
