Re: New season for school wars (B.C. Views, Jan. 30)
After reading Tom Fletcher’s clearly biased, pro-B.C. Liberal article on education, one has to wonder if he gets paid by Christy Clark to write this stuff?
Fletcher seems to put the blame on the teachers/B.C. Teachers’ Federation for the “school wars,” neglecting the fact that the current government poured gas on the fire many times in the last 12 years.
For starters, the government illegally stripped our contract of firm class-size and composition limits as ruled by the B.C. Supreme Court. Is this Fletcher’s idea of extending an olive branch?
Rather than negotiate a fair contract with teachers, two times this government has abused the democratic process and legislated contracts.
While she was acting as Minister of Education, Christy Clark attempted to hijack the old B.C. College of Teachers by stacking it with political appointees in a failed attempt to erode the BCTF.
Under the reigns of the B.C. Liberals, money to private schools has increased while public schools have been purposely underfunded, leaving our educator-to-student ratio one of the highest in Canada. By ripping class-size language out of our contracts, class sizes have been allowed to rise.
More than 3,000 teachers have been laid off saving the government about $270 million dollars a year for the last 10 years.
That’s nearly $3 billion looted from B.C. students.
By omitting these government actions, Fletcher comes across as a B.C. Liberal shill rather than the “journalist” he claims to be.
Paul Waterlander
Victoria