To the editor:
The enrolment data is accurate, as is the decline in "instructional" days from 186 to 176 per school year and not at the financial cost-cutting promised by VSB employees! There has instead been a cost to students deprived of essential instructional periods. See past letters when even a secondary student wrote to complain of the effect on his education.
The above facts demonstrate the need for public debate on policies designed and recommended by senior management to the VSB trustees. They are examples of the unquestioning consent granted to managers by the various COPE, NPA or Vision-dominated boards.
Public education is big business (albeit funded by tax dollars) and productivity is measured by student achievement: the number of students graduating, the number going on to post-secondary schools, the number of awards and scholarships won. Increasing numbers of students dropping out, transferring to private schools, or granted "leaving certificates" because they failed to maintain the requisite 50 per cent in required subjects are examples of a decline in productivity. That is what is happening in VSB despite the millions of dollars in extra funding given the VSB for special programs.
Management has been ready to lay the blame on the quality of inputs (students) and on front-line service people (teachers). This is useful reasoning only if these two factors can be changed. In this case the inputs/students cannot be changed and the front-line service providers (teachers) can be improved only with better training, decent leadership and determination to put student interests first.
It is rare for management to analyze its own decisions as the cause of low productivity and this has certainly been the case with VSB over the past 15 years. A business succeeds or fails according to management skills, management knowledge of what makes a successful business, and leadership. VSB through its senior management teams and its elected trustees has done a great disservice to the children of the district through ignorance, poor management and disinterest in creating policies to create successful schools. Public dialogue is indeed needed.
Ann Watson,
Vancouver
