Surrey parents and teachers are ratcheting up a pressure campaign aimed at saving stand-alone alternative education centres — but the province’s education minister shows no sign of stepping in.
The Surrey School District is planning on closing several stand-alone learning centres, alternative schools that cater to kids who have struggled with education for a variety of reasons.
“There is a reason that learning centres were created in the first place about 40 years ago: there are vulnerable, at-risk students for whom mainstream schooling doesn’t work,” Surrey Teachers’ Association President Lizanne Foster said.
“They are talking about how they’re achieving goals they never thought were possible, and some of the graduates talked about how they completed school and went on to university and it really changed the course of their lives,” added Anne Whitmore, chair of the Surrey District Parent Advisory Council.
“Many of these students have experienced bullying, exclusion, and a lack of supports in mainstream school.”
The district is planning on going from five down to two learning centres by the end of the school year, citing cost pressures and expiring leases.
The district says the programming from the shuttered learning centres will be replicated in separate and specialized programs at several mainstream Surrey schools.
“We have been in contact with Surrey district and we have full assurances that he services currently being provided to the students are going to be provided in the new location, complete with the wraparound services,” Education Minister Lisa Beare told Global News.
“These locations are going to be separate from the school community, as the students have asked for.”
Beare gave no indication the province could step in to preserve the learning centres, saying operational decisions are fully in the hands of individual school districts.
She also pushed back on funding arguments, saying her government had increased operational funding to B.C. school districts by 40 per cent since it took power in 2017.
“We have continued to provide Surrey School District increased funding year after year since we formed government,” she said.
“They have over a billion dollars in operating and we are providing almost a billion dollars capital (funding) this year.”
Whitmore said the province and the district are looking at the budget question in the wrong way.
She added that the district won’t be able to replicate the learning environment back in mainstream schools, adding that many students left those schools for traumatic reasons in the first place.
“How do you put a price on the future and the safety of a child? That’s really what we are trying to say here,” she said.
Foster said more than 5,000 people have signed a petition to keep the learning centres open, with many signatories sharing stories of how the facilities changed their lives or helped them graduate.
She said she has one message for the education minister.
“Come meet us,” she said.
“You don’t need a review. We can tell you what is needed in schools.”