Dear Editor:
The Burnaby NOW recently reported on the board of education budget meeting. School staff and parents are rightly concerned about elimination of elementary music programs and other proposals. It may be that non-enrolment, more than any other factor, is the cause of cuts. Let us resist being dumbed-down. Here are some numbers from government sources that are essential to informed debate about education and money.
How many students are there? Burnaby's 2012 school-age population age five to 18 was 29,578 according to B.C. Statistics.
How many attend public schools here? Only 23,112 school-age students are enrolled as full-time equivalents (FTE) in Burnaby public schools: 22,878 in "regular" plus 234 in "alternate" school.
So about 6,466 of Burnaby students are not enrolled in Burnaby public schools. This is about 22 per cent of the school-age population aged five to 18.
How much money is each child worth to the district? $9,033/year is the average per FTE student funding from the province to the Burnaby board of education (we no longer have "school boards").
How is this funding determined? Here are the four main factors:
1. $6,900 base per student funding, the same for all B.C. standard school enrolment.
2. adding in money for unique district characteristics
brings Burnaby up to $7,142/year/FTE enrolment. This money pays for: enrolment decline, higher than average staff salaries, geography and weather factors, etc.
3. add in money for "vulnerable" students based on statistics regarding the percentage of low income, separated parents, new immigrants, children in government care, etc.
4. add money for each student with unique characteristics: ESL $1,340, aboriginal $1,160, special needs - disabilities and gifted - $36,600 (level 1), $18,300 (level 2) or $9,200 (level 3).
How much is lost due to non-enrolment? $9,033 X 6,466 = $58,407,378/year. Or $7142 x 6,466 = $46,180,172, if you exclude funds for unique student characteristics. These numbers - $46 to $58 million - will be somewhat inaccurate but are needed for informed discussion.
How does Burnaby compare? Burnaby's $9,033 per student is near the provincial average of $9,491. It is surprisingly higher than Vancouver, Surrey, Coquitlam, New Westminster; and surprisingly lower than West Van and North Van.
Average per student funding ranges from a low of $8,685 in Abbotsford to a high of $29,057 in the Stikine District.
Is any enrolment up? We now have 970 international students - up 319 over four years. Burnaby district's website says it "caters to" fee-paying international students, even providing a special user-friendly multilingual website: www.study
inburnaby.ca/support.
Where are the non-enrolled students?
Some are enrolled in public schools elsewhere.
Others are in enrolled in independent schools, Distributed Learning programs, or registered as homeschooling. These students receive less, much less, little, or even no funding at all.
Why are so many Burnaby students not attending Burnaby public schools? It's time elected trustees and the minister of education talked to taxpaying families not attending their local public schools, found out why, and catered to them.
After all, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - including rights to equality in funding - which is the legal basis of the current contract dispute between the B.C. Teachers' Federation and the government, applies to all of us, children and parents as well as education personnel.
Helen Ward, Burnaby
