BC Budget 2024: Surrey teachers call on province to ‘show us the money!’

The Surrey Teachers Association (STA) is disappointed that B.C.’s latest budget did not include support for education in Surrey.

Lizanne Foster, the associations’s vice-president, says it’s been a long time since any government has prioritized funding for the Surrey School District.

“There’s been a steady decline in how education is being prioritized by the government,” she says. “I have watched the same thing over and over again, whether it’s BC Liberals and BC NDP.”

Foster has been in the STA since 1996, and tells CityNews that in the past, funding of education was at 3.3 per cent of GDP, but currently it’s been hovering around 1.7 per cent. She says that last spring, the school district said, “If by some magic, we had 10 new schools built today, we would still have overcrowding.”

Foster is concerned that the sheer volume of people moving to Surrey is an absolute tsunami and claims that the province is doing nothing to solve the problem of overcrowding in schools.

“Right now we have classrooms running at capacity,” she said.

She tells CityNews that lack of capacity to deal with overcrowded classrooms, with all the different needs that students have, lots of other things are falling through the cracks.

“We also have a shortage of teachers, EAs, support workers and so you have a situation in the classroom that’s quite unattainable,” she said.

“It’s impossible to teach because of all the various needs in the classroom.”

The finance minister said Surrey can expect news ‘in the coming weeks,’ but the STA is not optimistic.

“We are quite cynical right now, because we know it’s election year, and we’re quite used to being used for photo ops. Often these come with a lot of fanfare but if you look at the details in the announcement, it’s either money that’s previously allocated and they’re just reannouncing it,” Foster said.

Foster claims that the province will make a big deal out of adding a few more classrooms to existing schools, when what the district actually needs is at least 10 more schools “as of yesterday.”

“Unless they announce that there’s going to be 20 new schools in Surrey, nothing is actually going to solve the problem right now.”

The STA says it does not matter how well informed the education minister is, the people they have to appeal to are the minister of finance and the premier, because the minister of education can’t do much if schools are not part of the budget.

Foster tells us that currently there is a $350 million gap in what the government provides to school districts.

“Districts are not given enough funding to pay for all the supports they’re expected to provide for all students,” she said.

“Why do districts have to go into the operational budgets, the different kinds of budgets in order to meet the need?”

She says “it’s a constant trajectory every year” because cost of living goes up because needs goes up.

“Show us how important schools are by providing us with the means to provide all those services for students, because right now, we’re doing it at the cost of teachers’ mental health,” she said.

“Show us the money!”

With files from Michael Williams.