STRIKE!
The BCTF and the BC Government are at it again. I do wish the teachers the best, of course. However, I do also agree with Christy Gordon when she mentioned that the BCTF and the BC Government will have to come up with a strategy to not have such a disruption to schooling every time they work towards a new bargaining agreement. But what is that strategy, and is it even doable in BC? Sadly, I don't think it is, but let's travel down the rabbit hole together.
Here's a thought: I recently talked to a new Grade One teacher who mentioned that she had 24 Grade One students, two of which had Ministry numbers; she found it very hard to effectively teach that class (though I am sure she did a great job). Yes, she was a new teacher, but having to spend so much of your time with a few students can take away from being the best teacher you can be for the entire group. If teacher salaries begin to take money away from other areas that impact education, or even force schools to close down, then smaller class sizes, better working conditions ,etc., could become bigger issues again - there is only so much money to go around.
So how do we fix this? As I recently heard on CBC Radio (Kamloops CBC station, May 28th at 12:30 pm), one might think that shutting down private/independent schools would help, as those schools receive a grant worth 50% of the funding a public school would receive per student; so if we shut them down, the public schools would then receive that money as well. However, as Dr. Peter Froese from the Federation of Independent Schools mentioned during the same talk, moving all the students from the Independent school (12% of the student population I believe is what he mentioned are enrolled in Independent schools in BC) to the public system will actually cost the school district more money (that 12% of the student population is funded by only 5% of the populace). As well, many of the independent school teachers would then be moved to the public schools and their salaries would then have to be funded by the ministry. The long and short of it is that the public system would need more money to cover the influx of newer students and staff which the government grant itself would not cover. Where this money would come from is clear: tax dollars. Let's look at it this from the flip side: one way to save money in the public educational system would be to move more students into the private sector. This seems to be happening on its own anyway as more and more parents are sending their students to private schools (http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/857131/private-schools-in-b-c-bucking-trend-of-declining-enrollment/).
Now of course, you can't simply "move" students to an independent school: this needs to be a family choice. Also, you cannot increase government funding for independent schools as that will increase the needed money, thus increasing taxes again. Perhaps the issue itself is with the taxes: how much of our tax dollars actually goes towards the education system per family in BC? Trying to figure out the taxes paid by each person in BC is almost impossible, as many have stated (http://retirehappy.ca/does-half-your-money-go-to-taxes/). Let me use myself as an example: I have five children, and each child gets a school grant of $8,603 per student this year. That means that my five children can bring a school $43,015 in funding from the Government. I know I don't pay this much in taxes on my income, but with all the other taxes I pay (as well as all the other income the Government gets), I guess in some way this money must be there (and more to cover the other publicly funded jobs, such as health care).
So, does the money add up? Is Dr. Froese right? Well, here's a little background and some number crunching to test this all out: according to the Ministry of Education (http://www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2013/03/operating-grants-maintained-per-pupil-funding-highest-ever.html) there are a total of 541,618 FTE (full time equivalent) students in 2013-14. Total grants given for all of these students in BC would then be $4,659,539,645 (this is a very close number to what the 2012/13 Ministry PDF shows at https://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/independentschools/is_resources/funding_rates_march2012.pdf; I will use the 2012 numbers from this point on as they are quite close). As well, according to the above mentioned documents, there were 68,127 students in private schools in 2012 (http://www.brentgranby.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/2011EdFacts.pdf), which is around 8% of the populace (I think the 12% mentioned by Dr. Froese must include all privately held schooling (not simply Tier 1 and 2 schools who are partly funded by the Ministry). How much did independent schools actually get per student in 2012? Per student, according to the 2012 model, in the area I live in independent schools received $3999 for this current year, so let's use $4000 per student as an average for BC (this is not completely accurate, but it will make my point well). This would mean that in total (68,127 * $4000) the Ministry would have paid $272,508,000 to independent schools in BC. This sounds like a lot, but it is only around 6% of the total money paid out to schools. as you can see, the 8% of the populace only transfers 6% of the money from the Ministry funding to independent schools. That leaves a 2% profit to the Public school system (money they save and do not have to spend on students who are being educated). Adding the other students who are not at all being funded by the Ministry but are at schools (not supported at all by the Ministry) could increase this to the 12% mark, as Dr. Froese suggests, and this would save even more expenditure for the Ministry.
The long and the short of it is this: yes, independent schools actually save the public school system money. I would suggest that increasing funding to the private system (which would lower tuition for some schools) and thus allowing more students to enter the private school system (allowing choice) could actually save the public education system even more money (there would have to be a bit of a balancing act, but of even a 1% more increase per student of funding to private schools attracts even 3% more of the students to the private school system, that would again give another 2% increase to the public education system budget).
But, and here's the caveat: independent schools all have an agenda, and as many of them are religious in nature, this plan would now fall flat on its face. Percentage wise, there are still about 50% of the population in BC that have religious affiliation according to current BC Census, so there may be an appetite for this. However, the tuition cost for independent schooling would be a large deterrent, thus shrinking that 50% pool into a smaller number. In fact, if we were to consider that the upper middle class in BC (those families making more than around $50,000 annually) is only around https://moneygenius.ca/blog/middle-class-income-canada of the population, it may well be that only 12% of the population could actually afford Independent schooling in BC.
So, I guess we simply travelled down the rabbit hole and looked through the glass at an alternative world that will most likely never be.
