Original article dated April 27, 2010 found here.
Vancouver school trustees voted Monday to shorten the school year and lengthen school days slightly as part of a plan to deal with an $18.2-million shortfall in 2010-11.
While Monday night's special public meeting dealt only with the length of the school year, trustees will meet again Thursday to vote on the overall spending cuts required to deal with the shortfall.
Under consideration are a wide range of measures, including the elimination of 113 teaching positions in areas such as special education, band and strings, ESL and school libraries.
On Monday, the board agreed to cut the school year by 10 days, which includes extending spring break by a week. It also includes lengthening the school day by 16 minutes for elementary school and 18 minutes at the secondary level. The board estimates that by doing so, it can shave about $1.4 million off the shortfall.
School officials say the changes to the school calendar will only last for a year and then will be subject to review.
On Monday evening, most of the school trustees said they "reluctantly" agreed to support altering the school calendar.
Only one trustee, Ken Denike voted against the motion, saying there was no benefit in keeping students in classes for longer days.
"If you've ever been around an elementary school, around the bell closing at the end, about 10 minutes before the kids are lined up at the door ready to go. We're adding 16 minutes to this? What is going to be the value of that? By the third month those kids are worn out and adding that time is going to be not productive from an educational perspective."
Patti Bacchus, chairwoman of the Vancouver board of education, said trustees are having a tough time with the cuts and said the blame rests on the province.
"While I am not particularly happy with this, the provincial government has put us in a position of facing bad and worse choices and I am hoping this one is less bad than some of the others," she said.
"Relative to what we are facing on Thursday this one was difficult but I'd say what is coming up is more difficult and we are going to have some really tough decisions to make." Trustee Sharon Gregson explained that the board dealt with the length of the school year on Monday, separate from the rest of the cuts, "because we have to meet the required 30-day period of notice regarding adopting a local school calendar and the results play into the budget process."
Dozens of parents and their kids from Jamieson elementary school crowded the school board building on West Broadway before Monday's meeting to protest the planned cuts to the strings program.
They handed Gregson a petition with more than 200 signatures pleading to keep their program off the chopping block.
Reg Chow, chairman of the parents advisory committee at Jamieson, said 250 kids are involved in the strings program, the largest school program in Canada for strings.
"If we don't have this, our kids won't have music. We think that the future of kids in Vancouver should have this opportunity."
After playing a melodic tune on her violin, 12-year-old Zoe Wu made an impassioned plea to help save her music program.
"It's horrible that they could cut our strings program because it means so much to us," she said.
"I hope that we made enough noise to convince the school board to keep the strings program."
Ten-year-old Joshua Lee, who has played the violin for two years, said every day when he wakes up he looks forward to the strings program and that if it were gone he would be very upset.
The budget shortfall comes as funding to the Vancouver board increases by $500,000 to $443.1 million for the coming year.
The government has said enrolment in Vancouver is projected to decrease by an estimated 108 students.
Earlier this month, Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid appointed B.C.'s comptroller-general to review how the VSB spends its money.
Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland has been asked to monitor the budget development process and financial forecasts and write a report by the end of May.
Last Tuesday, about 1,000 concerned people marched to MacDiarmid's constituency office on West Broadway to protest the lack of education funding.
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