In a civic election campaign dominated by the mayoral and council races and party machines, two former members of COPE hope voters will respond to a new party focused solely on education.
“I was a COPE candidate in the last election,” said Gwen Giesbrecht, who is running to be a Vancouver School Board trustee along with Jane Bouey for the Public Education Project. “It was a little disheartening for me, a strong education advocate, how little opportunity there was to really talk about education. You spent a lot of time talking about… my opinion of this council candidate or that mayoralty candidate.”
Giesbrecht came in eleventh in the 2011 race for nine trustee positions. Bouey, who served two terms as a COPE trustee, placed 12th.
Bouey wasn’t interested in following in the footsteps of school board trustee Allan Wong who left COPE and joined Vision Vancouver in the last term.
And she doesn’t want Vancouverites to vote for trustees by party based on their reactions to that party’s record on city council. Public reaction to Vision’s split from COPE in 2005 is why she believes the party lost its majorities on school board as well as council and park board.
Bouey says the notion of forming a party focused solely on education has been bandied about by teachers and parents since about 2007. Wide-reaching concern about the Vancouver School Board’s revised gender identities and sexual orientation policy this spring and labour unrest between teachers and the provincial government that stretched into September convinced organizers it was time to launch the Public Education Project.
“Public education is at a real crossroads,” Bouey said. “I don’t know how much more it can take.”
Bouey and Giesbrecht want the provincial government to add more money to public education. Bouey hopes seeing a party focus only on education will affect funding decisions.
In her first term as trustee, from 2002 to 2005, Bouey argued the COPE-dominated school board and the community secured the only real funding increase for education seen in the last 14 years. “It’s because of the work the board did in conjunction with community,” she said, noting the money also arrived in a provincial election year.
“Every vote that the Public Education Project candidates get in this election sends a strong message to the provincial government that parents and citizens in Vancouver care about public education,” Bouey added.
The Vancouver School Board’s September 2014 submission to the select standing committee on finance and government services notes spending per student in B.C was $725 less than the national average, according to Statistics Canada figures. If that average was matched it would mean $398 million more for B.C.’s 550,000 students in kindergarten to Grade 12 public education.
As a parent of a child with special needs, Bouey also wants to improve support services for similar kids.
“That’s one area where I feel like I utterly, utterly failed,” Bouey said.
She is proud she helped bring about the VSB’s original sexual orientation policy, strengthened anti-racism policies and helped expand all-day kindergarten and hot meal programs during her first term. She’s pleased she helped tighten the focus on improving aboriginal education in her second term, when she served as vice-chair for the board of trustees, and she continues to work on food security as a member of B.C.’s Farm to Schools advisory committee.
Giesbrecht, past chairperson of the Vancouver District Parent Advisory Council and current chair of the Britannia Secondary Parent Advisory committee, is concerned about the fundraising performed by parents, the school fees they pay and how she said it leads to inequitable opportunities between schools and students.
Both she and Bouey worked on the Justice Not Charity group that held forums on family poverty and the privatization of public education.
Giesbrecht serves as president of the Britannia Community Services Centre board of management and wants to see more community services integrated with schools.
Financial support for the Public Education Project comes from unions, parents “and other community members who care about what is happening in our schools,” according to Bouey.
The Vancouver Elementary Teachers’ Association has endorsed all seven Vision Vancouver and both Public Education Project candidates for the nine school trustee positions.
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