Parents and teachers are concerned about the state of K-12

Teachers and parents of students in the capital region are raising alarm about a lack of laptops and dirty desks, a consequence of what they say is an underfunded public education system in BC.

Carolyn Howe, president of the Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association, said classrooms are very different from those of a few generations ago.

“If you went to Campus View Elementary in 1980, you don’t really have a clear idea of ​​what was going on,” she said.

Digital learning is widespread. For about two decades, schools have been integrating students with special needs into regular classes. Today, this is called an inclusive teaching model.

However, Howe said school funding as a share of the province’s GDP has been declining for decades.

The janitor’s working hours at her elementary school have been reduced to just two hours a day, she said.

As a result, the tables where students work on arts and crafts projects, eat and complete assignments are only washed once a week, Howe said.

Teachers concerned about the well-being of their students would take on cleaning duties even though that was actually someone else’s job, she said.

“Many teachers call us, terrified that the conditions they struggled with in the classroom last year will return,” she said. “There is a wide range of needs in our classroom, and one teacher usually tries to cover everything.”

A lack of support staff in classrooms is exacerbating teaching conditions, she said.

Robin Tosczak, second vice-president of the BC Teachers’ Federation and an elementary school teacher for Greater Victoria, said urban school districts are facing some staffing issues that previously only affected rural school districts.

Meanwhile, the parent of a Grade 11 student said there are not enough laptops for all students at Oak Bay High School this year after the school retired hundreds of laptops.

Jen Stewart said her son came home on the first day of school and told her that there was only one laptop for every three students in his class.

Stewart was concerned and wrote to the principal, who informed her that 300 laptops had been removed from circulation for security reasons.

In the past, a class of 30 students might have had 29 laptops and only one or two students would have had to wait their turn, she said.

This is a problem for students who regularly use digital platforms such as Google Classroom for their studies, she said.

“Kids need technology to do their jobs, and we are not funding the technology they need,” she said.

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