Click this link to submit your ideas for the provincial budget 2022. Anyone can sign up to either present or you can submit a video or written submission.
https://www.leg.bc.ca/content-committees/Pages/Finance-Budget-Consultation.aspx
Below is my submission:
My recommendations for budget spending are all connected to increase spending in public education. The output of our education system touches every aspect of politics, welfare state budget spending and society.
Education – For the Children
All children are vulnerable. They are dependent on us and when they are trapped in situations, they cannot get what they need, we fail them. Not investing in children is a high-risk game of chance with certain predictable long-term costs. Education touches everything. It touches all state welfare systems, and is the human system that has the largest impacts on the quality of socialization for our society members. We are all connected and through the relationships and interactions of true inclusion in schools with all the members, it creates a synergistic effect that cannot just be purely linked to a financial cost. However, the atrophy of our education system can certainly be connected to high costs down the road. When education experiences scarcity, administration will make decisions based on costs which have already negatively affected students, increased discrimination and ultimately led to human rights complaints. Investing in the inclusion of all children so everyone has access to an education and belongs to their community is the smartest investment a country can make.
Education – For the Staff
The demands on teachers and support staff are increasing not decreasing. They are burning out, leaving the profession and people who would have considered entering the field are not even entering. The profession is being treated like the ugly ducking while demanding it win a beauty contest.
Teachers were on the front lines during a pandemic, risking their own health, their family’s health, carrying the weight of society’s most precious potential. We need teachers to feel appreciated, to feel worthy, to feel valued by their communities and that will transfer into teachers who are more motivated, more emotionally secure, more intellectually driven, for them to support the wide range of diverse needs in each of their students. The relentless slow drip of pandemic stress is wearing down even the most seasoned educators. There are mental/emotional costs associated with employees that translate into financial costs the government will bare later on.
The EA profession needs the financial investment it is so long overdue. The rippling effects of exclusion is costing the government money and lost opportunity it may not realize. Educated parents are not entering the workforce because they have to stay at home because their children are unsupported. I know of people have turned down job offers to work in Canada because their disabled children have more education support in the US. This has even been reported on in the media.
Education – Society
Our health-care system takes care of people, but they need to be sick first. Our criminal system processes people, but they need to commit a crime first. Our roads are built and infrastructure created, but we need population growth first. Education is not reactive. It’s preventative. Education that meets children where they are, will decrease poverty, will decrease crime, will decrease hate, will decrease vulnerable populations, and will support, nurture, and grow the society we are all desperately craving and dreaming about. The government cannot be reactive when it comes to children and education. Our society is completely dependent on the next generation and then the next generation and the next. If we don’t invest in them now, we hurt us all. Playing catchup later on will always be more expensive. Always.
My public writings about the education budget.
http://www.speakingupbc.com/2021/07/16/systemic-impacts-of-scarcity-in-education/
http://www.speakingupbc.com/2021/07/16/the-impending-education-tsunami/
http://www.speakingupbc.com/2021/07/16/the-unpredictability-of-public-education/