Dear Editor,
Sadly, letter-writer Education Minister Peter Fassbender has submitted a form letter justifying his government’s law-breaking actions, with no direct reference to local conditions [Government’s job is balance, Feb. 18 Letters, Langley Advance].
Just lay blame on others and propose no immediate solutions.
Balance a provincial budget at the expense of identified special needs students who lack necessary supplementary learning support.
Ignore this government’s dismal record of delivering some of the lowest per student funding in Canada.
No reference to overcrowding on the Willoughby slope, and talk instead about declining enrollment.
No mention of neglect in the delivery of counselling, health, and social support to socio-economically needy schools in inner-city locations.
Dismiss parents’ widespread dissatisfaction that their children cannot excel in a classroom environment that presents such composition challenges that the teacher’s attention is sucked routinely away to deal with a diversity of challenges – the mentally or physically challenged, the learning disabled, the autistic, the gifted, the mentally ill, the love-deprived and sometimes abused at home or in group home, and the list goes on.
With a government record so abysmally demonstrated for decades, in terms of child protection, and one of the nation’s worst provincial records in terms of identified child poverty, this minister ignores the opportunity to immediately shore up the mess at the front line of a social delivery system: the classroom.
Dave Hall, City of Langley