Public education: our future

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/09/2023 (710 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BOTH the Manitoba Teachers’ Society and the Manitoba School Boards Association have distributed lawn signs this election asking voters to support public education. What does that mean, and why is it important?

First it means supporting a school system that proved itself to be strong enough and resilient enough to meet the challenges of the pandemic.

Schools and the people who staff them met and adapted to every challenge; remote instruction, social distancing, masks, contact tracing and notification and more. This wasn’t easy. But it demonstrates that our public education system is full of resourceful staff committed to our students.

During the pandemic we were all in the same storm, but we weren’t in the same boat. Many of our students did not fair well.

COVID-19 took a toll on their learning, their mental health and their hopes for their own future. Over time, schools will help those students achieve, return to health and their dreams but our schools need adequate support to do that.

Supporting public education means giving schools decent budgets and paying the people who work in them fair wages.

Manitoba needs to have per pupil funding that is higher than most other provinces. Manitoba doesn’t have the larger urban centres that Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia do that allow for economies of scale.

It does have costs associated with a challenging geography that results in many small and remote schools and with a substantial number of children disadvantaged by poverty. Financial support for Manitoba schools needs to be healthy and dependable from year to year.

That support has to be sufficient to ensure that students get the help they need when they need it and to ensure that demands on staff are manageable so that they can consistently give their best. It needs to provide reasonable class sizes, especially in the early years.

Nutrition programs need to be well supported and cost barriers like school fees, rental fees for musical instruments and charges for lunch supervision and field trips need to be eliminated. These should not be viewed as “frills” or add-ons, but rather essential elements of a high quality, province-wide, public school system from which everyone benefits.

Public education is a partnership between parents and professional educators, a partnership that cares for, and assumes responsibility for, “our” children and not simply “my” children. Public education builds community. Schools are at the heart of most communities.

It’s where children make lifelong friends and parents connect. It’s where children learn to take turns and be kind to one another.

It’s where they learn about climate change and Truth and Reconciliation so that they can contribute to making our community and our world better.

It’s where they are exposed to differences be it language, race, skin colour or sexual orientation and that people are people and that everyone should be treated with respect.

Public education is a dream, one where each and every child finds success, purpose and a future with promise. It is a dream we work toward but have yet to fully realize. The actions of our provincial government bring us closer to that dream or move us further away. In recent years funding cuts, the pandemic and the threat of Bill 64 have taken us further away from that dream.

As Tom Brodbeck has noted (Tax cuts vs. restoring services, Sept. 18) the current provincial election campaign offers voters a stark choice related to the restoration and enhancement of public services such as health care, education, and infrastructure and the taxes that such programs require.

Supporting public education in this election means asking candidates about their party’s education platform and voting for a party that is genuinely committed to fair and consistent funding, committed to believing that our schools are the heart of our communities, and committed to making a difference for kids especially for those who most need that a difference be made for them.

Brian O’Leary is the superintendent of Seven Oaks School Division. Jon Young is a professor emeritus in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba.