Rally for Strong Education in the Vancouver School District

Date: Friday, April 23, 2010
Time: 2:30pm - 4:00pm
Location: Vancouver School Board
Street: 1580 W Broadway, cross-street is Fir St.
City/Town: Vancouver, BC
View Map

FUNDING FOR OUR FUTURE:

Next year, the Vancouver School Board faces an $18.12 million budget shortfall. This will affect all students and teachers in this district. Specifically, specialty or alternate programs and systems are proposed to suffer the most.

These include:
1. ESL programs
2. Programs promoting diversity (Race relations programs and PRIDE)
3. Programs for students with special needs (including the GOLD program, and many outreach programs for disadvantaged kids and youth)
4. String and band programs (including cutting all funding for any elementary school band programs)
5. Enriched education programs (i.e. PW Mini School, PG Mini School, etc.)

There will be multiple teacher lay offs, and closure of certain schools has been proposed. Over the past eight years alone, the VSB has made a total of $51 million in cost reductions. The cuts cannot continue forever.

For more information, go to www.vsb.bc.ca

At 2:30 this Friday, there will be a peaceful, student organized rally meeting outside the VSB. From there, we will move to the Minister of Education Constituency office (1245 West Broadway) in order to call for further funding for our education.

This rally is meant to show our support for our education and our belief that more funding is needed in order to have the best education and future we can. Feel free to make polite placards, with slogans such as Funding for our Future, or Stop Education Cuts. Members of the Prince of Wales, and hopefully the Byng Arts, band will also be playing to give a message that children appreciate these music programs.