NEW PATH FOR EDUCATION NEEDED AFTER PANDEMIC
School system needs to be community hub, Jennifer Reddy and Rory Brown write.
Although technology allows many of us to connect during these unprecedented times, this crisis has shown us how absolutely crucial the in-person relationships of education are, and we can’t forget that as we move forward. Jennifer Reddy and Rory Brown
Hopefully, some time in the months ahead, B.C. and our school system will enter the POST-COVID-19 era. In Vancouver specifically, with a good deal of diligence and thoughtful hard work, we will courageously and empathetically move toward rebuilding and reconnecting with students and families inside the brick-and-mortar buildings at approximately 118 sites across the city.
Now, more than ever, is a time for advocacy. With students learning from home, educators are increasingly aware of the varied and complex home lives children and youth are sometimes faced with, including parents/guardians working from home, unsafe homes, food insecurity, job loss or precarity, physical distancing, and the unknowns of COVID-19. It is no surprise kids are being impacted and it’s also no surprise that stress, anxiety, fear and distress are on the rise.
We must think carefully and openly about what reconnection looks like. We must be prepared to make some changes. After almost 20 years of school underfunding, structural upheaval, facility renewal questions (think seismic needs) and soaring property values that changed our neighbourhoods, Vancouver schools need some help.
Despite these long-term challenges, educators across the city have risen to the challenge of COVID-19 and are providing creative and inspiring opportunities and reaching almost all of the city’s children. Teachers are learning new software with little training, maintaining critically important connections with students, and implementing new curriculum in real time. Support workers and other school staff are connecting with students and their families in creative ways across our district.
We are hearing loud and clear that connection is of utmost importance to children and youth, to connect with each other and supportive educators. Without the physical walls of the school, this critical connection is increasingly important to maintain. But, as we know, there are serious gaps in educational service that predate COVID-19 and we must tend to them. Now is the time, and education is just the place to start.
The once-mighty and educationally inspiring food program in our schools is in tatters. It’s sad but true that some students in our communities come to school with not enough food in their bellies.
It’s true that during the COVID-19 closure the school board has been providing meals to many students in need. As economic recovery unfolds in the coming months and, likely, years, this will need to continue and increase.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Vancouver schools rose to the challenge with a wide variety of programs and services that offered meals made in-house to students who arrived hungry. These sorts of solutions were creative, varied and award-winning. This can and needs to happen again. Our school gardens should feed children, unionized school board employees should prepare meals using board facilities, and the food we serve students should be of the highest nutritional value.
Students in low-income neighbourhoods, from precarious family environments, or with varied learning abilities have difficulty connecting and are feeling left out of the opportunities that are being offered. To fix this during the COVID-19 closure of face-toface classes, the Vancouver School Board has made an effort to provide access to devices and connectivity, but COVID-19 has shown that a far more robust structure, rooted in equity, is needed on an ongoing basis. Further, although technology allows many of us to connect during these unprecedented times, this crisis has shown us how absolutely crucial the in-person relationships of education are, and we can’t forget that as we move forward.
We don’t know all of the far-reaching effects of the economic collapse that COVID-19 has wrought. What we do know is that even before COVID-19, Vancouver had an extremely difficult time recruiting and retaining teachers. Although the recent completion of contract negotiations between the NDP government and teachers attempts to help, there is no sign that the underlying problem of reasonably priced housing for teachers and other education workers has abated.
It’s time for a conscientious and immediate examination of non-market housing and childcare options for people who want to work in Vancouver schools. The Vancouver School Board has the land available, and with fulsome discussion of the possibilities, some imagination and in particular some publicly owned land, the board has the means to contribute to much-needed housing stock to the city. The public’s perception is that the community school near their home is populated with children from the surrounding community. Unfortunately, that’s not true. Families commute (mostly from east to west) and it’s time to ask ourselves if families travelling across the city to attend a public school is best for children, the city or the climate. We know the answer: it’s not.
Motivated by an ethic of competition between public schools, the Liberal governments of the last decade passed ill-conceived legislation that allowed families to cross the city to attend a public school far from their home. This has created situations where neighbourhoods are hollowed-out by the speculative increase in property values and have schools enrolling children from across the city. All the while, the schools near where those children actually live feel the threat of school closure lurking each year. It’s goofy. This is exacerbated by situations where families can’t get their children into the kindergarten in the school across the street. It’s a mess and kids deserve better.
The solution to all these challenges, on a structural and administrative level, is to return to far more open and community-based decision-making structures. We need to return to dedicated advisory committee meetings where members of the public can share their issues, ideas, and concerns, and where trustees can engage and debate fully the challenges we face in our school system — in public. Our school board must be a place where debate occurs openly and with curiosity, with shared goals of improved educational outcomes for the children, youth and adult learners of our city, and where the community is afforded the agency of participating fully to find solutions for the difficult work at hand.
In a POST-COVID-19 Vancouver, the public school system needs to be a wraparound institution that residents turn to as one of the hubs of their community — for education, care, connection, information and services. It’s been that way in the past and with strong collective leadership it can be that way again. As a cornerstone of democracy, a robust and locally governed school system in Vancouver exists as more than a preparatory institution for post-secondary life.
Local schools that offer comprehensive, well-rounded services for all learners — special education and otherwise — is the goal, and it is possible.
In POST-COVID-19 Vancouver, it will be essential.