6 Tuesday, October 7, 2014
The Langley Times www.langleytimes.com
Funding conundrum
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Willoughby high school prompts much chatter The question of new schools in Councillor Charlie Fox said: “I Willoughby heated up last week, can assure you, when you know all as the Langley Board of Education the facts, we are working in harrevealed that the construction of mony with our School District 35 new schools will be more challengcolleagues to respond to the need ing in the future. moving forward.” The ministry of education has Councillor Michelle Sparrow stated it is no longer accepting fivewasn’t quite as optimistic. year capital plans, which in the FROM THE “How can we on council be expast have allowed for longer-term pected to continue to vote to applanning for new schools and addiprove new Neighbourhood Plans Frank Bucholtz for the Willoughby area, with now tions to existing schools. In addition, the ministry wants knowing for certain, there will be school districts to pay for more of the capi- no new schools to accommodate the stutal cost of new schools, with much of that to dents even if the growth continues in Wilcome from land sales of surplus school sites. loughby? In my opinion we can’t, given The big challenge in Langley will be in this information.” Willoughby. While a new middle school Fort Langley-Aldergrove MLA Rich Colehas just opened, the number of students man has also weighed in on the issue. continues to overwhelm the space availIn a letter to the editor (see page 7), he able. Nowhere is this more noticeable than stated “Funding will be available in the at R.E. Mountain Secondary, which has an future once a proper business case can be additional 300 students this year. made and is not dependent on any preMountain is now a Grade 9-12 school, scribed formula or contribution. While thanks to the opening of Yorkson Creek provincial funding is a significant compoMiddle School, but there are far too many nent of any new school construction, the students for one high school in Willoughby. business case includes an assessment of During the board discussion last week, the school district ability to contribute, trustees were told there is $4 million avail- given their financial and overall asset base. able (in local funds) to build a new high School districts are important stewards of school in Willoughby — a school that will public assets and a close and detailed excost at least $60 million. amination of their entire asset base is an The discussion at the board table spilled important part of this business case as we over to a liaison meeting between the look at funding options.” Township and board of education last The bottom line from all the comments week. The two Township councillors who is that there is an ongoing effort to provide were at that meeting had lengthy posts at least a high school in Willoughby, but on Facebook after that meeting, address- how it will be funded is far from clear. ing the challenge of building new schools Sparrow’s comments about continuing to when the population is growing rapidly. plan for future growth, in light of the chalTheir comments are posted on The Times’ lenges of building new schools, also merit Facebook page and are well worth reading. some thought.
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The discussion over who pays for new schools and how soon they will be built boiled over quickly last week, once word got out that there has been a dramatic shift made in the school construction system. This shift is not at all surprising. School construction is a large capital cost for the provincial government, and Premier Christy Clark has been unusually clear and even blunt — both in her cabinet appointments and her public comments — that every single local government, board, Crown corporation and agency which depends on provincial funding is under the microscope. In the case of school districts, most of them are land and facility-rich and cash-poor. Most have been losing students for years, yet have kept schools open with classrooms only partially full, or have closed buildings for school use but held on to the property. Langley was losing students for more than a decade, but started to grow in recent years as Willoughby began to develop more intensively. The province has funded construction of three elementary and one middle school in Willoughby, but the crunch has hit hardest at the high school level. Even with the Sept. 22 opening of Yorkson Creek Middle School, R.E. Mountain Secondary (now a Grades 9-12 school) is hopelessly overcrowded. A new high school is needed. Yet most high schools in Langley have room for more students. The trouble is, few are anywhere close to Willoughby. The district also owns several buildings which are either closed or severely underutilized. These include County Line, Bradshaw, Aldergrove, James Anderson and Murrayville schools (closed), Otter School (used for an alternative program) and Lochiel School (underutilized for a home schooling program). Together, the value of the land and buildings of these seven schools is in the many millons of dollars. In addition, Willoughby Elementary is located at a very busy intersection and it would likely be best if it could relocate to a somewhat quieter street. That land could be sold or used for a high school. Alternative use of school properties needs to be explored in more detail.
of the week
Will the verdict in the Surrey Six trial discourage some young people from getting into drug gangs?
Answer online at www.langleytimes.com
The online effect they
Facebook, and other social media, have played supporting roles in the last few elections. But the 2014 municipal election may be the first where they can be seen to have a direct effect on the outcome. It’s already had a direct effect on one young aspirant to the mayor’s chair, who declared his intention to run Friday morning and withdrew Friday evening, after some inappropriate Facebook posts he made last year came to light. That’s a lesson learned for the young man, and one way social media has already affected the outcome of the Nov. 15 municipal election. Then there is the recent dissolution of the TimeforchangePenticton Facebook page and the resulting development of the Educate Encourage Empower #Penticton group. These are people talking about the change they want to see in politics, which is a good thing and will make them a force on Nov. 15. Still, watching the discussion on both those groups, you see how often opinion gets substituted for fact, and how fast discussions get hijacked or devolve into personal attacks and other forms of abuse. It’s nothing new. This kind of behaviour is a well-known phenomenon for online discussions, dating back to the beginnings of the internet and the old IRC chat channels. In 1990, Mike Godwin jokingly stated what has become known as Godwin’s Law, that if an online discussion goes on long enough, the likelihood of a comparison to Hitler or Nazism becomes inevitable. We’re not suggesting any of these local forums have gone that far, but the lesson here for voters, as social media becomes evermore a source of political information free from checks and balances, is to do your own research. Most importantly, never vote based on someone else’s beliefs and judgements. Learn to separate opinion from fact, and remember that even the most well-meaning people may be sharing inaccurate information. — Penticton Western News
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