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By Dylana Kneeshaw

SCHOOL DISTRICT FUNDING

Programs, building needs and educator improvements: What the budget means for Kamloops public schools

Feb 26, 2024 | 5:30 PM

KAMLOOPS — According to budget figures released by the province last week, over the next three years the B.C. government plans to invest $968 million to support growth in public school enrolment, hiring more teachers and support staff, and increasing public school wages.

Capital spending for schools is listed around $4.2 billion dollars, which does include a new elementary school in Pineview Valley for the Kamloops area.

“While we’re appreciative of the number, seeing it be very large, there will be many districts and obviously communities as well who will be chomping at the bit to see what that will actually mean for them locally,” Kamloops-Thompson School District Board Chair Heather Grieve tells CFJC Today.

Grieve says the BC Builds program push for housing to be built in response to population growth also reiterates the need for more schools, such as a secondary school in Aberdeen, an elementary school in Batchelor Heights and more schools in other areas of the city.

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“It does make us kind of wonder, I think, a little bit around what will be the capital impacts for our region,” she said. “We know that we continue to have significant capital pressures.”

The school board also feels it would be helpful to have timeline details around capital commitments.

“I would love to see it if we were in a position where we knew where we were in the queue,” explains Grieve. “(Hearing) ‘We have this one on the list of our priorities,’ but where do we actually land provincially? What schools are ahead of us, and what school would be the next one to be funded? And that’s not really a system that we (currently) work in.”

Programming-wise, Grieve says the district is glad to see a variety of education, student nutrition and mental health support funding streams sustained or improved.

“Seeing that be refreshed and renewed and seeing that the Feeding the Future funding is going to be continued is a huge thing for us to see in the budget,” note Grieve.

On the operational side, Darcy Martin, the president of the Kamloops Thompson Teachers’ Association, expressed relief that overall education funding is going to be maintained. Martin says, however, an even larger increase is needed to address several areas.

“As public education often finds itself, we’re grateful that they’re maintaining spending and they’ve added enough to maintain what we have,” said Martin. “But what we have is not even an adequate minimum and that’s really frustrating.”

Martin describes the education system as “painfully squeezed.”

“Squeezed for space, they’re squeezed for resources and supports, they’re squeezed for qualified staff at every level, and it’s not sustainable,” she says. “And that drives where we currently are in the province with an acute teachers shortage.”

The KTTA says it hopes additional recruitment and retention funding can be kicked in at some point to get more prospective teachers into the profession and keep existing educators in the field.

“(We want funding that) really targets teacher education programs to draw people in, to look at loan forgiveness, to look at housing and recruitment and all those kinds of retention pieces so that we have qualified teachers and qualified staff across the district, and in every district,” she adds.