Getting elected to public office is overwhelming at first and if you’re lucky, you get advice from more experienced colleagues to help you manage your new role.
One of the best tips I got was to make sure I went to the Vancouver School Board’s (VSB) adult education graduation ceremony. A couple of seasoned trustees told me it was the best annual event in the district.
The Globe and Mail’s Gary Mason wrote a wonderful column five years ago titled “The School of Second Chances.” He captured the joyous, triumph-over-adversity spirit of the event which he described as “more profound than anything you experience at your standard high-school grad.”
I went on to attend seven of them over the years and had the honour of speaking at most. I shed joyful tears every time.
I spoke at regular high-school grads too. I loved those events. Grads are celebratory, hopeful occasions brimming with gratitude, relief and excitement.
But the adult education grads took that up several notches. The valedictorians’ stories were unique and awe inspiring. Some had endured perilous journeys from far-flung lands — where in some cases they couldn’t attend school — to make their way to Canada where they struggled to build new lives.
Some had taken time out to care for family members — their parents or their own children. Some had overcome illness, addiction or other setbacks and were now determined to get on with their education and pursue dreams. So many dreams — all involving post-secondary programs.
Many had juggled family responsibilities with jobs and still managed to excel in their adult education courses. Those courses gave them the prerequisites they needed to get into programs they needed to make their dreams of becoming doctors, scientists, teachers, nurses, lawyers and more come true.
Their adult education courses open doors to their futures. Many had already been accepted into programs and had earned scholarships to pay their way.
Sadly the thriving program Mason described has been diminished in the past few years.
That’s right. In this troubling era of rising inequality, lack of affordability and so many people joining the ranks of the “working poor,” access to funded programs that enable adults to acquire the high-school credits they need to go on to post-secondary education or training programs has been blocked for many.
That’s a social justice problem, according to adult educators like Hollie Williams, the president of the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers’ Association’s adult education committee.
She says government’s 2014 cancellation of its “education guarantee” is a formula for “how to hold someone back in life.” Williams says single mothers, aboriginal women and new immigrants are overrepresented in adult education programs and are disproportionately affected by government funding cuts.
“Women who’ve put their education on hold to care for family members discover their high-school credits may not be enough, or may not be recent enough, for them to get into post-secondary programs. Then they discover they’re going to have to pay $550 a course to complete them. For some, that’s just not possible,” says Williams.
“Recency” requirement
These cuts don’t just affect students who didn’t take the right courses or get good enough marks. Applicants to programs like the B.C. Institute of Technology’s (BCIT) Medical Laboratory Science program must have completed their biology, chemistry and math within the past five years.
Otherwise they need to do it again, and it will cost them $550 for a course that was fully funded until two years ago. So even if they got straight A's, if they did so over five years before, they have to do the courses again.
The Education Guarantee — no money back for “graduated adults”
In 2008 the B.C. government created the “education guarantee.” It was one of their better moves. It promised free high-school upgrade courses for adults through B.C. school districts and public colleges.
Thousands of students were able to complete or upgrade high school courses they needed to access post-secondary programs that would improve their employment prospects and enable them to move up from mini-wage, part-time work.
It was so successful that enrollment exceeded expectations. But in 2014 government abruptly made a mean-spirited and short-sighted decision to renege on their “guarantee” and announced that students who’d graduated at any point would have to pay for any courses they needed to get into postsecondary programs.
Then-Education Minister Peter Fassbender argued that students who’d graduated should contribute something toward any more courses they needed. As if upgrading your skills and getter a better job that enables you to support your family and pay more income tax isn’t a contribution.
The funding cancellation went into effect in the spring of 2015 and led to a dramatic drop in enrollment in VSB adult education courses. It didn’t just affect graduated students.
With fewer of those, the board voted to consolidate its programs into fewer sites and close some completely (disclosure — my Vision Vancouver trustees colleagues and I voted against the cuts and consolidations).
That meant fewer time table options at fewer locations, which tends to mean they just don’t work for some students who are juggling jobs and family responsibilities.
Last spring was the first year in many they didn’t hold the legendary graduation ceremony — replacing it with a few smaller ones. There just weren’t enough students for the traditional event that Mason wrote about and that was the highlight of trustees’ duties.
I doubt there will be again unless we see a reversal on the funding position.
The Vancouver Sun’s outstanding recent series on the working poor did an excellent job of showing how people — especially women — get stuck in low-paying jobs and how that affects their kids.
Reporters Tracy Sherlock and Lori Culbert took an in-depth look at the systemic roots of the problem and the potential solutions — which include adult education and affordable child care and housing along with increased disability and welfare rates.
Killarney Secondary school graduate Priscilla Ong is one of the lucky ones. She graduated in 2011 and took a dental assisting course at Vancouver Community College.
After working in the dental field for three years she decided she really wanted to take the B.C. Institute of Technology (BCIT) medical technician program. But it will cost her.
She needs to take several high-school science courses and a math course to get accepted. She’s scraping the money together from some savings she has and will get some help from her parents, but she wonders what others do if they don’t have that kind of support.
The declining enrollment numbers suggest they don’t take the courses and don’t get into the programs. They get stuck.
Mindy Xie isn’t so lucky. She’s taking funded English-upgrade courses through the VSB, but is worried about the costs of other high-school upgrade courses she’ll need next. She came to Canada from China with a bachelor’s degree in fashion design and wants to go to Langara to study business and continue on to a university program.
She says many employers don’t accept degrees from China. She doesn’t understand why new immigrants can’t get support to complete their Canadian high-school education so they can continue on to higher education. I don't either. It's a penny wise, pound foolish government decision that needs to be reversed.
It may get worse
While the B.C. Teachers’ Federation’s (BCTF) massive Supreme Court of Canada win means hundreds more teachers will be hired from government’s “classroom enhancement fund”, there’s nothing there for adult educators, who are employed under a separate contract.
A VSB staff report (attached to this meeting agenda) last January set the stage for more cuts or consolidations with its dry observation that “capacity is under utilized” due to fewer students signing up for classes.
I raised the alarm about the impact of cuts to date and what might be to come in a column in January. I fear we’re about to find out when the VSB Superintendent releases his proposed 2017/18 VSB budget plan, due out tonight, April 6. (Watch here for updates.)
Any more cuts or site closures would be devastating for the struggling program and the students who need them.
It doesn't have to be this way
With the provincial election just over a month away, ask the parties and candidates what they’re doing to ensure the door stay open for thousands of British Columbians who need to enroll at the school of second chances. Tell them to open the doors.