Skip to content

LETTER: Surrey trustees must stop trivializing support cuts

71343dobie-charlene

The Editor,

Re: "District eliminates $8M deficit," the Now, June 24.

There has been chronic underfunding to the education system for the last decade, resulting in a steady decrease of services to students.

To have the amount of support staff downplayed in the recent article is an insult to our members. Does anyone believe that you can recoup $4 million by cutting 20 support staff positions and reducing supply budgets?

The true story of cuts to support workers in Surrey's school district is at least 25 full-time equivalent education assistants, three speech language assistants, three visual language interpreters, at least seven full-time equivalent clerks, four information technologists and our welding department.

Some of these cuts will result in members laid off to the street.

Cuts are coming from programs. LST and BASES programs have seen a large decrease in EA hours. Students will not be getting as much speech language assistance. The loss of clerk hours will directly impact the StrongStart programs.

We applaud trustee Charlene Dobie for her stand against the raise to the trustee honorarium.

We understand that it would be a difficult task to cut jobs because the government will not fund the system adequately, to have to take services away from students, increase workloads to some and lay people off to the street.

Dobie is an education assistant herself so she knows all too well that the average EA works with many students in an average day and makes less than a school trustee.

As trustees, we need you to advocate for the students of Surrey. We need you to stop trivializing the cuts and to raise your voices, and be seen taking a stand that this system cannot endure any more cuts.

Janice Meehan, President CUPE 728