---

Surrey school district superintendent Mike McKay has gone public.

Recently, McKay went to the media in Surrey to point out that the district needs—not wants—$250 million. This money would go toward building two new high schools and four to five elementary schools, and would begin solving the city’s notorious portables crisis.

Surrey’s school district, like the city, is still growing rapidly. McKay argues that we need a “made-in-Surrey” solution.

Frankly, we have a made-in-Surrey problem.

City council, dominated by Surrey First, has continued to approve virtually limitless development despite knowing that there has been no new capital funding for Surrey schools since 2005.

Mayor Dianne Watts sees no reason to slow or delay the rapid development, which usually houses young families with young school-age children, even in neighbourhoods where schools are already overcrowded and portable use is rampant.

Surrey is one of the few school districts in the province that is still seeing significant enrolment growth year over year. As a result, the severe funding cuts handed down to school districts across the province are having a particularly cruel impact on Surrey’s students, where enrolment steadily continues to increase.

Without any ability to raise money, Surrey’s board of education has argued that high schools, like Earl Marriott (where students staged a protest walkout last week) and Lord Tweedsmuir, should adopt a staggered, longer-day schedule.

But students, parents, teachers, and the rest of the school community are just plain fed up. Switching to an extended-day schedule, just like installing portables, is a Band-Aid solution that lets the government off the hook for their failure to fund schools.

The provincial government is not fulfilling its responsibility to fund new schools, and Surrey students are paying the price. If Surrey keeps turning to Band-Aid solutions, the provincial government will never own up to its responsibility and provide Surrey with the cash for school construction.

McKay is right that we need a made-in-Surrey solution to the made-in-Surrey education crisis.

What we need is school trustees who will get the job done. Trustees who will fight for new school construction dollars and take real steps to address the embarrassing number of portables in our city, instead of continuing to accept the funding cuts handed down by the provincial government year after year.

But we also need councillors who are willing to work with developers that will work strategically to link new development projects to the funding of schools and other infrastructure.

When Bob Bose was mayor, development permits were withheld until funding was in place for a new school. This wasn’t anti-development, as some claimed at the time.

Rather, this forced developers and realtors to join students, parents, teachers, and support staff in lobbying for new school funding and the results were astounding.

During the 1990s, record numbers of schools were built. The current council—Bose excepted—couldn’t dream of making this connection today.

Twenty years later, Surrey once again has a portables crisis.

To some, the answer is obvious.

Stephanie Ryan,
President
Surrey Civic Coalition

---