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qball

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    Sunshine Coast
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    duhh,... Canucks Hockey

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  1. Wedding present from the Canucks?!
  2. Yet that's exactly what has happened!!! All through the 80's and early 90's teachers signed collective agreements with very small or virtually no salary & benefit increases in exchange for improvements in class size and composition conditions. During the same period, many other public sector unions bargained significant improvements in salary and benefits. Then the Liberals come in and illegally rip up the teachers' collective agreement, and we're now faced with a scenario where we gave up money and benefits for better class size and composition, and now have neither...
  3. I love the sweeping generalizations you throw around! Please enlighten us, what exactly do you have for qualifications &/or experience in education, that you use for your basis of reform? I hope it's more than the typical "I went to public school for 13 years, so I know what's wrong with the system and how to fix it"... Here's something that you clearly don't understand - the BCTF is a UNION. Their primary role and responsibility is to advocate for the wages and working conditions of their members. The BCTF is no more responsible for reforming the education system, than the Teamsters are responsible for reforming the province's transportation system... That being said, the BCTF has done a lot of research on effective education systems around the world, and has made numerous recommendations about how to improve the system in BC. In terms of the old/lazy/ineffective teachers you repeatedly refer to, every school district in the province has language in their collective agreements (one's that the Liberals haven't illegally torn up, yet) that outline a process around teacher evaluation and discipline. The overwhelming majority of the collective agreeements outline a positive process that seeks to remedy poor teaching practice before terminating employment is even a consideration. But again, it is the school districts' responsibility to evaluate, discipline and/or terminate the employment of those teachers not doing their job - not the BCTF's. Because the system has been so decimated by a lack of funding, while costs continually increase, over the past decade, school districts can hardly afford the time and expense of undertaking the evaluation process. Principals are so overloaded with base managerial & operational tasks, that they have little time left to be the educational leaders they should actually be. Not to mention the fact that few, if any, principals have any actual training or experience evaluating other educators...
  4. And why doesn't the gov't have the money? Because the first thing the Liberals (Gordon Campbell) did when they were first elected was to slash personal income taxes, corporate income taxes and the corporate capital tax... These tax cuts were going boost the economy, create thousands of jobs and promote massive corporate investment in BC - how'd that work out???? All the tax cuts really did was help line the pockets of the Liberal friendly big businesses. So yes, of course the gov't is broke - they gave a HUGE chunk of their income away, for almost no appreciable benefit. The BC gov't would bring in TWO BILLION DOLLARS more EVERY year, if their tax rates were just on average with the rest of the provinces in Canada...
  5. So you're saying that, if you had a legally binding contract with your employer, and they unilaterally ripped it up and 'imposed' a new one that was immeasurably worse for you than your previous contract, you wouldn't take your employer to court?! Right. Give me a break...
  6. I never said this would in any way solve the funding problem, just pointing out the priorities of our current governments... And I am a High School Math teacher, by the way. Keep drinking the Liberal Kool-Aid, Ron... Sure, the per-pupil funding has gone up slightly, but not on pace with inflation. Not to mention all the costs that the Ministry of Education used to cover, but now don't, that have been off-loaded onto School Districts. And while we're talking about Math, let's review some shall we. Take my medium/small high school with about 600 kids. Assuming an even split between all the grades (which there isn't) that works out to 120 kids per grade. At 30 kids per class (max), we would have to run 4 blocks of Math/English/Socials/Science and electives for each grade. Financially, this is a great scenario, since the funding those 120 kids bring in, covers the costs running their classes, with a small chunk left over for some 'extras'. But... In declining enrollment, if 10 students leave a particular grade (now down to 110), we still have to run 4 blocks of each class, since only 3 blocks would mean 36 or 37 students per class - not allowed. Those 4 blocks cost the same amount whether we have 120 kids or 110 kids, but at 110 kids, the school has about $65,000 less to do it with. Declining enrollment actually puts us in a worse position financially, until we hit that next lower multiple of 30... It's an even worse scenario if we were back at 120 kids, and 1 new student arrived in our catchment area. We would now have to open a new block of each subject, and reconfigure the timetable for an entire grade of students to keep the class sizes under 30. The 8 blocks that would have to be opened cost roughly $12,500 each (avg teacher cost per block) which is equivalent to $100,000 in wages the school has to pay out, while that one student brings in $6,500 in funding (to the school). The reality is, that teachers have been doing more, with less, for an awfully long time. An entire generation of students have suffered from the chronic underfunding of the system. We're at a point now, where we really can't stretch any more, for any longer...
  7. Average per pupil funding in Canada 2012/2013 - $8493 x 13 years (K-12) = $110, 409 Cost of housing an inmate in a Canadian prison for ONE YEAR (2012) = $113, 974 I suspect that if we (collectively, in Canada) invested more in the former, we'd be forced to spend less on the latter...
  8. Wow, 10 years on CDC... Even though I don't post much, I'm on here daily and I read a LOT. I feel like I actually know a few of you and truly miss some of the original members who are no longer with us! Thanks to everyone - the good and the bad - for making it a fun, interesting and crazy 10 years!!!

    1. PlayStation

      PlayStation

      I have no idea who you are O_o

  9. CDC Pokerstars Tournament tonight after the game. First game @ 8:50 pm PST. More games if necessary.

    Please sign up :)

  10. Where have you been?

  11. There's at least a foot & a half where I am in Sechelt and it's still coming down hard :angry: Good thing its SPRING BREAK next week...
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