Schools are being kept open not because of the need for educating students, their primary function, but because #bced performs a social safety net function in the provision of food, & the support of mental health in children. 1/?
2/? Schools perform these functions despite the fact that there is a Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, a Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, and a Ministry of Child and Family Development in BC.
3/? The ‘downsides’ that Dr Henry talks about to closing schools is not related to a loss of learning but to the loss of food and mental health support for children in one of the richest provinces in Canada. A province where 1 in 5 children lives in poverty.
4/? Who is responsible for this? Let’s look at the powers of all the ‘players’ in the current situation.
5/? @TeriMooring is the elected leader of 43,000 teachers. She has 1 vote on a 12 member Executive who take directions from the Representative Assembly, an elected body of 131 representatives from 60 locals around the province. Teri has no power to make or change laws.
6/? @DrBonnieHenry is the appointed head of the Public Health Office. Her word is law. Her laws can be enforced by fines. She answers to Adrian Dix. She's determined that schools should remain open. She dismisses calls for a mask mandate or concerns about asymptomatic infection
7/? @adriandix is the elected Minister of Health. He was appointed to this role by @jjhorgan . Dix has a mandate to protect the health of all citizens of the province. He can draft legislation.
8/? @JM_Whiteside is the elected Minister of Education. She was appointed to this role by @jjhorgan. Her mandate letter tasks her with working with other Ministries in acknowledgement of the social safety net role that schools play. She's responsible for what happens in schools.
9/? @jjhorgan is the elected premier of the province. He has an enormous range of powers. He has these powers because he has the votes of at least 56 MLAs in the Legislature.
10/? Trustees, represented by @BCSTA_News, are elected members of school boards. They are responsible for the management of school districts. They have the power to make changes in the 60 school districts in the province.
11/? We need to direct our concerns and frustrations to where they can make a difference.

Schools are being kept open because @DrBonnieHenry says so.
12/? A former BC Minister of Health, @ujjaldosanjh has been publicly calling on Dr Bonnie Henry for a mask mandate in schools and for rapid tests in Long Term Care facilities.
13/13 Because she is appointed and not elected, Dr Henry does not have to answer to voters.

Adrian Dix and John Horgan, all the MLAs in the Legislature, and all the Trustees do.

Let’s funnel our frustration accordingly.

#bcpoli #Covid19BC #bced
14/13 By "schools" I mean schools in areas of high virus transmission e.g. @Fraserhealth. What would tests of asymptomatic students & staff in all school districts in the health region reveal? Given what happened in schools in Ontario & Quebec, I suspect many cases would be found
15/13
" A Windsor elementary school outbreak with 49 cases set the "precedent" for asymptomatic COVID-19 testing in the province "
cbc.ca/news/canada/wi…
16/13 Apologies to @ujjaldosanjh whom I misidentified as former BC Minister of Health. He's a former Premier of BC and a former Federal Minister of Health.

Will @adriandix heed his advice? Unlikely, given that @CDCofBC is out of alignment with @CPHO_Canada

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More from @MovingParadigms

3 Oct
What would schools in BC be like if the mandate letter for the next Minister of Education included all 21 recommendations for Healthy and Resilient Schools? Why not ensure we are more prepared when the next pandemic arrives? #bced #bcpoli #MandateTheRecommendations 1/21
2/21
Recommendation 1
That the Ministry of Education provide stable, predictable, and adequate funding to enable school districts to fulfill their responsibility to deliver quality public education to all students in British Columbia.
#bced #bcpoli #HealthyAndResilientSchools
3/21
Recommendation 2
That the Ministry of Education terminate the consideration of a prevalence-based model for special education funding and align special education funding with special education needs.
#bced #bcpoli #HealthyAndResilientSchools
Read 24 tweets
26 Sep
Which party is most likely to fund #bced in a way that reflects the importance attributed to public schools during Covid19 updates?

#BCelxn2020 #BCElection2020 #bcelection Image
What are the chances that @bcndp or @bcliberals make any significant changes to this travesty? #BCElection2020 #bcelection #BCelxn2020 Image
The reason why teachers spend hundreds of dollars each year on classroom supplies. #BCelxn2020 #BCElection2020 Image
Read 6 tweets
24 Sep
I was challenged by a @bcndp supporter to name a jurisdiction with a better school restart plan. Here you go: Vietnam, Thailand, Ghana. 1/?
#BCelxn2020 #bcndp cc: @bctf
medium.com/indica/the-ove…
2/ Senegal has a better plan. @bcndp should check it out.

"You see Senegal moving out on all fronts: following science, acting quickly, working the communication side of the equation, and then thinking about innovation,"

usatoday.com/story/news/wor…
Read 5 tweets
21 Sep
Rumours abound about an election call. Time for a review.

Spring 2017 : Based on commitments made at BCTF meetings over 14 years, teachers volunteer hundreds of hours to help BCNDP candidates to get elected. Six are elected in the largest school district, Surrey.
#bced #bcpoli
Fall 2017: Teachers are dismayed to watch their working conditions deteriorate because the warnings about a teacher shortage were ignored by Minister Fleming. Hundreds of students don’t have a classroom teacher for the first 4 months of the school year.
Summer 2018: A funding formula review is published that, if implemented would make class size and composition language in collective agreements unenforceable.
Read 7 tweets
19 Sep
.@bcedplan You've got a mess on your hands. Let a teacher help you to see where you went wrong.
1st mistake: Just because you went to #bced school, doesn't mean you know how schools work. You should have given teachers meaningful roles in developing the plan. 1/? #BCIsNotDenmark
2/ 2nd mistake @bcedplan was to transplant a plan from Denmark into #bced. If you knew a bit of gardening you'd know that a plant that thrives in one climate zone doesn't always flourish in another. There are 10 kids in classes in Denmark; 30 students/class in BC .... 3/?
3/ ... despite the voodoo math that @Rob_Fleming keeps spouting about an "average" of 22 students in high school classes. Even that number of students is NOT what is in Danish classrooms. #BCIsNotDenmark #bced ...4/?
Read 6 tweets
16 Sep
"The first blow delivered to the teachers was the way the planning was done. ... They were given only two days to learn a new set of protocols and in many cases a completely new schedule which required a fundamental change in teaching strategies." #bced

rippleleadership.com/post/in-a-teac…
Image
Read 4 tweets

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