B.C. minister defends progress on building more schools in Surrey

CBC

5 hours ago

B.C.'s infrastructure minister has defended her government's progress on building more schools in Surrey, even as two more schools in the city will shift to a staggered schedule to deal with overcrowding.
Fraser Heights and Sullivan Heights secondary schools will shift to having class times adjusted to start earlier, and end later, in order to squeeze a fifth block of classes into the daily schedule.
That means eight schools in B.C.'s largest school district will have staggered schedules in total, as the Surrey School District's long-running overcrowding problems continue to lead to parent frustration.
District officials have defended the practice of extending days and say staff have been able to manage the workload, while the minister responsible for building more infrastructure has said around $1 billion has been spent on new schools and school additions in Surrey since 2017.
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Fraser Heights and Sullivan Heights secondary schools in Surrey are expected to stagger start times so that school space is available for them in the fall. Cindy Dalglish says the staggered schedule at her child's school, Salish Secondary, is very disruptive for working parents. Sally Huang, who is the PAC president at Fraser Heights, called the changes terrible and horrifying.
Parents, however, say that officials aren't moving fast enough to deal with a problem that has festered for years, and students' futures are getting caught in the crossfire.
"The inconsistency is completely disruptive and the inequity, and lack of awareness of the inequity, is astounding," said Cindy Dalglish, whose daughter studies at Salish Secondary School, which was on staggered start times last year.
"These decisions are not student centred at all."
Dalglish said the inconsistency in school starting times means that parents have to juggle work responsibilities to get their kids to school and extracurriculars and study schedules are thrown in flux daily.
"We already have, you know, a high level of curriculum coming into them," the parent said. "She is one of those go-getter kids that has really hard, hard classes .... they're cramming more into these [classes] this time."
Sally Huang, the president of the Fraser Heights Secondary parent advisory committee, said that the staggered start times were also hard on staff, even as she acknowledged staggered start times were preferable to online learning.
"The Surrey students' population growth is not new news," she said. "It has been steadily growing [over] the years, especially since COVID and a lot of young families, we heard, moved here looking for affordable housing.
"So why hasn't the government kept up with that reality? Why hasn't there been a timely capital investment in new schools and classrooms?"
Year-round schooling being considered
Terry Allen, the vice-chair of the Surrey Board of Education, defended the staggered start times, and commended staff for dealing with the added workload.
Allen said the feedback the school board has received has been positive, and he was disappointed to learn that parents weren't satisfied with their kids' learning experience.
"The reality is, though, that there's really no other choice," Allen said of the extended school days.
"We don't have enough schools in Surrey, and if we don't find some way of creating more space in the schools we have, it can only get worse and certainly not better."
WATCH | Terry Allen defends staggered start times:
2 more Surrey, B.C., schools to have staggered start times
4 days ago
Duration 9:01
Amid a funding crunch in B.C.'s biggest school district, Fraser Heights and Sullivan Heights secondary schools in Surrey are expected to stagger start times so that school space is available for them. Terry Allen, vice-chair of the Surrey Board of Education, said the issue of school space will only get worse if the province doesn't step up with more funding.
Allen said that year-round schooling was being given serious thought at the Surrey school board, and that if they failed to receive new schools, everything was on the table.
"Parents will have a problem with it, and I don't blame them," he said.
"Simply because the provincial government is not providing new schools, and new expansions to existing schools."
Minister says billions being spent
B.C. Infrastructure Minister Bowinn Ma said she sympathized with parents in Surrey, and that the school board was being creative in dealing with the overcrowding people.
She said the provincial NDP government has invested $6 billion, including $1 billion in Surrey, into new schools and additions since 2017.
"Recognizing that the situation that Surrey is dealing with is not ideal, there is hope on the horizon because investments are underway to bring literally thousands of new seats into the Surrey School District," she said.
In response to questions about why the government had not moved faster to deal with the overcrowding issue — given the NDP has been in power since 2017 — Ma said the previous Liberal government had not built a single school in the four preceding years.
She categorized the money being spent now as a "massive increase in investment" since then, and said that if population growth had stayed consistent, Surrey would actually be seeing an excess of student seats.
"But the population also went through this massive increase," the minister said. "So student population increased by 11,500 in that time. This is an unprecedented population increase, we have not seen these kinds of rates of increase in B.C. before."
Ma said that a recently-passed infrastructure bill will help the government streamline projects and get them built faster.