Equity

EQUITY in education is my primary reason for running for Trustee.  Equity is many things.  At the highest level, equity in education means that ALL students have fair, accessible, and free access to high quality public education. 

Over the past few months, I have talked with thousands of families and it is alarming how many students we are not serving well today.  The burden on parents and caregivers can be huge to advocate for needed testing, support or programming, and the burden on teachers can be huge when we don’t have the resources to properly serve all students. 

Our funding is severely lacking and we do not have the measurements in place to be able to understand the magnitude of the shortfall.  Operationally, there are several elements:

• Available programming to suit all students including those with physical, sensory, neuro and cognitive differences.
• Support services to support each child to achieve their potential.
• Accommodation services to enable students to learn in their optimal way.
• Fair and adequate funding to deliver the above programming.
• Regular review and measures of how well we are serving different segments of students.

To truly deliver our Division’s goal of “success for all students” we need to look carefully at all groups, not just averages, so we can understand and improve how we serve all students equitably.