Dear editor:

Took a little time to analyze the school administration’s proposed changes and school closures. This is how it appears to me:

1. This administration (includes the school board) has been running a failing ship for well over ten years. They are not educating all of the kids and they know it.

2. People in the community are slowly but surely waking up to the mess. Thanks to the Ministry of Education FSA (Foundation Skills Assessment) and the Fraser Institute.

3. No one has been held accountable. Not the school board. Not the superintendent.

4. Parents of undereducated kids are getting angry and beginning to demand action.

5.The school board knows that the teaching staff is pushed to the limit. The School Board hired a fancy PhD to do the pushing. He in turn promoted others who are too weak to stand up for the kids. Those administrators and teachers who try do not last long.

6. So (dither, dither) What to do? The school board and its superintendent decide to change the playing field so that no one will be able to figure out what is actually going on for at least another five years.

7. They do not want to close the Bench Elementary School because it is the best elementary level school they have, and the uproar from parents of children attending there will be deafening.

8. The same might be said for Collettville.

9. Diamondvale and Central? They need an influx of teaching staff to allow them to teach all of the kids. This school board simply doesn’t understand the problem. They created the mess now they are going to make it worse.

10. Closing the middle school and eliminating teachers is their idea of finding a solution?

This school board should be ashamed of the record. Every member of the school board should be ashamed to even consider closing schools and eliminating teachers at a time when the results clearly show that more resources (not fewer) are needed. In private industry, the board would be fired. Since this is a public venture and these people all have their noses in the trough, I doubt that anything of the sort will happen.

So, I propose that the school board members each reduce their stipend from $12,000 per year to $1 per year until such time as our district reaches a Ministry of Education and Fraser Institute placement of at least 50 per cent (in other words the middle of the pack). Their expenses should be frozen at what they spent last year.

Administors should immediately have their wages sliced to five per cent above the level of the highest paid teacher in the district. Those wages should not be reinstated until they have proven that they can produce the required 50 per cent ranking. If they do better, they should be rewarded.

Those changes should produce the necessary funds to keep all the schools open.

At the moment, these people have no incentive to really educate your kids. This would be one way to provide that incentive.

I suspect that they would suddenly find the nesessary resources.

Lin (LB) Wotton

Merritt, B.C.