It's complicated ... what the election means for education

I have a new column at The Courier newspaper and here is a link to the first one.
In it, I take a look at what the election could mean for education. It was written before the NDP-Green deal was announced this week. My next column is about the cuts to French immersion at the Vancouver School Board.
Ongoing, the column will be about education and social issues. Send column ideas and suggestions to tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Book Review: The Clean Money Revolution by Joel Solomon

The Clean Money Revolution: Reinventing Power, Purpose and Capitalism
By Joel Solomon, with Tyee Bridge
New Society Publishers

Earlier this year, journalist Jane Mayer released her book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. It’s billed by publisher Penguin Random House as a look at how elite plutocrats have bankrolled a systematic plan to alter American democracy. Mayer writes in the preface that Donald Trump’s election as president was a huge victory for these billionaires.
The Clean Money Revolution: Reinventing Power, Purpose and Capitalism, by Joel Solomon with Tyee Bridge, is the antidote to Dark Money and the powers behind it.
Solomon, a Vancouver-based philanthropist who tries to use his money to create positive social and environmental change, appeals to others who, like him, stand to inherit money over the coming decades. He wants the $40 trillion that he says will change hands as the Boomers pass on their money to their children in North America by 2050 to go to good use, rather than investing in companies that contribute to climate change or exploit the poor.
Here’s how he defines clean money: “Clean money is money aligned with a purpose beyond self-interest. Money for the commons. Money that makes the world better. Money regenerating ecosystems and engendering a healthy balance between people and planet. Money that builds true security: long-term, safe, fair resilience.”
He comes at the idea of clean money from a position of privilege and he recognizes that. “I believe I am one of the luckiest people in the world,” he writes. Solomon grew up in Tennessee, the son of a man who got wealthy building shopping malls. He writes of the prejudice he experienced as a Jewish person and of finding out he inherited polycystic kidney disease. He also inherited enough money build his dreams of a better world.
Today, Solomon is involved in several ventures, all aimed at creating social change. He is chairman of Renewal Funds, a $98-million venture capital company. He is a founding member of the Social Venture Network, a group of business leaders that invest in social enterprises, Business for Social Responsibility, a non-profit organization that works with business to build a just and sustainable world, Tides Canada, a foundation that funds non-profit organizations, and is the board chairman of Hollyhock, a non-profit learning centre on Cortez Island.
In The Clean Money Revolution, he tells readers how he got there and explains his vision for a positive future. The book is an interesting mix of memoir and manifesto that also includes several profiles of and interviews with other socially aware entrepreneurs, which Solomon says are signs the clean money movement is catching on.
He calls money, “the sly foil, the crass seducer” and says “an obsession with growing and clinging to money can damage us and those we love. We need self-awareness and spiritual grounding for safe, healthy engagement with that kryptonite-like substance called money.”
His vision is to create a new world for seven generations into the future. “I hope that five hundred years from now, people will be highly advanced, living in a better world where poverty, disparity, lifestyle diseases, slavery, climate chaos, and refugees are stories form history. One where our infrastructural systems — food, housing, buildings, travel, good and services — work intelligently within natural limits and thriving ecosystems for an appropriately sized human population.” He says logic tells him it can’t be done, but nonetheless he has chosen to believe in a positive future.
Those who are either about to leave a large sum of money to their children or those who are about to receive such a sum would do well to read Solomon’s book — it may change your ideas about investing, endowments and how to make the world a better place.
tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Book Review: Our Short History by Lauren Goldstein

Our Short History
By Lauren Goldstein
Algonquin Books
March 21, 2017

Our Short History is a heartbreaker of a book.
It’s premise: a single mom is dying of ovarian cancer, leaving behind a six-year-old son. The son has never known his dad, who, upon being told of the pregnancy said he never wanted to have kids. The mom, Karen Neulander, agrees to let her son, Jake, meet his dad, Dave, when Jake insists. Dave is thrilled to meet Jake and says he assumed Karen had had an abortion. He’s more than a little upset he missed the first six years of his son’s life, while Karen is upset Dave might swoop in and take Jake away. Jake and Dave bond instantly and Karen is even more threatened.
Our Short History is written as a memoir of those months from mother to son, with the intent that Jake read it when he’s an adult. It takes place in real time, so events unfold for readers as they unfold for Karen.
Here’s an excerpt that shows the technique: “Jake, I do realize at this point in the book that I’m not giving you as much advice as I meant to – in fact, when I originally started planning this project, I was thinking I terms of something that would intertwine autobiography and advice, so not only would you learn all about me, but you’d also learn whatever wisdom I have to pass on to you. I suppose, when I started this, I thought I’d have more wisdom. But here it is now, six in the evening, a long day, dinner almost ready in the house across the lawn, and I’m right where I was two weeks ago.”
It’s a cool writer’s technique and very enjoyable for readers, who of course feel like yelling at Karen throughout that Dave is Jake’s dad and only has his best interests at heart.
Lauren Grodstein has written several other novels, including The Explanation for Everything, which was a Washington Post book of the year and A Friend of the Family, which was a New York Times bestseller. She lives in New Jersey and Our Short History takes place both in New York and on the West Coast in Seattle. Vancouver even plays a bit part – at one point Karen fantasizes about running away to Vancouver to die alone.
Our Short History includes sub-plots about politics (Karen is a political campaign consultant), family dynamics and Hungarian Jews who immigrate to the United States. It’s a page-turner: I read the entire 342 pages in one day while on vacation.
Neulander is clearly an accomplished writer of fiction. Readers will devour this story, despite the universal tragedy – mother leaves child too soon – at its heart.
tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Will new government be deja vu of last VSB?

The B.C. provincial election looks like a toss up, with a split vote and the Green party holding the balance of power.
That’s exactly what happened in the 2014 Vancouver municipal election for school trustees, which saw the right-of-centre NPA win four seats, the left-of-centre Vision party win four seats and the Green party left holding the ninth and deciding vote.
That didn’t end so well.
The entire board was fired last fall by the education minister for refusing to pass a balanced budget.
Before being fired, the lone Green trustee, Janet Fraser, sometimes voted with Vision, sometimes with NPA. There were lots of unanimous votes, but on any contentious issue, Fraser had to decide which way the board as a whole would go. She also held the deciding vote on who would be chairperson of the board, and she decided to alternate between the two other parties.
But that’s not how it works in provincial politics. A premier is a premier until their government falls. A government falls when it tries to pass a vote in the house but doesn’t get a majority of votes in its favour.
That’s why coalition governments are formed. As long as two parties agree to work together, they can ensure that a government doesn’t fall. When a government falls, an election is called.
So, if the Green party agrees to work with either the Liberals or the NDP, they will be kingmaker. The numbers make it possible that either the NDP or the Liberals could get a majority by teaming up with the Greens.
However, under a coalition government, anytime the ruling party wants to pass legislation, they need the support of the second party. That could mean major changes in B.C., regardless of which party gets the Greens’ support.
So which party will it be? So far, the Greens haven’t said. But I bet there's some wheeling and dealing going on behind the scenes today. B.C. may be at a political stalemate for the next two weeks while recounts and absentee ballot counts are underway May 22 to 24. The Liberals could still pull off a majority if they keep all the seats they have and gain one more.
If the Greens do end up holding the balance of power, they’ve already said changes to political donations and the voting system are imperative. The Green platform also called for significant new funding for education, an expansion of the education system to pre-schoolers, the exploration of a guaranteed minimum income and support for youth aging out of care. Obviously, the Greens are not keen on pipelines, LNG and the like.
Weaver said during the campaign that he supported a byelection for the fired Vancouver school trustees. The NDP said they would either reinstate them or hold a byelection. Former Liberal Education Minister Mike Bernier, who was reelected with a strong majority, said the official trustee he appointed to take over would be in place for at least a year. We will have to wait until the dust settles on this election to see whose voice will win out the VSB.
Stay tuned. There’s never a dull moment in B.C. politics and this election is far from over.

Other education notes:

• The NDP’s Morgane Oger, an openly transgender candidate, came close to beating the Liberals’ Sam Sullivan in Vancouver-False Creek, where the results went back and forth all night and the final count saw Sullivan just 560 ahead. Oger was the head of Vancouver’s District Parent Advisory Council before deciding to run for the NDP.
• Former Liberal education minister Peter Fassbender lost his seat in Surrey-Fleetwood. One has to wonder whether being the government’s face through the 2014 teachers’ strike hurt his re-election chances. Several Surrey seats went to the NDP, which perhaps indicates anger over the 6,000 students there who go to school in portables. Bridge tolls probably didn’t help.

tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Number of kids falling in Vancouver, census shows

The 2016 census numbers show clearly that the number of children living in Vancouver is falling.
The number of kids younger than age 14 dropped by 815 children from 2011 to 2016, even as the city’s population grew by about 28,000 people, or nearly five per cent. The drop in the number of children amounts to a one per cent decrease.
If the number of children had kept pace with the Metro area's overall population growth, there would be about 5,000 new kids on the block in Vancouver alone. But anyone who lives in Metro Vancouver knows those 5,000 kids have all packed up, with their parents, and moved out to Surrey, Coquitlam, Maple Ridge and Langley.
Last year, I wrote about Vancouver becoming a childless city, but the evidence was only anecdotal. Now it’s confirmed: kids are leaving Vancouver. And it could get worse. A recent City of Vancouver survey found that 58 per cent of families are considering leaving the city in the next three years.
Statistics Canada has laid it out nicely in a map, where people can clearly see the dark green areas in the outer suburbs where all the children are moving. West Vancouver, Vancouver and Richmond are all paler shades of green, which indicates fewer young people.
Children make up just 11 per cent of Vancouver’s population, whereas in Surrey kids account for nearly 18 per cent. In Coquitlam, it’s 16 per cent, a number that is nearly identical to the overall Canadian percentage of kids, which is 16.6 per cent.
Experts told me last year that a city without a robust population of youngsters will suffer both economic and social consequences, including increased isolation.
Abigail Bond, the City of Vancouver’s director of Housing Policy, told me in December that “it’s very important that we have children because their parents are often the people driving the economy of the city and the region.”
The price of housing is obviously linked to the lack of children in the city. Clearly, those who are staying are living in very specific areas of the city, like Olympic Village and Yaletown, where young parents can afford to live in a condo. Elementary schools in those areas are so full they turned neighbourhood kindergarten students away.
This demographic shift of children and their parents out of the single family neighbourhoods of the city and into downtown or the farther flung suburbs where they can afford homes is creating havoc with Metro Vancouver's schools. It’s no coincidence that Surrey schools are so full that 6,000 kids attend school in portables or that daycares housed in Coquitlam schools are being forced to close because the schools no longer have space.
Cities like Vancouver and Richmond, which kids are rapidly deserting, are left with tough decisions like closing schools. It remains to be seen what will happen in Vancouver and Richmond schools – both cities have many schools with plenty of excess space. They also have many schools that need seismic upgrades. Although both districts put school closures on hold last fall, the contentious issue is all but guaranteed to resurface after the election.
Meanwhile, what can Vancouver and Richmond do to attract more families? The answer seems clear: there is a pressing need to create more housing that is family-friendly and affordable.
tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Why adults should watch 13 Reasons Why

Parents and teachers would do well to watch a new Netflix series called 13 Reasons Why.
It’s about suicide and it includes quite graphic content, including the main character’s suicide and scenes of rape. It has generated a lot of controversy – talking about it has been banned in one school in Edmonton and another district in Ontario has warned teachers against using the series as a teaching aid. The Vancouver School Board sent out a notice to parents offering guidance about the show.
13 Reasons Why does not paint a pretty picture of life in high school. However, banning people from talking about it is probably going to do more harm than good.
The series, based on a novel by Jay Asher, focuses on Hannah Baker, who kills herself, and Clay Jensen, her friend. Jensen finds a package of cassette tapes on his porch. They are from Hannah, who tells the 13 reasons she killed herself on the cassettes. Each cassette focuses on a person and how they contributed to her despair.
The reasons range from the mundane – friendships that end with no apparent reason – to the profound – watching someone you know get raped or being raped yourself. In between, there are various shades of grey, such as having lewd photographs of yourself shared on social media or having a friend drop you because they’re outed as homosexual.
I hope this show is exaggerated. But it might not be. In B.C., 15-year-old Amanda Todd committed suicide in 2012, and cyberbullying played a role.
Certainly, private photographs are shared on social media all the time. Kids drop kids off their friendship lists on a daily basis. Parents fail to notice what’s happening when they’re all wrapped up in their own survival every day. Car accidents, questions about sexuality, drinking, drugs and cyber bullying are all prevalent in teenagers’ lives.
A school counselor is portrayed as somewhat uncaring and oblivious in the show. This is unfortunate and certainly a stereotype, one that is probably completely wrong. However, it’s also an opportunity for counselors and teachers to watch the show and use it as an opportunity to talk with each other and students who may be vulnerable.
In the U.S., the National Association of School Psychologists produced “guidelines for educators” specifically about the series. It urges adults to talk to kids about the show.
“While many youth are resilient and capable of differentiating between a TV drama and real life, engaging in thoughtful conversations with them about the show is vital,” the guidelines say. “Doing so presents an opportunity to help them process the issues addressed, consider the consequences of certain choices, and reinforce the message that suicide is not a solution to problems and that help is available. This is particularly important for adolescents who are isolated, struggling, or vulnerable to suggestive images and storylines.”
Clearly, this show isn’t for everyone. The school psychologists’ association also says exposure to another person’s suicide or sensationalized accounts of death can be a risk factor for suicide. It makes it clear that most people who commit suicide have a mental illness.
But some young people are going to watch the show. When they do, it’s going to be better if they have someone to talk to about it, especially if they are struggling themselves.
Isolation and loneliness do not help when a person is depressed or mentally ill. Hannah Baker becomes more and more isolated with each episode of 13 Reasons Why. In the end, even with everything awful that happened to her, if she had had someone – just anyone – to talk to about it all, viewers know she would not have killed herself.
If we refuse to talk about suicide and this show, as upsetting as it may be, we contribute to further isolation. People need people to talk to. Let’s not push this series underground for fear of upsetting someone – let’s get it out in the open and start conversations with our kids. One of them might really need a friend.
tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Novel about remote Aboriginal community wins B.C. fiction prize

A tragic but inspiring story about a remote First Nations reserve in British Columbia has won the Ethel Wilson prize, B.C.'s top prize for fiction.
The Heaviness of Things That Float, by Jennifer Manuel, published by Douglas & McIntyre, is the story of Bernadette, a nurse who worked in a remote indigenous community for 40 years. She's on the verge of retirement when Chase Charlie, a young man she is close to, disappears. Here's a review of the book I wrote for the Vancouver Sun.
Manuel, although not an indigenous person herself, has worked in remote areas of B.C. with Aboriginal people for many years.
At its heart, the novel is about privilege, as expressed in this quote from Manuel. “It hasn’t occurred to (Bernadette) that she may still hold assumptions rooted in her own dominant culture, and when you are in a position of privilege, the worst thing you can do assume. It’s the novel’s central message: try to know the other, but never assume to know the other.”
The fiction prize was handed out Saturday night in Vancouver, along with seven others awarded at the 33rd annual BC Book Prizes gala.
The recently deceased Aboriginal author Richard Wagamese won the Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice award for his book Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations (Douglas and McIntyre). That prize is given to the best book in terms of public appeal, initiative, design, production, and content. Embers is a book of meditations that Wagamese created and used in his own life as an author of many books, including Indian Horse, Medicine Walk and Keeper 'N' Me.
Author and artist Douglas Coupland, who coined the term Generation X with his book of the same name, won the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. That award comes with a $5,000 prize, while the other winners each receive $2,000.

The other winners were:

• Neil J. Sterritt, Mapping My Way Home: A Gitxsan History (Creekstone Press), which won the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize for the author(s) of the book that contributes most to the enjoyment and understanding of British Columbia;

• Deborah Campbell, A Disappearance in Damascus: A Story of Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War
(Knopf Canada), which won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize for the best original non-fiction literary work:;

• Adèle Barclay, If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You (Nightwood Editions), which won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry prize;

• Monique Gray Smith, illustrated by Julie Flett, My Heart Fills With Happiness (Orca Book Publishers), which won the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize;

and

• Iain Lawrence, The Skeleton Tree (Tundra Books), which won the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize awarded to the best non-illustrated book written for children.

tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

B.C. election: Where's the fire over education?

Despite a decade-long court case settled against the government, a heated strike that closed schools for weeks and a fired board of education in the province's biggest city, education has yet to emerge as a defining issue of this election.

The Liberals promise to stand pat, the NDP has pledged more money, but is short on specifics, and the Green party is making big, ambitious promises, but is unlikely to form the government.

Here's a recent article I wrote about education issues and the election for the Vancouver Sun and Province.

There's a space squeeze on in schools, with Vancouver's urban schools bursting at the seams, while schools in some neighbourhoods are nearly empty. Eight schools had to turn kindergarten students away in Vancouver. In Surrey, 6,000 students study in portables. A group called Surrey Students Now says the space crunch could see all but two Surrey secondary schools move to an extended day schedule. The group is also concerned about the funding for portables and an education ministry request for a "space audit" that could see auditorium stages or libraries converted to classroom space.

Even with these significant issues, education is not getting a lot of election traction. The party platforms promise very little in the way of specifics.

All three parties promise to review the funding formula for schools, which is essential now that the teachers' won at the Supreme Court and their 2002 contracts are restored. The win means significant differences in the number of teachers needed in each district, because every district now has different rules and some districts have no class composition language at all. A one-size-fits-all per-student funding model will no longer work.

None of the parties is calling for significant change to funding for independent schools.

For post-secondary schools, all three parties promise some relief on student-loan interest and the Liberals and the NDP promise to keep a cap on tuition fee increases, although the NDP don't specify the size of the cap. Today, tuition fees can only go up two per cent each year.

On Tuesday, I moderated an education forum for election candidates, hosted by the Vancouver District Parents Advisory Council. The Liberals didn't participate, but the NDP was represented by Adrian Dix and Morgane Oger and the Greens were represented by former Vancouver School Board trustee Janet Fraser and Bradley Shende. It was an interesting evening, but there were few surprises. About 50 people showed up to hear from candidates, but other than a few digs at the missing Liberals, it was largely a friendly gathering.

In the leaders' debate Wednesday night, education was barely mentioned. Even the NDP, which is promising $10-a-day childcare, only got around to mentioning it in the closing statements. The Greens, who would extend the school system to include preschool for three and four year olds, didn't pump that during the debate.

After the election, there are all kinds of unknowns. Will school closures be back on the table in Vancouver and Richmond? Will seismic upgrades be done even if schools aren't at capacity? Will the next contract negotiations be bitter or sweet? Only time will tell.

Despite the big questions, it doesn't look likely to me that education will emerge as a defining issue before May 9.

tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Various recent education stories

Below you will find links to my most recent education stories, including some about the Supreme Court case, class size and composition and other education issues.

Number of B.C. classes with more than three special needs students rises dramatically


Provincial election a motivator in getting B.C. teachers' deal done


Teachers reach deal with province on classroom conditions


Childless in Vancouver: How do cities keep families from fleeing?

tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Foster care and aging out

In my time at The Vancouver Sun and Province, I wrote many stories about foster care and what happens to foster children when they "age out" of government care.
Here is a selection of links:

'Shocking' numbers of aboriginal children in care an 'embarrassment,' children's advocate says

Number of B.C. kids-in-care deaths, critical injuries jump dramatically


B.C. youth in foster care died alone, as multiple warning signs ignored


Girl who recently aged out of government care dies in Surrey tent


Teenager's death in Surrey 'a preventable tragedy,' NDP says

tracy.sherlock@gmail.com