Perspectives is an opportunity for Fellows and others to share their ideas in short, accessible essays. IPE/BC Fellows hold a range of views and interests relative to public education.
A Big No to Big O
By Patti Bacchus
October 1, 2024
Pity the poor tire-store marketing account manager, if there is such a gig. The client has a measly $20,000 to spend on a campaign, which doesn’t go far if you’re buying advertising space in a fractured and crowded media environment.
Here’s an idea: Let’s use unpaid labour in the form of captive public-school kids and their overworked, underpaid teachers, and heck, we can even make them compete for the privilege!
We won’t even have pay to promote it, we’ll get the taxpayer-funded school board’s communications staff to promote it for us!
It’s like that time Chevron tried to promote gas sales through “Fuel Your Schools,” where teachers were supposed to compete for grants to fund classroom projects, with the program being promoted at the pumps, urging parents to fuel up to fund their kids’ classrooms. Yuck.
Those were the thoughts that crossed my mind today when I scrolled by a post from the Vancouver School Board (VSB), promoting “The ‘Big Idea’ with Big O Tires,” a grant program that requires students and their teachers to compete for a $20,000 grant “implement a new, creative initiative that will help service a need in their community.”
Sounds fairly harmless, doesn’t it? I don’t know. If you go to the Big O website, the finer print gets to what this is really about: marketing. It says: “Big O Tires reserves the right to publish through its marketing channels, including but not limited to social media, in whole or in part any submissions received, including any accompanying materials and/or the names of the faculty member and/or school from which the initiative was submitted.”
It would cost the tire company a heck of a lot more than $20,000 to do some good in the community, without the free labour from students and teachers, so you can see why they came up with this scheme.
As a former Vancouver school trustee and its longest serving chairperson, I’m opposed to private businesses using schools to polish their public images. If they want to support schools, they can make a donation to the school district without requiring students and teachers to be part of their marketing programs.
With all the emphasis on critical thinking in our public school curriculum, you’d think the folks making the decisions at the VSB would pause to subject this marketing pitch to the rigours of critical thought. Apparently they did not. It should have been a big no to Big O.
Patti Bacchus is a public education advocate, commentator, and IPE/BC Board member, who was also the Vancouver School Board’s longest-serving chair, from 2008-2014. She has also served on the Board of the Broadbent Institute. Patti has written extensively about public education issues in the Georgia Straight. She believes that a strong and well-resourced public education system is key to a healthy and just society.
It’s time to let parties and candidates know what you want to see if they want your vote, donation, or volunteer time. If they want to put a sign in your window or on your lawn, demand to know what they’re committing to for public education. I’ll be letting my candidates know that having among the lowest per-student funding in Canada doesn’t cut it. I want to know when they’re going to complete all outstanding school seismic upgrades.
school land deemed ‘surplus.’ The BC Liberals closed 267 schools during their tenure, and K-12 funding fell to all-time lows. They also created a program (that still exists) to sell property deemed ‘surplus.’
The trouble of course is that much of this land isn’t really surplus and is almost always needed in the future. With the ever-upward march of land values, school properties that are sold are gone forever- unattainable and unaffordable when needed back. Where land values are highest, the pressure to sell land is greatest, and the public has the greatest amount to lose in this folly. In Vancouver, the site of the current Wall centre, worth likely hundreds of millions, was formerly the site of a school.
In Surrey district, where the population of school-aged children is exploding, the lack of land set aside for new schools is felt keenly as the district packs more and more students into existing schools – many in portable buildings. In Vancouver, where land values are high, schools are in poor repair and some buildings have excess capacity, largely created by the lack of family housing stock in the city, something likely to change in the future as the calls for increased density come from all political camps. North Vancouver district closed and sold many elementary schools during the last twenty years and parents in the district are now desperate for spaces as the density of school-aged children increases past capacity and projections.
that provincial law meant that fees could not be charged. The court case was successful in 2006.
“shall consult with appropriate teachers, staff, staff committee, students and the Parents’ Advisory Council prior to establish the fee.” Do you recall that consultation last school year?
financial hardship and how the waiver can be obtained. The policy is supposed to be fair, consistent and confidential. You can find how your district provides this in the district policy or ask the school principal.
The NATO-induced commitment is not something prescribed by law. Nor is it a treaty commitment. It is a political deal hashed out within a supranational military organization that hasn’t been elected by anyone. It is very telling that when the Prime Minister announced his recent 2% timetable, it was not done in parliament, or even within Canada – it was done in a European forum in front of politicians, bureaucrats, generals and defense pundits – and covered by a mainstream media that increasingly functions as echo chamber for military-industrial interests. This is the group calling the defense spending shots and the group Canada has decided to answer to.
resource shortage and funding insecurity?
As the IPE quoted UNICEF Canada in our 
Having good food available at school would reduce busy families’ financial and time pressures, expose kids to a wide range of healthy foods, remove the stigma of current food programs that are targeted only to kids from poor families and support local food production.
There have been many prominent Indigenous scholars of educational discourses over the past number of years who have made clear the need for changes in the way mainstream educational practices and curriculum include and address Indigenous students, their cultures and histories within schools (Battiste, 2004; Dion, 2008; Donald, 2009; Schick & St. Denis, 2004; St. Denis, 2011). They point to the fact that colonial logics and agendas have excluded, reduced, distorted and erased Indigenous cultures, languages and knowledges in curriculum for decades. This is important when we think about the many Canadians who have become teachers having risen through the very systems of education that were perpetuating ignorance and misunderstanding. Indeed, in my early days of teaching Indigenous education to pre-service teachers, many expressed anger and dismay when it became clear to them what was intentionally not taught to them in schools.
responses and thoughts in this process, even those who are most uncomfortable often find support in their learning, and inspiration in the insights of their classmates (Leddy, 2023).
resources to which they are exposed. But the best part is that Indigenous approaches to education demonstrably benefit all of our students, making the work of decolonizing and Indigenizing all the more pertinent and pressing (Restoule, 2017). When we teach with attention to Kirkness’s 4Rs of Indigenous education, respect, reciprocity, relevance, and responsibility, then we model what it means to build and maintain good relationships with ourselves, others, and what we must all learn together. When we use holistic frameworks, such as the Medicine Wheel, in our pedagogical and planning considerations, we can plan lessons and learning experiences that address our students as the intellectual, spiritual, emotional and physical beings that they are. And when we undertake to do the work of decolonizing ourselves, we become better at preparing our students for the world they will inherit, putting the Eurocentric practices of the past behind us where they belong.
The bigger problem here comes down to the teacher increment ladder. Educators are underpaid for the nine to ten years it takes to reach full salary – the regular rate for the job. This encourages implementation of an extractivist approach to the use of educator labour. Extractivism is a concept developed by David Harvey, Veronica Gago, Nancy Fraser and others to describe power relationships which afford those in control the ability to confiscate or extract rising shares of value from their subordinates.
which allow for the migration to other areas of work. Less stress? Better pay? Reduced feeling that your commitment to work is being used against you? Hey, why not make that move?
It’s time to think “outside the box” and look for innovative ideas to deal with a problem that is likely only to get worse. We can all support the call for more funding resources for public education but there is also a need to look at practical options for making better use of whatever resources are provided to support public schooling.
There’s an evening program for adults – with courses in everything from belly dancing to introductory business skills to gymnastics – and there’s a ceramics studio with a kiln and slip and glazes that’s used by the kids during the day and adults at night.
In a portable in the parking lot behind the school is a re-entry program for teenagers who’ve been out of school for at least 6 months. The school recruits those students through local social service agencies, high school counselors and the media.
who advise and decide on the various programs, advertise, and explain what’s going on at the school to their neighbours, and advocate to the School Board and other governments and agencies for the various programs and activities at the school. Some of them are parents of kids at the school. Some of them aren’t.