Please Don't Give Up On Public Schools

Saskatchewan used to be one of the best places in the world to raise kids. What happened? Why don't we care anymore?

I’ve had down time in the last few weeks, so you’ve been getting a bit more content from me than usual.

I just sent you something a couple days ago, but in light of the fact Saskatchewan teachers are currently voting on the Sask Party’s “final offer”, I wanted to share this experience with you.

With everyone, actually, so making this piece free for all.

About a week ago I was getting a pedicure in Calgary when a sweet, chatty Boomer lady sat down in the chair next to me. I recognized her face immediately, but couldn’t remember her name. I just knew she was from Saskatoon.

Of course she was, we were in Calgary.

After some small talk and exclamations over the various connections we inevitably share in this tiny, oddly-shaped aquarium, I asked her how she “felt about Saskatchewan nowadays”.

Trying not to impart my own bias, I watched the rain as it rolled down the shop’s full-length windows, waiting for her to answer. After a pause she sighed, lifting her shoulders and her eyebrows the way you do when you desperately want to tell someone you think your kid is on meth…but just can’t bring yourself to say it out loud.

“I’m just glad my grandchildren live here,” she whispered guiltily, peering over her shoulder as if a couple of Scott Moe’s Marshals in a trench coat and fake mustache might be waiting for her in reception.

Don’t laugh.

Not like it’s not feasible.

She told me her son and daughter-in-law were both high-earning Calgary professionals and were spending $6000 a month total (or $2000 per month per kid) to send their three young children to private elementary school.

“Classrooms are capped at fourteen kids,” she said, her eyes widening and in hushed tones.

My own jaw dropped.

Can you imagine what your kid could do if they spent their day in a classroom with only thirteen other kids?

“From the beginning, each child is moulded into the best version of themselves,” she continued, explaining that public speaking and elocution classes start in Grade 1.

Leaning in even closer, she told me that students who continue at the private school through Grade 12 are guaranteed acceptance into university.

Just imagine.

“They didn’t want to do it,” Boomer lady added hastily.

“There were 46 kids in my eldest granddaughter’s Grade 3 classroom. She would go for days without even speaking to a teacher.

They felt like they didn’t have a choice but go private.”

Of course they felt that way.

That’s literally the entire point.

As she kept talking, everything that’s happening with this education battle in Saskatchewan made even more sense.

Conservatives lie and tell you that using public dollars to fund private, for-profit schools is about parental choice in education.

The reality is the scheming, ignorant arseholes “leading” places like Alberta, Saskatchewan and Tennessee are about leaving parents with no choice.

As public schools continue to become more and more untenable due to deliberate government mismanagement, delusional authoritarians like Danielle Smith and Scott Moe are counting on parents who have the ways and means to pull their kids out of the public system and pay privately.

The entire goal is to first toss as many privileged kids off the public school bus as possible, so their governments don’t have to pay for their participation in schools and even better, someone else can make money off them.

You may be thinking, “Great, leaves more for my kid.”

Um no. Every kid who leaves the public system equals one less kid the government will fund. They believe they’re saving money.

Thing is, even after skimming all the highest income bracket kids off the top, public schools will still be overflowing.

However, not all private schools are $20,000 per year. Some of them are only, say, seven or ten thousand.

So now the government comes along and says “How about we give you a gift certificate for the school of your choice?”

With parents on the hook for any cost overages, naturally, but still, for middle-income families who understand the value of solid childhood education, it’s probably feasible.

They’re going to make it work.

They have no choice, because the public system has been purposely destroyed by the government in charge of running it, so they’ll find a way to get their kids out of it.

At this point you’ve cleared both the highest and middle-income bracketed kids out of a newly-lower-populated public education system, which now only consists of kids whose parents couldn’t pay for private school.

Who could those kids be?

You know the answer.

Brown kids.

Poor kids.

Once the public school system is populated primarily by the most vulnerable children in Saskatchewan, you think the Sask Party is going to increase per student funding?

Of course not.

Growing up in Saskatoon in the 80s and 90s, my parents had a lot of problems but where my sisters and I went to school was never one of them.

Like everyone else, I went to the school that was closest to my house, Queen Elizabeth. Easy peasy.

Friends who lived a few blocks to the south went to John Lake School, cause it was closer. Friends to the west, Buena Vista School.

We were poor, but I went to school with rich kids. There were lots of white and lots of Indigenous kids in my class.

Didn’t matter.

We were all Queen Elizabeth students.

Even though we weren’t equal at all, public school in Saskatchewan was, in many ways, a great equalizer. Each kid in my class, which never had more than twentyish students in it, was being provided the same foundation for life.

The curriculum wasn’t perfect but it was solely controlled by education professionals, not Grant f**king Devine (shudder).

I was a Jehovah’s Witness in a public school, which wasn’t unique in the 80s and wasn’t that big of a deal. Frankly, I thank every one of the gods today that I wasn’t put into some batshit crazy Christian fundamentalist school like the ones the Sask Party government is championing today. There were no special accommodations required for us in our classrooms. We just sat out.

What strikes me the most, looking back as both a somewhat complicated former student and now a parent… is it was just so easy. There was never any question that by May we would be doing weekly field trips, in July we’d be at Lathey Pool and in the fall we’d go back to school.

Contrary to what today’s politicians would have you believe, not everything has to be a fight.

Public education is supposed to be homogenous.

Basic, even.

By putting our kids together and teaching them well, we’re supposed to be combatting racism, classism and providing a strong foundation for every child’s future.

Instead, the Sask Party wants to create more division, more classes of people - even of kids.

I mean, if I had $2000 a month to put my kid in a school where he’d only have thirteen classmates and guaranteed, customized one-on-one daily support, would I?

Of course.

But I shouldn’t have to and neither should anyone else - strong public education is what’s best for our kids.

Period.

It’s what was best for us, for our Saskatchewan parents and our Saskatchewan grandparents.

The system wasn’t broken.

It’s been smashed to smithereens by the Sask Party, in an attempt to save money, leaving parents little choice but to funnel their kids away from the public system if they can.

For these and many other reasons, the result of the STF vote will very likely be “No”. Thank god we still have at least one group of labourers in the province with a backbone.

That said, while I understand that it’s likely going to be the strategy, work-to-rule is, sadly, the result the Sask Party wants. They don’t give a shit why parents are aggravated or even if parents blame the Sask Party for their aggravation - the goal is to force parents to look outside the public system for solutions.

Please don’t.

We have everything we need in Saskatchewan to educate our kids, but first we’re going to have to take control of it away from some really bad, fraudulent and misleading people.

Like Jeremy Cockrill.

Have a great week,