BURNABY, BC—An independent school system seen by many British Columbians as an elitist bastion for the rich cannot afford to take the steps needed to correct that perception.
In a survey released last month, Ipsos-Reid found that 60 per cent of B.C. residents disagreed with using public funds to support “private religious schools.” Only 27 per cent were in favour. Among 18 to 34-year-olds in the Lower Mainland, that opposition grew to 72 per cent—the highest among Canada’s eight major urban centres.
“A lot of people see [private schools] as havens for the educational options of rich people. And to suggest that they require some funding or tax exemption is seen in the public’s mind as pretty ridiculous,” says Ipsos-Reid spokesman John Wright.
Dan Dowbar, development officer for Vancouver Christian School and the new Carver Christian High School in Burnaby, says those who think that way need a reality check.
“We don’t just have wealthy Christians in these schools. They’re all very much everyday people,” he says. “I drove an old beater for years so my kids could be here.”
Carver principal Paul Tigchelaar also insists his school is not “private” in the sense of being for Christians only. “We’re an inclusive community,” he says. “We have and will have kids who probably would not say, ‘We are Christians,’ but they’re on that pathway and we hope to be able to bring them along with us.”
Wright suggests these educators have not used the “right words” to explain why they deserve provincial tax dollars. “I’ve never seen the…issue either broached, conveyed or sold in a way that probably is acceptable to the public,” he says.
But Fred Herfst, executive director of the Federation of Independent Schools Association (FISA), says it is pollsters’ use of the word “private” and its negative connotations that is inappropriate. (FISA represents about 270 B.C. schools, about 80 per cent of which are faith-based.)
“Try the term ‘schools operated by charitable non-profit societies,’ which is in fact what most schools are,” he says, “and see what kind of results you get”—although he admits he has never seen a survey question framed that way.
Herfst says while independent schools—his preferred term—can “always improve” their public profile, their priority remains education, and their limited resources leave them with little or nothing for anything else.
And, he adds, “we have never gone out of our way to proselytize, and the reason for that is that most of our schools are full.”
Yet B.C.’s independent schools receive far less in funding than public schools. Their operating grants are half (or less) of the per-pupil operating cost of the public school district in which the school is located, and they receive nothing for capital projects.
“If we want to do anything at all that includes capital, we have to raise that money,” says Dowbar. “In the last three years, the capital budget for public schools [in B.C.] has been $700 million. Well, that’s tax money. Our parents pay into that, but receive no benefit.”
Ipsos-Reid also found 49 per cent of British Columbians do not agree that “kids are getting a first-class education in our public schools”—a figure that Wright believes would be higher if the question had been more specific.
But Herfst says independent schools have benefited little from this dissatisfaction. For this, he blames the “shrinking pool” of children in the population as a whole.
“For the last five, six years…out of the total loss [to the public system] of about 35 to36,000 students, we’ve increased by maybe 5,000 to 6,000. Twenty-nine thousand students simply disappeared.”
Figures compiled by FISA shows 66,235 children are currently enrolled in independent schools in B.C., or 1.9 per cent more than last year. Herfst predicts future growth will be about half a per cent a year—if any.
