Nicaragua the target as U.S. arms

Wednesday, February 27, 1985

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Newsstand Price 40°

RTE EL SES

Vol. 48, No. 8

United protest rally
hits education cuts

Delta parents hold aloft sign declaring opposition to Socred Education minister’s $1.59 million cut to the district's schools

during parent rally against education cutbacks in Vancouver Sunday.

a b

Some 1,800 people involved in public
education — mainly parents — told the
Provincial government Sunday to end its
Tuinous cutbacks to British Columbia’s
Schools and return authority to elected
School trustees.

They cheered speakers from across the
Political spectrum and gave special men-
tion to Delta, urging parents and trustees
of the southern Lower Mainland com-
munity to fight the education ministry’s
$1.6-million chop to the district’s 1985-86
budget.

Attenders signed their names to large
Petitions in the lobby of the Queen Eliza-
beth Theatre in Vancouver, site of the rally
Organized by the Metro Education Asso-
Ciation.

Some indication of the breadth of the

| Coalition raps meeting ‘disrupters’

‘Socreds taking schools to dark ages’

anti-cutbacks movement was presented by
Vancouver Ald. George Puil, a self-
admitted “right winger” who declared
Socred cuts were “leading our schools
back into the dark ages.

“If we continue the way we’re going,
our education system here is doomed to
mediocrity,” Puil, a secondary school
teacher, asserted.

Sounding like a trustee from the Van-
couver school board, Puil. listed the ills
that have hit city schools, including nurs-
ing shortages, janitorial cutbacks, and the
forced early introduction of foreign-born
students into mainstream classes because
of cuts to the English as a Second Lan-
guage program.

Puil noted that Vancouver ranked 74th
out of B.C.’s 75 school districts in terms of

low pupil-teacher ratios, with an average
of more than 33 students per class. Citing
the supposed ‘‘average” class size of
between 23-28 per class, he stated: “I can
honestly say that in 30 years of teaching, I
have never had an average class size.”

He cited the “outcry” of parents,
teachers and trustees and the “unanimity
of probably every elected council and
board in this province” against the educa-
tion cutbacks, and received applause in
calling for a royal commission into educa-
tion financing in B.C.

“We have had cuts after cuts and it’s
time they stopped,” he declared.

Educator and Province newspaper
columnist Crawford Kilian hit Bill 48, the
proposed education amendment act that

see PARTISAN page 2

ee

PARTISANACTION

MPEP LAE T2OF

Strikers
four spurs
boycott
campaign
— page 12 —

labor backs
shorter
work time

— page 11 —

— page 3 iim

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