Regina Public School Board not being very strategic

Gotta love administrators suddenly finding themselves in several thousand dollars’ worth of a money jam and choosing to get rid of arts teachers to reduce the deficit. If there’s truly a deficit of $600,000

The Regina Public School Division’s Strategic Plan lists the following strategic priorities: 

1. engaged and successful students
2. Equitable & safe environments
3. Healthy & Skilled employees
4. Sustainable & accountable operations. 

Their decision to reduce teaching positions acts in opposition to at least three of these priorities. 

1. A further reduction in the number of teachers in elementary band programmes will reduce student engagement and success. Reducing those positions means existing band teachers have to teach at more schools than they currently do. That means students are having to choose between band class and lunch, band class and after school programmes, band class and drama class. This means fewer students will engage with music, music programming which has been proven time and time again to contribute to student success. So to hell with strategic priority number one. 
2. Further reductions to band teacher positions will result in fewer students accessing one of the safest, most equitable curriculum areas public schools have to offer. Band classes welcome students of all abilities, all backgrounds, and with complex needs. Not a single student is turned away from band, and not a single student rides the bench in band. Whether or not students are confident in their language use, whether they have mobility restrictions or live with other disability, whether a student is academically inclined, whether or not a student can sit still or focus, band teachers make meaningful space for all. And all students work together in band. It’s the only class in an entire school where every single student has a meaningful role. 
3. Further reductions in the number of FTE band teachers means you are preventing people from earning a living. It means you are putting more and more on fewer and fewer shoulders. Band teachers are almost guaranteed to burn out, thus ensuring the failure of the programme. Band teachers are already undervalued and under appreciated. In addition to all the administrative stuff all teachers have to do, most teach in five or more schools at a time, have no classroom, and have some of the most complex class compositions out there. Beginner (elementary school) bands can have 40-60 students in them. Why? BECAUSE STUDENTS ARE EXCITED TO LEARN TO PLAY AN INSTRUMENT. How many other classes have that kind of engagement? Band teachers take their students to festivals and workshops. These are highly specialised, incredibly skilled people, and they’re being treated like quaint little babysitters. 
4. Continuing to reduce jobs to meet your budget is by definition unsustainable. “Accountable”? To whom? Certainly these decisions are not making the school division accountable to the students for whom the board is elected to oversee education. These decisions are not making the school division accountable to the parents of students who want to learn music and improve their overall academic performance. Certainly these decisions are not making the division or the board accountable to the taxpayers who elected them. Cutting FTE, regardless of what area they’re in is not sustainable; where’s the accountability? 

Recently the Regina Public School Board approved an additional $25k to support equity and accessibility in school programs. Except they seem to have forgotten to support the most accessible and equitable programming available for elementary students. 

Regina Public School Division received an increase of just over 9 million dollars. Much of those funds will be used for infrastructure and salaries. That the Ministry of Education has been underfunding primary education for decades is also to blame, and the funding “increases” announced are actually mot really increases, but reductions to reductions introduced over the past few years. Coupled with the rising cost of living, this is a recipe for disaster. 

The Regina Public School Division needs to stop considering arts education as the low hanging fruit. Start looking for cost saving elsewhere, and if you’re going to cut FTE positions, start at the top. Every single school board trustee elected to Regina Public should be ashamed of the decisions they’re making, which fly in the face of their own strategic plan and actively undermine student success. 

This province needs to stop thinking arts Ed is just a fun activity. When students spend more time in their ELA classes making posters than they do actually learning language skills, I think it’s obvious we need more arts education support, not less. 

Stand up for band programming. Stand up for teachers. Stand up for our children. Stand up and tell the Regina Public School Board trustees (since the director seems to be not only tone-deaf but also arrogant) you want what’s best for students in Regina, and what they’re planning is not that.