The Editor,
In the proposed budget cuts, the SD43 School Board said it was trying to keep cuts away from direct services to students.In the budget that passed, they suddenly - and without notice - changed tack. The local papers reported, briefly, that the Teaching Assistants (TA) budget had been cut in schools in order to save some caretaking positions but barely elaborated beyond that, merely dismissing TAs as people who read stories to elementary school children.
I am a career resource facilitator at Centennial Secondary School. My position falls under the TA category and has, along with all the other Career Centre positions, been cut to the bone.
It is absurd to cut career resource facilitator positions in SD43 at this particular moment, at a time of record youth unemployment.My time is spent helping students understand, plan for, and access post secondary training, thus addressing the much discussed "skills shortage" in Canada, as well as combating youth unemployment. It is the role of the public system to fill in gaps for students who may not have access at home to information on how the post secondary system works; for many, they may be the first generation post secondary student or the first to continue schooling in Canada. I also assist them with accessing scholarships, bursaries, and awards and with improving their applications, that they might be able to pay for their further education. I help them with resumes, with volunteer placements, and with expanding their extracurricular activities to build their ability to apply their learning to real life situations. I explain how their career will require soft skills as well as technical abilities and help them to understand what those are and how to develop them and highlight them. I sleuth out and feature a tremendous array of opportunities for the kids to explore, grow, learn, and augment their experiences and education outside the school system as well as in it. I seek to engage and empower youth, to build their skills to inform themselves, to plan ahead, and to advocate for their own situations.
Cutting such a vital area of support to students in the current economic and educational climate is shameful; spinning these cuts as storytime is dishonest. Students - and the B.C. economy - need this help.
On a personal level, I cannot live on the 20 hours per week to which the position has been reduced.I am a single (widowed) mother of three: a sole breadwinner.May those who made these cuts look me in the eye and explain how their "error" results in my job loss.I over-served this district, in that instead of the minimum requirement of two years of college training to become a Career Resource Facilitator, I brought seven years of university, a graduate degree, and experience advising at a university level. I did this because my passion is to work with adolescents, as I deem this to be the age where intervention can result in the greatest positive impact on both the individual and society. It is through teenagers that we can change the world.
If anyone out there has a good position in that realm for me, please let me know, for it seems I'm looking for work.
Tasha Nathanson
Coquitlam
