Dear PAC members,
The BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils acknowledges the important role you play as PAC chairs and parent leaders in your communities. In an effort to support you and your PAC, BCCPAC is requesting your input, stories, challenges and progress of how job action is affecting your students and schools, specifically extra-curricular or other activities occurring or not occurring in your School as a result of job action and the pending BCTF membership vote on their action plan to refrain from all extra-curricular/voluntary activities. A copy of the action plan that was drafted at the BCTF Annual General Meeting can be found here. The union’s 41,000 members are expected to vote on April 17 and 18 on this action plan.
The one thing that is clear throughout job action is that the story or issues change frequently and frustrations exist in many arenas which continues to erode school connectedness in the communities our students rely on to support them. Each district and school is handling job action differently from report cards to extra-curricular activities to staff meetings and consultation. Your input will provide us with a more complete picture of what is occurring provincially for parents and students. This information will help frame our continued discussions with the provincial educational partners on the many issues as this dispute continues and by all indications may continue into the next school year. Your input and information is greatly appreciated and valued as we continue to advocate for students and parents at the provincial level through these challenging times.
Some points to consider when providing feedback may be – Are teachers withdrawing services? Which ones? Are parents able to volunteer their services in the absence of teacher volunteers? Do you have policies which impede parent volunteers in these roles? How is this affecting the students in your School? Is your PAC having discussions on what September will look like for extra-curricular activities? What will your PAC be doing with unspent extracurricular funds previously budgeted? Is your PAC adjusting their budgets for next year to exclude or reallocate extracurricular spending?
Please forward your comments to memberviews@bccpac.bc.ca subject line “job action”.
Thank you in advance for your commitment to parent involvement and your support of BCCPAC.
In partnership
Ann Whiteaker
BCCPAC President
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