Mr. Deputy Speaker: Proposed resolutions, the honourable member for Gladstone (Mr. Rocan), Federal Transfer Cuts--not at this time; it will be dropped to the bottom.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Number 2, on the proposed resolution of the honourable member for Gimli, Mr. Helwer, Parental Involvement.
Mr. Edward Helwer (Gimli): Mr. Deputy Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable member for Pembina (Mr. Dyck), that
2. WHEREAS the government places high importance on the involvement of parents and the community in the education of Manitoba's young people; and
WHEREAS Advisory Councils for School Leadership were created and are operating in over 200 schools in the province; and
WHEREAS this government hosts annual forums for parents to encourage their continued involvement as important partners in the educational process.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the members of the Legislative Assembly support the involvement of parents and communities in education through such activities as in-service programs, information sharing with parents, parent forums and a continued partnership between the Department of Education, school divisions and schools in supporting parental involvement.
Motion presented.
Mr. Helwer: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am very pleased to propose this resolution and speak to it because I think it is very important to get parents' involvement in the community and in the schools, and this government certainly fully recognizes the important contributions that parents and other community members can make towards the education of Manitoba's young people.
Parents have so much to offer, Mr. Deputy Speaker, not only with respect to the education of their own children but for the school program as a whole. We need to recognize and respect the fact that parents are indeed our children's first teachers, and they also play a very important role in developing in them a lifelong love of learning. It is so important that parents and community members have the opportunities to have real input in the education system. Too often in the past, many parents wanted to get involved in school matters, but there were not sufficient provisions for their involvement. There was not a tool or an avenue for them to get involved in their school system.
There have always been opportunities for parents to get involved in some of the school activities such as fundraising or some of the extracurricular activities, of course, but there were often limitations on their involvement in some of the real school matters; I mean things that pertain to the education of their children, some of the real issues of the school.
So there is just no question that many parents want to have some input into school matters such as curriculum, assessment, school planning, personnel practices and other areas of the school operations. In the past, the extent and the nature of parental involvement varied from place to place, parent to parent and also from school to school. In some families, parents become very involved with their child's education, while in others involvement has been limited or somewhat less.
There are many schools where parental involvement was superficial and sometimes even discouraged, and while parents were often involved during the early years of their child's education, that involvement lessened sometimes during the latter years of the education. The government recognizes though that many schools have provided excellent opportunities for parental involvement, and they should be applauded for this. However, it is important that all schools provide such opportunities and that all parents are able to participate in the education system if they so wish.
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Many educators also recognize the need for and the value of parents' involvement in their children's activities. I think that is where the co-operation between the educators and the parents and the parents' council--I think that is where we are benefiting from having these parent councils. There is no question that a close partnership between the parents and the teachers leads to a more effective learning environment.
When parents, some of the community members and educators work together, this results in significant benefits such as improved academic performance and student behaviour, strengthened community networks, a better understanding of the needs of individual students, more regular attendance, greater motivation and more positive attitudes towards homework and school. With all these benefits, it also is easier for the teachers, the educators, in areas such as discipline and things of that nature, getting the students to attend school regularly, and when the parents are involved, all these come about much easier, and everybody benefits from this process.
Numerous studies have examined the effects of involving parents also in the education of their children. The overall evidence indicates that meaningful parent involvement in programs have significant benefits for students, for parents, schools and the whole community. Parent endorsement of school enhances children's self-esteem and self-discipline, mental health and long-term aspirations. When children receive help at home in a particular subject, their achievement is likely to increase. The children of parents who participate in school activities are better behaved and much more diligent in their efforts to learn, and this also helps them in their later stages also.
The benefits of continual parental involvement are not restricted to students in the earlier and middle years, of course, of their school years, but students experience these benefits continually throughout their senior years, and studies confirm the value of parental involvement at the high school level and suggest that early school leaving may be prevented by supportive parents. That is certainly borne out by the results.
The government is committed to enhancing the participation of parents in the function of Manitoba schools, and for the past four years this government has sponsored an annual parents' forum to provide information and to listen to questions, concerns, suggestions that parents may have regarding the whole school system and the educational system.
The latest forum was just held a couple of weeks ago here, on November 29, as a matter of fact, and many parents were able to attend this function. The topic, standards testing or in pursuit of excellence, provided an opportunity for parents to learn more about assessment and standards testing in Manitoba and to have some of their questions answered.
One of the most important responsibilities is to provide a strong educational foundation for our children for they are truly the future of this province, and parents, as important partners, play a very valuable role as together we work to ensure we are providing a high quality of education to our students to make sure they have the skills that they need to succeed in the 21st Century.
Manitobans have clearly expressed to us the need for higher standards, better programs, effective use of technology, more parental and community involvement and effective measures of accountability. We have listened and are continuing our efforts to ensure excellence in education with an increased emphasis on the core subjects, and we have strengthened legislation to ensure that schools are safe, productive environments where teachers and students can work together and where there is order in the classroom.
We continue our efforts to provide parents with opportunities for meaningful involvement in the educational process. The government is making an ongoing effort to open the doors to as many parents as possible. This means that guidelines, procedures for parental involvement are friendly and easy to understand. The government recognizes that diversity is an important building block in many strong partnerships, and they wish to involve the parents from all backgrounds.
I just want to give you one example of how the local parents' council in one of my schools in my constituency--they did not have enough students for really a full grade or to make two classrooms of a certain grade. What they had to do was split the classes to have some Grade 4s and some Grade 5s in one classroom to make provisions for all the children. Parents did not particularly like to have a split class, and they certainly voiced their opinion, but they did it properly. But, with the co-operation of the educators, the teachers, the parents of those particular children, we were able to resolve the issue without any major problems. Parents understood the importance of what had to be done, so it was done in a constructive manner. So it worked out very well.
Through some of the ongoing initiatives, like annual forums, strengthened legislation, resource and support documents, meetings, committees, and information-sharing opportunities, we continue to invite parents to become and stay meaningfully involved in their children's education and also where parents and community involvement are an integral part of education in Manitoba, and because of an expanded involvement to provide significant benefits to our young people, and whereas this involvement will continue to be encouraged by this government and promoted through such activities as in-service programs, through sharing with parents, parent forums, and a continued partnership between the Department of Education, school divisions, and schools in supporting parental involvement.
I want to mention one other example of where parents are involved. I think I have a couple of minutes yet, Mr. Deputy Speaker? A couple of minutes. Good. Oh, great.
One of the ways in which parents have gotten involved, and this is a perfect example of what parents can do working with the teachers, this is at Stony Mountain in the Stony Mountain Elementary School, where the teachers and the parents, the parent councils all worked together as a community. They improved their playground and also became a green school. Now, just last September they celebrated the completion of the SEEDS program and became a green school. This is through the SEEDS program, whereby they completed 1,000 projects, environmental projects for the SEEDS Foundation. So in the Stony Mountain School they started out back in 1994, actually, where they were recognized as a green school with 100 projects; the following year they were a jade school with 250 projects; and then they went to an emerald school with 500 projects. Then this past year they completed their total, 1,000 projects. This is terrific, I think, and I was pleased to take part in the program there when they did announce that the school achieved their 1,000th project.
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Some of the projects that they did there in order to realize this--they took part in a wide variety of projects, from recycling materials for art, toys, bird feeders, to create their own green school. Also, one of their earlier projects was a playground, and it certainly has made for a safe environment for the children at the Stony Mountain School so that they can make the whole school much safer and much more enjoyable for the students there.
This is all done in co-operation with the parents, the school division, the province, the SEEDS corporation, and also the teachers and the students involved. Also, the students have to maintain these projects for a number of years, and they are trained to do this. So it also teaches the students some responsibility to maintain what they have built because they really do take better care of it when they were involved in the project to begin with.
There is only one other school in Manitoba actually that qualified for this Earth School, and I understand it is in the constituency from the Minister of Health (Mr. Praznik) actually, in Lac du Bonnet area. But we are really pleased to have this.
While my time is up, I would like to see all members support this resolution here today.
Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am pleased to be able to rise and make a few comments about this particular resolution, because I think all members of the House would agree, and many who have done reading on the topic would agree, that where parents are involved in, aware of and part of their children's education, those children tend to do better than those where parents are apathetic, uninterested and uninvolved. All that we have read and learned and studied in all research shows that to be true.
We have been placing a special emphasis in our government on providing opportunities for parents to get involved in the schools, and I am delighted to indicate that, with our new format for school advisory councils, we have provided a very real platform for parents to become meaningfully involved in the schools through school plans, through a wide variety of venues that enable parents to become true partners with other adults in the school in their children's lives. Parents are, after all, their students' first teachers. They are the ones who teach the children to walk, to talk, to conduct themselves properly in society and prepare them for the actual learning experience of school.
Advisory Council for School Leadership builds upon that foundation that is desired in children's preschool years--not always, unfortunately, there. That is another issue where we need to assist families in providing support, preschool, for those where parents are not as involved as they could be or would like to be, but at the school level we have seen over 200 advisory councils fully established and functioning. Having visited some of the schools where that influence is felt, it is a wonderful experience.
It is wonderful to see the parents and the teachers working together, supporting each other, lifting each other up, working together for the benefit of their students. It is wonderful to see parents taking a part at the beginning of the year and helping to establish plans for that school for the year, plans for that place in which their students, their children would be spending so much time, plans about the kind of discipline the school shall have, about the kind of atmosphere the school shall have, about the type of learning that will take place in the school where their children attend.
For the teachers involved in schools where that support is strong and that influence is solid, the teachers feel such a strong sense of support from those parents because together they have all opted into a common goal and outcome for those children, and together they can reinforce each other and establish continuity and consistency for that child. We are amazed to see the difference that these kinds of school councils can have in a school.
We have not made them compulsory, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We have provided the model and the opportunity. We have also said that if parents wish to have a different kind of parent council or, indeed, no parent council, that parents are free to pursue those routes as well. But more and more, we are beginning to notice that where school advisory councils have been set up and are observed by a neighbouring school that it is snowballing, those schools watching these success stories are then seeking the opportunity to have them for themselves as well. It is very stimulating, and it is a great thing to witness.
We find with the trustees and principals/administrators in places where they have strong parental and community involvement that there is a much easier leadership task. They may be busier because there are a lot of people involved in helping, but the supportive atmosphere makes the job more fulfilling, more satisfying.
We recognize parental involvement as a cornerstone of educational renewal. In fact, we have outlined in our New Directions six priority areas for renewal of the education system, and this parental involvement thrust is one of them. We believe that parents and community members have the right, the right to be involved in all aspects of their children's education.
Too often in decades gone by, there existed educational institutions where the children were dropped off by the parents, and the door then was closed to the parents, who remained on the outside, and everybody else was on the inside, leaving the teachers in isolation, coping on their own without parental support, leaving the parents outside the door feeling frustrated and left out, and there developed a culture that said we are the people in the schools; we know about education; you are just the parents; you must not come in. There developed a culture on the parents' side that said you are the educators; you must be all things to my student; I can now abdicate my responsibility at this door. Those two cultures coming together spelled bad things for students.
Opening that door and letting the influences flow both ways, I believe, has made a tremendous improvement, and I hear this over and over from parents. I know there are still places where people are still caught in old think, where they are nervous and worried about this new thrust and are fearful that it will mean that parents coming into the school will start making comments that perhaps people of the school will not want to hear, or parents feel coming into the school that educators in the school might forever condemn their child if they share views and opinions with the educator. But all we have to do is take people who feel that way over to see the success stories and the attitude changes, because the positive interaction has created deep bonds of friendship and mutual respect and a greater understanding of the roles that all these adults in this child's life fulfill.
We are, through the Manitoba Association of Parent Councils--the Manitoba Association of Parent Councils is currently conducting a survey on the numbers of formally established Advisory Councils for School Leadership. The numbers are expected to show that we have actually about 400 councils established to date. The 200-some-odd that I mentioned are those that are there and flourishing, and some of the others are still in the new stages.
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Given the importance of these councils, I would like to just highlight the mandate of them. The Advisory Council for School Leadership is formally recognized through legislation. It consists of elected members of the community, and these councils have powers that are recognized in legislation. The Advisory Council for School Leadership works in co-operation with school staff, trustees, parents and members of the community. The council acts as a liaison between the school, parents, community and other school support organizations for the purpose of information sharing and co-operation. It also provides advice to the principal, staff and school board on matters related to programs, school planning, budgeting and management of the school.
The roles and responsibilities of Advisory Councils for School Leadership are to advise the principal on school matters as they pertain to school improvement, policies, organization and activities. Some of those would include curriculum and programs, cultural and extracurricular activities, student discipline and behaviour management policies, community access to school facilities, transportation, fundraising, school closures, hiring and assigning of principals.
They also have a role and responsibility to participate in the development of an annual school plan, and we will shortly be receiving the first sets of school plans, Mr. Deputy Speaker, having been notified by several divisions that their plans are ready. They are tremendously excited about them, and I am most eager to read those plans and see the personalities of the schools reflected in them and know that everybody in the school has opted into this as a way for their schools to function and go through the year. It is such a positive thing.
To participate in the development of the school budget proposal prior to the submission to the school board: That is an opportunity for input that many parents have long sought, and now that it is happening, schools are finding to their delight that this is a very helpful process. They are getting fewer complaints about the priorities for spending in the schools. They know if they decide they are going to purchase new volleyballs or purchase new library books or something of that nature, that they are doing it on the priorities as established by those who are consumers of the system.
Another role is to promote community interest, understanding and involvement in the school and in the governance of the school. We have some incredible examples where the community has become involved to the point that the schools have benefited from the acquisition of equipment, computers, technology, where there are technology councils set up in the schools that are technology councils consisting of parents, community members, students, staff, and their focus is to have technological literacy high on a priority list in their building, and working together they have been able to accomplish far more than they had ever anticipated could be done.
I see things like that, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I want to pick up the phone and call my predecessor and indicate to him that it is time he came to see the results of his initiative. It is time he came to witness some over 200 flourishing, fully established councils, some 200 newly established, beginning-to-get-going councils and the mushrooming effect as people begin to notice how much better the schools are when these councils exist. I would like to call my predecessor and have him come and enjoy the fruits of his labour and show him that his vision was a correct one and ensure that he gets a sense of satisfaction from an initiative that has been very well received by the people for whom he hoped it would work.
The councils, of course, establish ongoing communication with all parents of the children enrolled in the school and with community members. The advisory council is representative of their priorities and concerns. They establish a means of regular accountability to the school and community for involvement, activities, expenditure and recommendations. To ensure that the parents are well represented, at least two-thirds of the positions on the council must be filled with parents whose children attend the school. As an additional resource, for parents wishing to establish an advisory council, the Department of Education and Training has issued a handbook which outlines how to plan and implement the formation of such an organization.
Mr. Deputy Speaker, we note, for the record, the involvement of the community in these school advisory councils, and it is delightful to see those areas where seniors have become involved on the school advisory council, where local neighbourhood business people have become involved in this school council, where they take an interest in what the children are doing, coming and going to and from school, where we have the community feeling ownership of the building and the people who are in it. I attended one parent council function last year, and I could not believe the number of people who were there who were not related in a legal sense to the children, but who were there because they had played such a large role in that school that they felt--one person said, I feel as if these children are my own. What a wonderful attitude to come out of an initiative, and kudos to the school.
Are you signalling my time is up, Sir? Okay. I want to thank you, then, for allowing me to put these few comments on the record. With that, I will resist the temptation to talk for another hour about the wonders of parent councils.
Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): Mr. Deputy Speaker, I would like to thank the mover of this resolution and to suggest that there are areas obviously, I think, where both the opposition and the government would agree on this. But I should note at the beginning that it is based, of course, upon two false assumptions. The first is, and the minister has elaborated upon this as she just spoke, the assumption that there were no parent councils until the light of this government shone upon them. Nothing could be further from the truth. In case of Winnipeg--[interjection]
Mr. Deputy Speaker, I think I waited quite patiently for two members of the government to speak, and I think it would be appropriate for them to wait, too.
It is a straw man that there were no parent councils before this government introduced its legislation, and that is not true. In Winnipeg No. 1, for example, all schools, I believe, had parent councils. Other urban school divisions did, and so did some of the rural divisions. I do not know since the legislation--and I look forward to the minister's report on this--how many more schools have added parent councils. I assume that many of them have, and I think that is a very good idea. It did not require legislation to do that; it required a government which was prepared to indicate best practices to schools across the province and to take the time to expand upon that.
The second assumption which is false is that parents were not involved in schools in any other way before there were parent councils. Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am certainly getting on in years, and it is 20-odd years since my children were in school, and indeed I was invited from the very beginning into the kindergarten. Although I have taught kindergarten myself in other settings, I very much remember that first day in kindergarten and my great respect for the teacher as I emerged at 11:30 somewhat unscathed--or perhaps scathed--from the experience. So I have never encountered a school, in fact, in my experience in the city of Winnipeg, which has not had open doors for parents. We have been invited into the classroom; we have been invited at lunchtime; we have been invited to go with students upon field trips. All of those things have involved parental involvement. Certainly those who were on the parent councils, and I certainly was not involved myself at the parent council level, have been involved in many of the things which the legislation has provided for. So, although we welcome the legislation, we thought the government could have done it without, and indeed they also perhaps are starting from false premises in this particular area.
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Mr. Deputy Speaker, I think also that the government is wise in its resolution to indicate that it is not just parent councils which are the basic involvement of parents. There are many, many other ways for parents to be involved, and indeed one of the roles of parent councils should be to find other ways for parents to become involved in the school, as indeed many of them already have.
I think also one area where the government has assumptions different from mine are, I believe that much of the government's speeches on this rest upon, as the minister put it, parents who are apathetic, uninterested and uninvolved. Mr. Deputy Speaker, I think that is a very unfortunate assumption because I speak for a constituency, as do many people on, I assume, both sides of the House, where there are parents who are very anxious, indeed extremely anxious in some cases, to become involved in their children's education, but resources are not distributed equally across families, either in my constituency or, I suspect, in most members'.
Madam Speaker in the Chair
There are parents who are able to be their children's first teachers in all the ways that we would hope. There are parents who are able to supply their children with books and a household that is filled with books and pictures and the things that we need to stimulate children. There are households where there are computers, sometimes one and two computers, and there are households without computers.
There are houses where children or families are taken regularly to the library, and there are houses where parents know nothing about a library or about a library ticket. And I will say as an aside on that, Madam Speaker, that I hope that a government which brings in a resolution such as this is not going to be the same government which enables the City of Winnipeg to begin to charge library fees because nothing can be more important, I believe, to children in their beginning education than a house of books and a library ticket and a family which engages in reading together.
But there are parents with many different abilities. There are many parents who are not as literate as we would hope. They come from other countries. They have different languages, that their ability to help their children in English or in French is much more limited than those perhaps of many of us in this Chamber. And so I think, as the minister might have done, to assume, and I do not suggest that she assumed this, but I think she must make the assumption as well, that there are parents who want to help their children and who cannot and that resources and abilities are distributed unequally.
Parent councils are one way of ensuring greater involvement of parents, but also there must be an indication that schools have to be the equalizers, that those children who come from families where there are no books, where there is very little involvement in language, where there are not the financial supports or the supports available from time, from the perspective of a family which has time to be with its children, then the school must be the equalizer. Schools must make a difference, and that is where I think I would perhaps have added or differentiated myself from the government on this, the idea that schools have to be the equalizer. They must have the libraries. They must have teachers with additional time. They must have the teachers for the special needs children in the schools. They must have the resources to deal with children who come from families who cannot provide what we would all hope for in terms of literacy and ability to meet the world with confidence, what we want to instill in all of our children.
Madam Speaker, I think we have seen funding cuts to public schools as the result of this government's actions which have had a serious impact on the resources available. There are school divisions who used to have librarians who no longer do. There are school divisions which used to have budgets where they could buy books, possibly every year. Now they no longer do. There are school divisions where there used to be textbooks for every child. Now they can have textbooks for perhaps one in every three children or every four children. The rest must be xeroxed and taken home, if they still have a xerox budget. And I mentioned in my response to the throne speech that in some of our wealthier neighbourhoods children are being expected, as a form of user fees, to bring xerox paper so that things can be made up in the absence of available textbooks.
There are schools in our province where students are being charged for substitute teachers for field trips. What a great equalizer and parental involvement that is to involve parents in field trips to take the children to camp as they used to in the language programs, to be involved with them in a visit to the museum, to be involved with them in visits to galleries or to take them to the swimming pool so that every child by the age of 10 or 11 may indeed learn to swim. How more important can so many things in physical education be than that in a province of so many lakes where water safety is of extreme concern to all of us? Yet, look across our schools, and look at those areas which are being cut or for which user fees which exclude children are being made. You will find that those areas of parental involvement are diminishing seriously, and I think that is a serious concern. It is all very well for the government to talk about parental involvement, but in fact the government's own actions diminish the opportunities for the very involvement of parents which would have made a difference.
That is particularly true at the junior high and senior high school levels. It is relatively easy for parents to become involved in kindergarten, as I was, or in the junior levels of the elementary school. It becomes much more difficult when your child is 13 or 14 when the messages do not come home from school, when you unpack the knapsack at the end of the school term and you find that there are three feet of sandwiches and several feet of letters that have not been delivered to you. The communication between school and the home does become more difficult the older the children get and the greater autonomy that they seek. It is one of the ways in which they seek that kind of autonomy, and that is part of their job. So field trips and those kinds of things, and sports activities, sports teams, do make a difference, and I very much regret that a government which brings forward a resolution like this has seen to reduce the funding in those areas as well as in areas which have an impact on the classroom.
Now the government wanted to talk about its parent forums, and the parent forums are a good idea. I think they are probably too large and too unwieldy. I think the government would be much better advised to have smaller-scale parental forums on a regional or on a divisional district. I think parents who know each other are much better able to discuss things in a more collegial manner than with people whom they have not met before.
I think there are several things wrong with the forums that the government has had, and I am offering this as free advice. The minister rejected it, of course, the last time I offered it. But I think in the last parent forum it would have been advisable for the government to have an opportunity, to provide an opportunity for parents to discuss, for parents to talk to each other, to listen to each other and for parents particularly to talk to the minister and to listen to the minister in response. That is why parents were there, and that was precisely what they did not get from this government.
But this government as a government which listens to parents, I think, is probably something which most parents by now have realized is simply not the case. If you live in a government riding you seem to have some access to ministers. If you do not live in a government riding, such as those parents from The Maples, for example, it takes you a lot longer. Month after month you must write the letters, you must make the phone calls and be turned away.
I know of no parent in Manitoba who has asked for the removal of Canadian history from Grade 11, and yet the minister who claims to listen to parents has removed it. Indeed, if you look at the records of the first parent forum that she had, and incidentally it is the only one that has had a formal published record--there must be some reason for that. It escapes me at the moment. But the formal published recordings of the minutes from the Dakota meeting did indicate that parents wanted Canadian history. They wanted it, and this is a government which has just sent us out a package to ask us to talk to students in high schools about Canada. It is the very government which is reducing the amount of Canadian history it is going to teach in schools. In fact, it is not going to be compulsory after Grade 6. So, this is a government which listens to parents, I think is something that is a little breathtaking.
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Many parents in the alternative program, some of them from my riding, some from across the province, also tried to talk to the government about the standards test in Grade 3. They were very concerned about the implications of it for their students and for their children. This is a minister who claims to listen to parents, but she certainly did not listen to those parents. There was no discussion. There was no accommodation. There was no, as they believe it, certainly no understanding of the position that they were making about the nature of education in the alternative program in the early grades.
So the government can talk about its parent councils, it can talk about its parent forums, but it is fundamentally a government which has continued to cut money to public schools, it has launched in many ways an attack upon teachers in the classroom, and if there is anything which is more important, it is that relationship between the parent, the teacher, and the child. That is what is significant, and when the government undermines the position of teachers, when it formally and publicly chooses to attack them, then it is breaking one element in that important bond that should be maintained.
Finally, Madam Speaker, I want to talk about the--oh, I see my light is flashing. I did want to talk about the pressure of time upon parents and of the parents from whom I have heard even in the last 10 days who are not apathetic, who are not uninterested, who are not uninvolved in their children's education, but they are part of this flexible labour force that this government has created. They have two and three jobs to keep going, jobs of 20 hours and 30 hours, often at not much more than the minimum wage. The father I spoke to has to do the laundry, the cooking. He spends an hour and a half with his child every night on mathematics. He then spends another hour with his daughter in reading, and he is extremely anxious that as the class size grows in her school and he has less and less time to deal with the educational needs of his children that she is going to fall further and further behind.
I want to tell the government, as I did in my response to the throne speech, that I have had not just one call on that, but in the last few days I have had several dealing not so much with the mathematics that the government wants to emphasize, but with basic reading--basic reading. That is where many children are falling behind. The government's reading recovery program, much spoken of in the early years of this government's mandate, is enormously expensive for schools and school divisions to buy into, and reading is suffering, according to the people who have phoned me. That is where parental involvement is extremely important.
Madam Speaker, I am sorry, I do not have any further time. Thank you.
Mr. Stan Struthers (Dauphin): Madam Speaker, I feel privileged to stand and take this opportunity to talk a little bit about Parent Advisory Councils. It is something that as a former school principal I have had some real-life experience with.
Madam Speaker, for this minister to stand in this House and to indicate and to imply that somehow this government waved a magic wand and all of a sudden all over the province appeared these Parent Advisory Councils is sheer nonsense. As a student teacher at Brandon University quite a few years ago I was placed in a school that, lo and behold, in the '70s, in the mid to late 1970s, had a Parent Advisory Council. That may be news. That may be news to the minister. That may be news to everybody on their side of this House, but in the 1970s there were actually schools in this province who had Parent Advisory Councils. So when the minister says that she has provided the model or when she says they have provided the opportunity for these Parent Advisory Councils to exist in Manitoba, I would suggest that that is just nonsense.
Madam Speaker, every now and then in a political person's life I understand that a political person will feel the need to jump onto a bandwagon, to try to jump onto a situation that is positive, you know, try to get into something, get onto a good thing. I guess there is nothing too much wrong with that. But what I am afraid is happening here is that this minister has so badly mismanaged the education of kids in Manitoba, that this government has done so many dastardly things to the education system in this province for no other reason than to jump on this bandwagon to distract us from what really this government is intending to do with education, and that is, set up a two-tiered system for kids in our province.
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That is the final objective. I do not think this minister wants people to understand that, so she is muddying the waters by jumping into supporting the parent advisory councils in this province simply as a way to distract people. The minister knows that, I think members on the government side know this, and I do not think she is fooling anybody out there. I think people understand that this government does not care about education, that this government does not care whether parents are involved or not in education, and I do not think they understand the importance of having parents involved in their kids' education, Madam Speaker.
The minister talked about doing some reading about education. The minister talked about citing research papers on education. That is all well and fine, Madam Speaker. I have nothing against the minister reading about education and consulting research papers on education, but this minister has failed miserably when it comes to consulting with the real people involved in education, including the children, including the parents, including teachers.
Instead of bashing teachers all the time, this government should consult with teachers and with parents and with students, consult with the administrators in the schools who have to implement the heartless cuts of this government in education. This minister should talk with trustees and talk with the superintendents and try to figure out just what effect her cuts are having on our classrooms throughout the province of Manitoba.
Madam Speaker, I have taught school in a number of different communities in the province of Manitoba. What I have learned at those schools where I have taught is that parents have always been welcome in the schools in which I have been a staff member. The staff in Rossville, Manitoba, under the leadership of our school principal, came up with a very inclusive, very effective model upon which to invite parents into our schools and have a real role to play in the education of their kids' lives.
In Rossville, we understood that there was a problem in the normal way in which the school in that community ran their parent-teacher interviews, so we sat down and we talked to people about how we could do them better. We decided that what would really be effective and really be a good thing for the kids was to go to the homes of these parents and talk with them there, and do you know what, Madam Speaker? We were welcomed with open arms into every single house that we went to in Rossville. We talked with parents, and we got some excellent ideas on what we can do in co-operation with the parent; partnership, like this government likes to talk about, but they can only mouth the words. They do not actually do it, particularly in education. We developed some real partnerships and some relationships with parents that really paid off for those students.
The old method that was employed when we tried to make kids go to school was to hire a truant officer and send the truant officer out to round up all the kids every day. We understood that was not a good way of doing things. We understood that you have to have parents buy into the value of education and work with the staff and have through that process students understand how important it was to come to school.
Madam Speaker, we had days in Rossville School where parents filled the classrooms, not a big special event going on but just a regular teaching of a Grade 8 math lesson, and parents sat around the edge of the classrooms and listened, paid attention, asked questions. When the kids saw their parents interested in Grade 8 math, you cannot begin to describe how powerful a message that was for those students. That is much more powerful than any standardized test that this minister thinks is going to provide some kind of standard for the students in Grades 3 and 6, Senior 1 and Senior 4.
When I taught at the Birch River School in the Swan Valley School Division, we invited parents into our schools who had specific talents that they would like to share with kids. That is a real positive way to get parents involved. Do you know who came up with that idea, Madam Speaker? The parent advisory council. That was 1987. New Democrats were in power then. We had parent advisory council groups under Howard Pawley. We had parent advisory groups under Sterling Lyon. We had parent advisory councils in this province under Ed Schreyer. So for this government, this minister, to get up here and tell us that she has some newly established council, as she said 200 of them, that is just not correct, Madam Speaker.
In the fall of 1990, I was a school principal at Rorketon. In the fall of 1990, in Duck Mountain School Division, six schools, there were no parent advisory councils. I was approached by a group of parents in Rorketon who said: We would like to become involved; what can we do? So on our own, in Rorketon, without the guidance of the minister, heaven forbid, we decided we were going to put together a group of parents who could advise the principal and the staff and work with the principal and staff to better the education for the Rorketon students. We did that, Madam Speaker, and it was a wonderful experience. It was great to see these parents working with the staff to help their kids.
Madam Speaker, the Education minister, earlier in her comments, said that she would love to give a telephone call to her predecessor, and I encourage the minister to do that. I think what she should do is say, Mr. Manness, I am so proud of myself; I have continued your cuts to schools. We are going to continue cutting schools. As a matter of fact, we have cut them 2 percent, 2 percent, 2 percent, froze them, cut them 2 percent more and then froze them again--it is for public schools, that is.
I want to let this Minister of Education (Mrs. McIntosh) know, a 2 percent cut is pretty clear. That is a cut. When you announce cynically a zero percent cut to education, in effect you are still announcing a cut. I know this because when you announce a zero percent cut from your desk here in the Legislature, by the time it filters down to the principal's desk--and I know because I was one--it becomes a cut. When you announce a zero percent cut, some principal has to lay off a school librarian. When you announce a zero percent cut, some principal--and I am sure I would be backed up by the former principals in this Legislature, that when you announce a 2 percent cut or a zero percent cut, by the time it gets down to the principal's level, you are laying off somebody, or you are denying the students the opportunity to purchase computers. [interjection]
Now, Madam Speaker, the member for Turtle Mountain (Mr. Tweed) is talking about throwing money at a problem. This is the same old cliché that this government throws every time they get caught cutting something. We are not talking about throwing money at things. We are talking about cutting, and that is what this government has done. They have cut public schools in this province, and they have lost purchasing power for the local schools and the local school divisions.
Madam Speaker, this is not a case of throwing money--
Madam Speaker: Order, please. When this matter is again before the House, the honourable member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers) will have four minutes remaining.
As previously agreed, the hour being 6 p.m., this House is adjourned and stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow (Thursday).