Chilliwack – On his social media and ahead of the October 17 Municipal Elections, An opinion piece from Reid Clark, President, Chilliwack Teachers Association: Before I begin, it is important to note that I am writing from the specific context of public education in Chilliwack. That said, many of the issues, pressures, and questions facing our community are not unique to us. They reflect broader conversations happening in school districts across British Columbia, and I believe much of what follows applies well beyond Chilliwack.
There is a lot being said about public education right now.
Some of it is about safety. Some of it is about academic achievement. Some of it is about parental rights, inclusion, discipline, budgets, accountability, classroom conditions, or what schools should and should not be doing.
Those are legitimate conversations for a community to have.
But as we head toward another school board election in Chilliwack, I worry that we can become so consumed by individual controversies that we lose sight of something much bigger:
Our public education system is one of the most important institutions we share.
It belongs to all of us.
And the people we elect to govern it matter enormously.
I write this as an educator and as a parent. I have spent years listening to teachers talk about what is happening in classrooms, advocating for better conditions for students and staff, meeting with district leadership and trustees, navigating disagreements, grievances and difficult situations, and watching educators continue to do extraordinary work despite increasingly difficult circumstances.
That experience has made me more convinced, not less, about the value of public education.
Our schools are not failing institutions waiting to be rescued.
They are vibrant, complicated, imperfect and deeply important places filled with people doing remarkable work every day.
What I see in Chilliwack schools
I see kindergarten teachers helping children learn how to belong to a community for the first time.
I see teachers helping students crack the code of reading, develop strong writing skills, build number sense, reason mathematically, ask better questions, and gain confidence in their ability to learn.
I see teachers developing literacy programs, designing numeracy interventions, assessing student progress, changing approaches when something is not working, working in small groups, collaborating with colleagues, and celebrating the moment when something finally clicks.
I have seen it professionally, and I have seen it personally as a parent.
That matters to me.
Because sometimes the public conversation creates a strange impression that teachers have somehow stopped caring about the fundamentals.
Nothing could be further from what I see.
Teachers care deeply about whether children can read.
They care deeply about whether children can write.
They care deeply about mathematics.
They care about science, history, the arts, physical education, trades, critical thinking and communication.
They care about whether children can think, reason, question, create and make sense of the world around them.
And they care about whether students feel safe enough to do those things.
These are not competing priorities.
They belong together.
Literacy and numeracy are foundational
Literacy and numeracy deserve particular emphasis because they open so many other doors.
Reading is not simply one subject among many. It is a gateway to almost every other area of learning.
A student who reads confidently can access science, history, mathematics, literature, instructions, information and ideas with far greater independence.
Numeracy is equally important.
It is not simply memorizing procedures or getting the right answer. It is about understanding quantity, pattern, proportion, relationships, logic and problem solving. It is about being able to interpret the information that surrounds us every day.
Teachers know this.
They spend enormous amounts of time thinking about it.
They analyze assessments. They identify gaps. They change instruction. They communicate with families. They seek interventions. They collaborate with specialists.
They do this because they care about student achievement.
That should not be controversial.
And when candidates talk about wanting to “return the focus to academics,” I hope voters ask a simple follow-up question:
Return from where?
Because teachers never left.
They are teaching children to read.
They are teaching mathematics.
They are teaching science, history, writing, music, trades and physical education.
They are assessing, intervening and adapting instruction.
And at the same time, they are responding to increasingly complex classrooms, supporting students in crisis, communicating with families and trying to ensure every child has a realistic opportunity to succeed.
The question facing us is not whether literacy and numeracy matter.
Of course they do.
The question is whether we are prepared to give educators the conditions and resources necessary to do that work well.
The challenges are real
Anyone who works in public education today knows that classrooms have changed.
Teachers are supporting increasingly complex academic, behavioural, social and emotional needs.
Many classrooms include students requiring significant adaptations, individualized programming or intensive adult support.
Violence and aggressive behaviour in schools are real concerns. They should not be minimized.
Workers have the right to safe workplaces.
Students have the right to learn in safe environments.
Teacher shortages are real.
Educational-assistant shortages are real.
Specialist caseloads are often too high.
There are students waiting too long for assessments, intervention and support.
There are teachers trying to meet enormous ranges of need within a single classroom.
There are employees who are tired.
And there are families who sometimes feel frustrated because they can see that their child needs more than the system currently has the capacity to provide.
These are problems worth talking about during an election.
But we should be careful about anyone offering an easy explanation for difficult problems.
A new policy cannot substitute for an educational assistant who isn’t there.
A slogan about classroom order cannot substitute for appropriate behavioural supports.
A directive cannot replace a counsellor, psychologist, learning-assistance teacher, Indigenous educator, child and youth care worker, or other specialist.
And blaming teachers, administrators, parents, unions or vulnerable groups does not create one additional resource for a classroom.
If we want safer schools, better academic outcomes and stronger classrooms, eventually we have to talk about capacity.
We have to talk about staffing.
We have to talk about class size and composition.
We have to talk about specialist services.
We have to talk about mental-health and behavioural supports.
And we have to talk honestly about funding public education sufficiently to meet the expectations we place upon it.
Safety has to mean safety for everyone
Safety will undoubtedly be part of this election, and it should be.
Teachers should not be assaulted at work.
Educational assistants should not accept injury as simply part of their jobs.
Students should be able to learn without persistent disruption or fear.
When violence occurs, there must be appropriate reporting, investigation, planning, support and accountability.
But we also need a broader understanding of what a safe public school is.
A safe school is one where the Grade 2 student who is struggling to regulate gets the support they need before a crisis develops.
It is one where an educational assistant has the information and training necessary to work safely.
It is one where teachers can raise safety concerns without feeling ignored.
It is also one where a Muslim child knows their religion does not make them less welcome.
It is one where an LGBTQ+ student knows they belong.
It is one where Indigenous students see their histories, cultures and perspectives respected as integral parts of education.
It is one where students with disabilities are not treated as inconveniences.
It is one where racialized children do not have to wonder whether the adults governing their school system consider them fully part of the community.
Safety cannot be selectively defined.
Protecting workers and protecting vulnerable students are not competing objectives.
A strong public education system must do both.
And before accepting any group’s claim that it is fundamentally campaigning on safety, voters should look at the whole platform.
Safety is not one announcement.
It is a principle that should be reflected consistently in every policy, every priority and every group of people a candidate intends to serve.
Parents matter — and children have rights too
Parents are essential partners in public education.
They know their children in ways schools never can.
They advocate, ask questions, provide context, push us when something is not working and rightly expect to be heard when decisions affect their children.
That relationship matters.
But public education also has a responsibility directly to the child.
Children are not simply extensions of the adults in their lives.
As they grow, they develop their own identities, beliefs, relationships and understanding of the world.
Schools have legal, ethical and professional obligations to protect their dignity, privacy, safety and access to education.
Most of the time, the interests of parents and children align.
Sometimes they do not.
When that happens, the role of a public school cannot always be reduced to simply choosing one adult’s preference over a young person’s wellbeing.
Educators have to consider the student’s age, maturity, safety, individual circumstances and rights while continuing, wherever possible, to build trust with the family.
That is not an argument against parents.
It is an acknowledgement of what public institutions are required to do: serve the people in front of them, including young people who have rights of their own.
This is also why slogans like “parental rights” can sometimes oversimplify complicated situations.
Parents absolutely have important rights and responsibilities in their children’s education.
But those rights exist alongside the rights of the child, the professional obligations of educators, and the responsibility of schools to provide safe and inclusive learning environments for every student.
A strong public education system should not be interested in pushing parents away.
It should be interested in creating the conditions where families trust schools, students trust the adults around them, and difficult situations can be handled with care rather than turned into political theatre.
Inclusion is not a distraction from education
One of the false choices increasingly presented in debates about schools is that we must choose between academic achievement and inclusion.
We do not.
Children learn better when they feel safe.
They participate more when they feel that they belong.
Teachers can focus more effectively on teaching when adequate supports exist for the range of learners in their classrooms.
Strong literacy and numeracy instruction, appropriate standards, rich curriculum, student belonging and inclusive schools can all exist at the same time.
In fact, they should.
We should absolutely have rigorous conversations about whether students are learning to read, write, calculate, reason, communicate and think critically.
Those discussions are part of healthy public education.
But we should be able to debate education policy without debating the dignity of children.
That distinction matters.
Education matters because truth matters
There is another reason public education matters enormously right now.
We are living in a period where misinformation can move faster than evidence, where historical facts can be reduced to social-media arguments, and where difficult parts of our history can sometimes be minimized, distorted or denied.
That includes rhetoric surrounding Indigenous history and residential schools.
This is precisely why education matters.
The late Murray Sinclair, who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, famously said:
“Education is the key to reconciliation. Education got us into this mess, and education will get us out of it.”
That idea should stay with us.
Education was once deliberately used as a tool of assimilation.
It can also be part of repairing that damage.
That means teaching history honestly.
It means helping students understand residential schools, colonialism, Indigenous rights, treaties, the continuing presence and contributions of First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples, and the responsibilities that flow from reconciliation.
It does not mean teaching children to feel guilty about history.
It means teaching them history.
There is an important difference.
And it means teaching students how to evaluate evidence, distinguish credible information from misinformation, ask questions and think critically about what they encounter.
That is not ideological work.
That is educational work.
When historical denialism enters public debate, the answer should not be less education.
It should be better education.
Indigenous education must remain central
Our community has a particular responsibility to ensure Indigenous education remains central to the work of public education.
Truth and reconciliation cannot be treated as an initiative that comes and goes depending upon the political climate.
Indigenous education is part of public education.
That means ensuring Indigenous students receive appropriate support, but it also means every student learning the history of the country they live in, including histories that previous generations of Canadians were often never taught.
Reconciliation requires relationships, knowledge, humility and sustained commitment.
It also requires listening.
In education, that means recognizing the importance of Indigenous voices and Indigenous partners in decisions that affect Indigenous students.
It means understanding that reconciliation is not something a school district simply declares complete.
It is continuing work.
School boards have an important role in ensuring that work continues meaningfully and respectfully.
What trustees actually do
One reason school board elections deserve more attention is that the role of trustee is often misunderstood.
Trustees are not elected to personally run classrooms.
They are not elected to supervise individual teachers.
They are not elected to direct principals on individual student matters.
They govern.
Collectively, the Board establishes policy, approves budgets, oversees the superintendent, sets strategic priorities and makes decisions affecting the entire school district.
Trustees are also part of the employer.
That means temperament matters.
Judgment matters.
Respect for governance matters.
Understanding the difference between oversight and micromanagement matters.
The ability to work with people you disagree with matters.
A school board should contain different perspectives.
Democracy would be pretty pointless if everyone agreed about everything.
I don’t need every trustee to agree with me.
I need trustees who understand their job.
I want trustees who will ask difficult questions while also listening to the people who understand the work.
I want trustees who can disagree with a teacher, parent, administrator, union representative or fellow trustee without treating that person as an enemy.
I want trustees who understand that governing a public institution requires something different from building a social-media following.
And I want trustees who recognize that once elected, they serve every child and every family in this district, including people who did not vote for them.
There is a difference between scrutiny and distrust
Public institutions should be scrutinized.
School districts spend significant public money. Decisions should be transparent. Trustees should ask questions. Unions should challenge employers when necessary. Parents should advocate for their children. Journalists should investigate. Citizens should expect accountability.
That is democracy functioning properly.
But there is a difference between scrutiny and creating a narrative that nobody inside the system can be trusted.
Teachers are not conspiring against families.
Administrators are not inherently opposed to parents.
Parents advocating for their children are not the enemy.
Unions advocating for safe working conditions are not standing in the way of education.
Most of the time, these groups actually want many of the same things.
They want children to succeed.
They want classrooms to function.
They want problems addressed.
They sometimes disagree profoundly about how to accomplish that.
A healthy school system needs structures through which those disagreements can be resolved.
We already have collective agreements, district policies, appeal processes, health and safety structures, provincial legislation, professional standards and elected governance.
Those systems can always be improved.
But constantly telling the public that every institution is corrupt, ideological or untrustworthy eventually has consequences of its own.
Public education depends upon public trust.
Follow the resources
One question I hope voters ask throughout this campaign is very simple:
What would this proposal actually do inside a classroom?
When someone promises safer schools, ask what staffing and resources accompany that promise.
When someone promises better academic achievement, ask what they propose for children who are struggling.
When someone wants additional oversight, administration or bureaucracy, ask what it costs and whether those dollars could be spent closer to students.
When someone proposes reducing spending, ask what services disappear.
When someone promises more support for teachers, ask whether they support the resources teachers consistently say they need.
Budgets reveal priorities.
Cuts to specialist teachers, learning assistance, resource services, English-language-learning supports, Indigenous supports or substitute coverage are not abstract accounting decisions.
Eventually, they arrive at a classroom door.
They arrive as a student waiting longer for intervention.
They arrive as a teacher trying to meet another need without another adult.
They arrive as a specialist with a larger caseload.
They arrive as lost instructional time.
They arrive as fewer opportunities for teachers to sit with a student and actually teach.
That last point matters.
If we genuinely want stronger literacy and numeracy outcomes, then we should care about the conditions under which those subjects are taught.
A teacher who is constantly responding to unmet behavioural needs has less time for targeted reading instruction.
A learning-assistance teacher carrying an overwhelming caseload has less time for intervention.
A classroom without adequate EA support can lose enormous amounts of instructional time.
These issues are connected.
You cannot separate academic achievement from the conditions of learning.
Public schools do something remarkable
There is something about public education that I think we sometimes take for granted.
Every morning, children with profoundly different lives walk through the same doors.
Children from wealthy families and families struggling to pay rent.
Children born in Chilliwack and children who arrived in Canada recently.
Children who speak English at home and children learning it for the first time.
Children who excel academically and children for whom learning is enormously difficult.
Children of different cultures, religions, identities, abilities and family structures.
We bring them together and say:
You all belong here.
There are not many institutions left that attempt something that ambitious.
Public education is one of them.
And then we ask teachers to do something equally ambitious.
Teach them to read.
Teach them to write.
Teach them mathematics.
Teach them science.
Teach them history.
Teach them how to collaborate.
Teach them how to disagree.
Teach them how to evaluate information.
Teach them how to participate in a democracy.
Help them discover things they are good at.
Help them through things they struggle with.
Prepare them for lives we cannot completely predict.
That is extraordinary work.
That is why arguments about schools can become so emotional. Schools are where many of our hopes, fears and disagreements about society meet.
But that is also why public education is worth defending.
Not because it is perfect.
Because it is ours.
Elections determine what happens after the rhetoric ends
Campaigns make it easy to promise things.
Governing is harder.
After the election signs come down and social-media advertisements disappear, trustees will have to sit around the same table.
They will have to approve budgets.
They will have to hire and evaluate senior leadership.
They will receive confidential information.
They will hear appeals.
They will work with parents, employees, unions, Indigenous partners and community organizations.
They will face situations where there is no perfect answer.
They will occasionally have to vote for something unpopular.
They will be responsible not just to their supporters, but to the entire district.
That is why character, judgment and governance ability deserve as much attention as campaign promises.
Ask candidates what they believe.
But also ask how they behave when someone disagrees with them.
Ask whether they understand the limits of the trustee role.
Ask whether they can distinguish evidence from ideology.
Ask whether they are willing to change their minds when presented with better information.
Ask whether they see teachers and other employees as partners in improving schools or adversaries to be defeated.
Ask whether their definition of safety applies to everyone.
Ask whether their commitment to parental involvement also recognizes that children are people with rights, dignity and increasingly independent voices of their own.
Ask what they actually propose to do about literacy and numeracy.
Ask what they will do about teacher shortages, educational-assistant shortages, class composition and specialist supports.
Ask what they will protect when budgets become difficult.
And ask whether every child in Chilliwack could reasonably believe that this person intends to represent them.
Please vote
School trustee elections do not always receive the attention of provincial or federal elections.
They should.
The decisions made by a Board of Education reach directly into classrooms throughout our community.
They influence how public dollars are spent.
They shape relationships with employees.
They affect which priorities receive attention.
They influence whether difficult conversations become constructive or corrosive.
They determine whether scarce resources move closer to classrooms or further away from them.
And they help determine the direction of the public education system our children inherit.
So I hope Chilliwack residents participate in this election.
Read what candidates actually say.
Look beyond slogans.
Attend forums.
Read candidate surveys.
Ask questions.
Look at the whole platform rather than one carefully packaged announcement.
Consider not only what a candidate is angry about, but what they are for.
When someone tells you what is wrong with public education, ask what they plan to build in its place.
When someone tells you they support teachers, ask what that support looks like when it comes time to make decisions about staffing, resources and working conditions.
When someone says they support academic achievement, ask how their policies will actually help a struggling reader, a student having difficulty with mathematics, or a teacher trying to meet thirty different needs in one classroom.
When someone says they support safety, ask whether they mean everyone.
And remember that the loudest political debate on Facebook on any given evening bears very little resemblance to what happens inside most Chilliwack classrooms the following morning.
There, teachers will still be welcoming children at the door.
Students will still be learning to read.
Someone will finally understand fractions.
A child will write a paragraph they could not have written six months ago.
A teenager will talk to a trusted adult about something they have been carrying alone.
A student who has struggled all year will experience success.
A teacher will change a lesson because yesterday’s one didn’t work.
An educational assistant will find a way to reach a student nobody else could.
A librarian will put the right book into the right child’s hands.
An Indigenous educator will help a student see themselves and their history reflected in their education.
A team will practise after school.
A class will laugh.
A teacher will stay late.
A book will change someone’s mind.
And somewhere in Chilliwack, a child will suddenly realize:
I can do this.
That is public education.
It is not perfect.
It is not easy.
And it certainly does not need to be immune from criticism.
But criticism should be aimed at making it stronger, not diminishing the people who work within it or dividing the children it exists to serve.
Public education will continue doing what it does every day: bringing an extraordinarily diverse group of young people together and trying to give each of them the knowledge, skills and opportunities to build a future.
That work deserves serious leadership.
It deserves adequate resources.
It deserves thoughtful debate.
It deserves leaders who understand that literacy, numeracy, inclusion, safety and belonging are not competing goals.
It deserves leaders who understand that parents matter enormously, and that children have rights too.
It deserves leaders willing to confront misinformation with education rather than amplify it.
And it deserves a community willing to participate in deciding its future.
If educators don’t tell the story of public education, someone else will define public education for us.
I know which story I see.
It is a story of enormous challenges, yes.
But it is also a story of professionalism, resilience, expertise, inclusion, opportunity and thousands of people across Chilliwack choosing, every day, to invest in children who are not their own.
I’ve seen that work firsthand.
As an educator.
As a union representative.
And as a parent.
That is something worth protecting.
That is something worth improving.
And this election is worth voting
