Starting in September, thousands of Surrey students will start a new school day: leave the house earlier, or go home later.
Divert students to schools so that they are less crowded
According to the CBC, the Surrey School Board plans to address the current situation of rapid growth in student numbers and overcrowded school classrooms by extending school hours.
Source: CBC
The Department of Education approved the proposal for extended school hours on Wednesday (February 14) evening, and from this proposed report, they plan to divide the daily school hours into five time slots (P1-P5) and divide students into two categories:
The first group of students attends classes in the P1-P4 time slots, and they need to go to school earlier than they do now.
The second group of students will attend classes in the P2-P5 time slot, and their release time will be extended.
During P2-P4, the majority of students will attend classes in school, and this program mainly separates students through P1 and P5 to improve the capacity and quality of teaching in schools.
Source: Surrey Department of Education
In addition, the EDB considers that this approach can also be used to:
1. Provide flexible class time for students with different circumstances
2. Give students more access to some of the school's special facilities, such as theatres, home economics classrooms and craft workshops, to help them gain more hands-on experience
It is reported that the next school district staff will analyze and sort out the list of schools that need to "extend school hours" to alleviate the overcrowding problem, and these schools will implement new school hours from September 2024.
Gary Tymoschuk, deputy director of the education bureau, said a third of the secondary schools (five out of 15) were expected to be on the list, but he did not say which schools would be.
He told the CBC that this is just the first step in tackling the problem of overcrowding in schools by the Surrey School Board, and that measures like this give them a little "room to breathe" but do not fully solve the problems that Surrey is now facing.
How crowded are Surrey schools exactly?
In recent years, many Chinese parents in Metro Vancouver have chosen to send their children to school in Surrey because of the quality of their schools.
According to information released by the Surrey School Board, an average of 2,400 new students have been enrolled each year for the past two years, three times the number of new students per year (about 800) in the last decade!
Only two of the district's 15 middle schools are not overloaded, and many have had to operate in portable classrooms built from prefabricated houses, a solution that Deputy Commissioner Timoshchuk described as a short-term "band-aid."
The Surrey School District's Department of Education, the Teachers' Union and parents have been calling for the provincial government to invest more money in building more schools and hiring more educators in Surrey, predicting that more students will flock to Surrey with the completion of the Surrey Crane, and the situation will be worse if they don't prepare early.
Source: CBC
In a survey conducted last November, in addition to extending school hours, the Surrey School District proposed several solutions:
These include the shift of some classes online, a three-semester system, evening classes and sending some students to other schools, and some solutions have raised concerns among parents.
Who will be affected by the change?
Some concerns include:
The change in school schedule may cause confusion for some families, for example, if two children in a family are at different school times, do parents need to pick up and drop off twice a day?
Or if one of the children is at a school that has implemented extended school hours, will their siblings at a nearby elementary school complicate the already accustomed pick-up and drop-off methods?
In an interview, Jaswinder Dilawari, a parent whose daughter attends Sullivan Heights Secondary in Surrey, shared his dissatisfaction with the change:
He believes that this will not only change the school hours of students, but also affect the work and schedule of parents in an area where the majority of residents are working-class.
Source: CBC
Dilawari's wife, who works as a teacher at another school, worries that the change will make it difficult for him and his wife to coordinate their commute and potentially reduce the number of incidents they have together as a family, and they will need to rethink how they balance work, family responsibilities, and their children's educational needs.
He believes that the provincial government should be responsible for solving the problem of overcrowding in schools, rather than leaving educators, parents and students to make concessions and compromises.
It is reported that in addition to the possible inconvenience to staff, parents and students, the Surrey School Department will also invest additional funds to achieve the "extended school hours" plan.
For some services that also require additional hours, such as extended library hours, it will cost about $65,000 CAD, and additional school bus trips will cost about $280,000 in additional expenses.
As a parent, do you find such a change reasonable?