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Yaletown phenomenon
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January 9, 2008
ABCs of the Yaletown phenomenon
Peter Grimmett, an expert on education policy planning and professor and director at the SFU Institute for Studies in Teacher Education doesn’t have a crystal ball. But he can profess to have said, “I told you so.”
Teachers Administrator Shortages in Changing Times, a study that he co-authored with a UBC professor eight years ago, predicted education conundrums such as what is happening in Vancouver’s Yaletown and Strathcona neighbourhoods.
The 2000 study foretold how changing economic times, education culture and public school administrative polices would collide with changing demographics to produce the current tug-of-war between neighbourhoods, such as Yaletown and Strathcona.
While parents in affluent Yaletown are lining up to clinch a shortage of elementary school seats for their children schools in lower-income Strathcona are struggling to attract students to fill their abundance of seats. Media reports indicate Strathcona has a surplus of hundreds of seats while Yaletown is short more than 20.
Grimmett says that the ‘Yaletown phenomenon’ will continue “unless government policy develops a longer than four year perspective of the number of schools, teachers and administrators needed to educate children and accommodate parental expectations.”
Grimmett adds: “Since that is largely unheard of in political circles, the propensity of local communities to demand their local school stay open or have a new school to meet their needs will continue. The district’s problems in balancing its budget will also continue because it is difficult to be flexible in a fiscal straightjacket. And parents might ultimately conclude that their ability to choose schools is so circumscribed by government-imposed-on-districts fiscal requirements that the commitment to choice is essentially a rhetorical one.”
Peter Grimmett, 778.782.4937, grimmett@sfu.ca
Link to study: http://www.jstor.org/view/03802361/ap050100/05a00080/0
Peter Grimmett, an expert on education policy planning and professor and director at the SFU Institute for Studies in Teacher Education doesn’t have a crystal ball. But he can profess to have said, “I told you so.”
Teachers Administrator Shortages in Changing Times, a study that he co-authored with a UBC professor eight years ago, predicted education conundrums such as what is happening in Vancouver’s Yaletown and Strathcona neighbourhoods.
The 2000 study foretold how changing economic times, education culture and public school administrative polices would collide with changing demographics to produce the current tug-of-war between neighbourhoods, such as Yaletown and Strathcona.
While parents in affluent Yaletown are lining up to clinch a shortage of elementary school seats for their children schools in lower-income Strathcona are struggling to attract students to fill their abundance of seats. Media reports indicate Strathcona has a surplus of hundreds of seats while Yaletown is short more than 20.
Grimmett says that the ‘Yaletown phenomenon’ will continue “unless government policy develops a longer than four year perspective of the number of schools, teachers and administrators needed to educate children and accommodate parental expectations.”
Grimmett adds: “Since that is largely unheard of in political circles, the propensity of local communities to demand their local school stay open or have a new school to meet their needs will continue. The district’s problems in balancing its budget will also continue because it is difficult to be flexible in a fiscal straightjacket. And parents might ultimately conclude that their ability to choose schools is so circumscribed by government-imposed-on-districts fiscal requirements that the commitment to choice is essentially a rhetorical one.”
Peter Grimmett, 778.782.4937, grimmett@sfu.ca
Link to study: http://www.jstor.org/view/03802361/ap050100/05a00080/0