LETTER: Surrey school board election shouldn’t be an afterthought
Published 7:30 pm Sunday, October 4, 2026
Editor,
In the midst of elections, both provincial and municipal, the election of school board trustees tends to be overlooked. This is unfortunate. School board budgets are large, and should be examined by knowledgeable trustees.
Equally, though, we surely need trustees who have experience and understanding of educational issues.
One of the truisms about children is that they do not all learn the same way. The decision of the Surrey board to close the special Learning Centre may have been a financial decision, but it was also a demonstration of ignorance on the part of trustees about how children learn and of the educational environment in which learning takes place.
Our system stresses academic progress when our society, and our children, need a variety of learning objectives. The trades, for example, are vital for our economic growth, yet we undervalue and underfund trades training.
We need to look closely, and critically, at the qualifications and experience of those seeking to oversee our educational system so that we provide learners with a full range of opportunity.
Peter Ferris, Surrey