The Editor,
Re. "Board chair defends Tri-City trustees' pay" (The Tri-City News, Dec. 17).
I was astounded when I read that Judy Shirra, the new chair of the School District 43 board of education and a Port Coquitlam trustee, was defending the pay and the 5% increase this year for the school trustees as "the job description doesn't reflect the amount of hours you put in."
Interesting. The board chair receives more than $42,000 per year and each other trustee receives $38,000 per year. I queried a few past school trustees about the job load and they said there are two meetings per month and about three hours of reading preparation per week.
The BCTF posted the 2015 salary grid for each school district for school teachers last week. A beginning teacher in Coquitlam gets about $44,000 per year - if they are lucky enough to get full-time hours after many years of TOC-ing. Many work part-time with less pay but still a huge work load. They spend long hours preparing for each day's lessons, spend many hours marking each week, spend seven to eight hours per day at school teaching, coaching and supervising, and attend several meetings each week.
The school trustees in the Tri-Cities are paid about $14,000 more per year than the Vancouver school trustees who are responsible for B.C.'s largest school district. Tri-Cities trustees are paid about $8,000 more per year than trustees in Surrey, B.C.'s second largest district.
The school trustees get to claim expenses for their position and a third of their salary is tax-free.
I hope the new school trustees do the right thing and hold the line for their pay increases for 2015 - or even more justly, cut their pay to a reasonable compensation.
SD43 has a multi-million-dollar deficit and the line needs to be held.
Ken Kuhn, Port Moody
