Christy Claws Back

[flamingfingers]

‘Gift’ to parents in school strike clawed back
JACK KNOX / TIMES COLONIST
JANUARY 28, 2016 06:00 AM

Hey parents, remember that $520-per-kid the government gave you after the teachers strike?

What did you spend it on? Daycare? Tutors? The newest iGadget? Meth?

Lucia MacKenzie spent it on education for her child.

That’s why she’s miffed now that the province is clawing it back.

It goes like this: Back in 2014, the provincial government and B.C.’s public school teachers were engaged in the latest instalment of their 100 Years War. By mid-June of that year, a low-level guerrilla conflict had grown into a full-fledged strike.

As summer dragged on without a settlement — and with the government making it clear it had no intention of legislating teachers back to work — it became obvious that classes were unlikely to resume in the fall.

At the end of July, the government announced that should the strike continue in September, the province would pay parents of public school children ages 12 and under $40 for each lost school day.

“Parents can utilize that money to acquire tutoring for their children, they can use the money to explore other education opportunities as they see fit, and for some parents it will be basic daycare, it will be ensuring that their young children have the supervisory attention that they require,” Finance Minister Mike de Jong was quoted as saying at the time. “So it will be up to parents.”

Victoria’s MacKenzie, coming off maternity leave and with a husband who worked full time, didn’t wait for the strike to resume before lining something up for daughter Laura, who had been in kindergarten in the public system the previous year. In mid-August, she enrolled Laura in the Catholic St. Joseph’s Elementary School.

“I needed her to be in a school,” says MacKenzie, herself a teacher in an independent institution. (Others made a similar choice: year-to-year Island Catholic Schools enrolment jumped to 1,710 from 1,598.)

As it turned out, the public schools reopened in late September (the 41,000 teachers were effectively starved back to work) after a strike that cost 13 school days that month.

Like the parents of more than 300,000 students — 95 per cent of those eligible — MacKenzie applied for and received one of the $40-a-day cheques, which worked out to $520 per child.

All was well until last year, when the Finance Ministry demanded the money back. The application for the Temporary Education Support for Parents program clearly stated that the money was only to go to families with children registered in the public system as of September 2014, and Laura had been signed up in an independent school two weeks earlier.

MacKenzie balked. She had only enrolled her daughter in St. Joseph’s because of the strike, she argued. Doesn’t matter, she was told, the rules were pretty straightforward: No grants for private school kids. MacKenzie could have used the money to hire a tutor, to pay for child care, to go on vacation — anything except sign up for an independent school before September.

“I said: ‘What’s the difference between a private tutor and a private school?’ ”

She argues she used the money as it was intended — to offset the effects of the strike — yet had it clawed back. Meanwhile, other parents were free to spend their cheques on whatever they wanted. If the money went to daycare, great, but if Grandma was providing free babysitting and Mom and Dad wanted to blow it on a trip to Vegas, that was OK, too.

Never mind. MacKenzie is now trying to figure out what to do with a polite-but-firm letter that just arrived from a collection agency.

It’s worth noting that she wasn’t the only one unhappy with the result of the $40-a-day scheme. The province paid for the program out of the amount school districts saved during the strike; that ticked off trustees who said the money should have gone to education, not daycare.

Not sure they’ll get much support from those parents who emerged from the strike with an unexpected $520 in their pockets, though. After months of angst, uncertainty and disruption to their lives and their children’s education, it might not have felt like nearly enough.

[fluffy]

No sympathy from me, if the rules were clearly stated on the application form then Ms. MacKenzie was applying for benefits to which she was not entitled. Independent schools receive government funding too. By putting her daughter in a school where she would benefit from that funding, plus applying for the money the government did not spend in the public system, Ms. MacKenzie was trying to "double dip", exactly what the rule was in place to prevent.

[flamingfingers]

^^

“Parents can utilize that money to acquire tutoring for their children, they can use the money to explore other education opportunities as they see fit, and for some parents it will be basic daycare, it will be ensuring that their young children have the supervisory attention that they require,” Finance Minister Mike de Jong was quoted as saying at the time. “So it will be up to parents.”

I guess DeJong neglected to elaborate on the fine print.

Just goes to show how much you can rely on the ChristyLiberals to tell the truth about ANYTHING!!

[fluffy]

The application for the Temporary Education Support for Parents program clearly stated that the money was only to go to families with children registered in the public system as of September 2014...

I wonder what a professional educator found hard to understand about that?

[twobits]

removed.

[fluffy]

I really have to question the motivation of the author of this article. I mean, you really don't have to dig too deep to see that Ms. MacKenzie should have been well aware that she didn't qualify for the grant, but went ahead and took the money anyways. Mr. Knox (the author) presents the facts as if he expects people to hop on the anti-Clark/Liberal bandwagon and cry for social justice in the face of the great oppressor, but any thinking person could see that Ms. MacKenzie was out of line from the start. I can only assume that the article is not meant for thinking people.

This sort of pot-stirring is going on all over the place of late, most notably against the Federal Liberals and the Prime Minister in particular, and also at the provincial level with our neighbours to the east. The prevailing strategy is to take any chance at all to come down on the government of the day, any chance. Weighing the merits of political decisions made is so heavily tainted by party allegiance that objective assessment has disappeared. It's my experience that decisions made in anger are rarely correct, and I think that opposition politicians are aware of this too, and are promoting an overly emotional state of mind among individuals because they like the idea of a lot of noise against their political rivals, noise made by people who have likely not taken a serious look at the issue from all angles before coming down on one side of the fence or the other.

I just don't see the wisdom in citizens making decisions based on incomplete information, and the fact that our politicians are deliberately promoting the practice, and doing so with the help of muck-raking, sensationalist media.

/rant

[maple leaf]

I'm having trouble following how the rebate worked.Going by what is said in the article it seems to be saying that the rebate is meant for anyone who has a child registered in public school.So does that mean when the strike started? Was this persons child registered in public school then, or private school,does anyone know?
To me it would depend on which .Weather or not she could then claim the money and apply it like the rules seem to say

. they can use the money to explore other education opportunities as they see fit

Not taking a stand one way or the other,It's not clear.

[fluffy]

The application for the Temporary Education Support for Parents program clearly stated that the money was only to go to families with children registered in the public system as of September 2014, and Laura (MacKenzie's daughter) had been signed up in an independent school two weeks earlier.

It sure looks like the author of the article was trying to create an issue where none really existed.

[Ka-El]

It sure looks like the author of the article was trying to create an issue where none really existed.

A lot of that going around these days.

[alfred2]

removed.

[Rwede]

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

[Smurf]

From the information we have it looks like Ms MacKenzie just signed the papers without reading them, maybe a bit greedy. This happens a lot and quite often people regret it in the end. Take the time to read anything you sign or suffer the consequences.
I am not a C. Clark or BC Liberal fan but this does not seem to be their fault.

[Rwede]

Oh look! Free money!

Uh, yeah, not a chance.