• West Van High. Tom and I are given school Highlander ties which we immediately put on (see picture 3). The Kay Meek Centre is a spectacular new resource and there we are briefly entertained by a young woman with a thrilling Broadway voice. Then meet teachers, tour classrooms, and chat with principal Phipps. My (and Tom’s) overall impression: can we go back and start our education all over again? Outside the school, a photo op for the Minister, featuring Chair Merkins, MLA Ralph, Minister Christensen, and Superintendent Jopson.
  
  
• Chartwell Elementary. My impressions – everybody is heads down, working! Disciplined. A highly organized facility. Good mood. Teachers bright, responsive, and friendly. Our kids are in good hands.
  
  
• Stakeholder luncheon. The Minister talks about the opportunity for greater spending flexibility, now that the government is in surplus by about a billion bucks. No lack of ideas about where to spend it. Both Kimber Frenette (parents’ council) and Kit Krieger (teacher’s union) zero right in on a major problem: the need for increased staff resources for special needs students. It is great to integrate special needs students into regular classrooms, but the requisite staff support must be there or it does not work. Nobody disagrees.
  
  
• Meeting with the Board: discussion of revenue projections and upcoming contract negotiations. It is noted that SD45 obtains about one-fifth of its revenue from foreign students. Without this increment of funding, programs would have to be thinned down and our schools would lose a significant portion of their curriculum richness. But what if there was a Toronto-style SARS outbreak, and foreign students stayed home? This strategic source of revenue is subject to uncertainty.
  
  
• Visit to Pauline Johnson. A bilingual success story. Parents want their kids to have that extra linguistic edge. I practice my high school French, but one teacher pointed out that I have just told her she was beautiful, not that she was kindly to receive us, and that such an opener might get me into trouble. Back to école française for Ralph. However, I think I can offer a reasonably accurate translation of WVSS’s team slogan “Faire Sans Dire” which seems to loosely say “Just Do It and Don’t Brag About It!” Politicians would have a hard time with that one,

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