$10 Million for Textbooks
Education Minister Tom Christensen recently announced that the province will invest $10-million for textbooks in B.C. classrooms, on a matching funds basis. This means the school districts must scramble around to find the matching $10 million. This book funding for each district will be based on enrollment.

For example, $10 million would buy more than 285,000 Grade 4 Math texts (at $35 each) or 190,000 Grade 7 Science texts (at $52 each). There are approximately 63,000 kindergarten to Grade 12 (K-12) students in the B.C. public school system. This funding is over and above the $85-million increase in total district operating grants for fiscal ’04-‘05.

The Education Ministry provides funding to individual school districts in this province, establish governance structures, set educational standards, monitor student performance and report the results to the public. British Columbia's K-12 system serves approximately 578,800 public school student FTE's (full time equivalents), approximately 59,600 independent school student FTE's and over 3,600 home-schooled children.

Is $10 million for textbooks significant? We think so. However, K-12 is a $5 billion enterprise, as shown in the table.

For an overview of the Ministry’s 3-year service plan and budget details consult web site
http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/sp2004/
educ/educ_overview.htm


 

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