Mooring states, “We would be able to fully fund the public school system if government didn’t fund private schools” – she is wrong.

Trust the former President of the BC Teachers Federation (BCTF), Terry Mooring, to trot out the age old, and massively incorrect, comment that private schools in British Columbia take away funding that should be going to public schools.

Her comment is ridiculous of course, as she very well knows, but it certainly plays well to her base (mainly NDP supporters) who perhaps don't think through what she and others in the hierarchy of the BCTF have to say.

Mooring states, “We would be able to fully fund the public school system if government didn’t fund private schools”.

What she doesn’t state, because she doesn’t want people to dig too deep, is that ending government funding of private schools would literally bankrupt the provincial government. 

Here are the cold hard fiscal facts!

There are approximately 90,000 children that attend BC’s private schools, with each of those students receiving a ‘maximum’ of 50% (range starts at 25%) of the per pupil funding allocated to students in public schools. 

And what is that per pupil funding you ask?  

It amounts to an average of $15,000, so the Education Ministry is basically saving 50% per student ($7,5000 vs. $15,000).

Moving 90,000 private school students to public schools would therefore double the per student funding required.  That means an additional $1.35 BILLION dollars from the provincial treasury

Adding 90,000 students would also require at least 3,500 additional classrooms (on top of massive classroom shortages already faced by students in school districts across the province). 

I did a Google search and guess what?  The average cost to construct each and every classroom is $1.2 million.  Got your calculator out?  3,500 classrooms at a cost of $1.2 million each comes to a whopping $4.2 BILLION dollars.

Now what about the additional 3,500 teachers that will be needed.  I’ll be generous and use the starting salary of $65,000 to calculate this one ... that adds another $227 MILLION dollars which school districts will need to find.

On top of that hundreds of additional support staff will need to be hired ... there's the cost of playing fields ... land acquisition for the new schools ... and dozens of other expenditures we don’t even think about.

The bottom line is this ....

There is no possible way that the province can afford Moorings claim that the BC government could "fully fund the public school system if government didn’t fund private schools".

But she already knew that.