Editor:
Re: School leaders want housing freeze, April 27.
Surrey school trustee Laurae McNally’s motion “to temporarily suspend all new development approvals in the Clayton, Grandview/South Surrey and South Newton regions” until the district receives adequate capital funding from the province is bang on.
Surrey First mayor and council have no idea what their non-stop development approvals are doing to the students, their families and the staff of Surrey School District.
The district is one of the largest employers in Surrey, if not the largest, and it is responsible for educating the citizens of tomorrow. If this mayor and council are all about business, they better realize the school district is one of the biggest drivers of business in this city.
Yet, the mayor and council seem to be so concerned with the needs of the developers, they forget about the needs of the citizens.
If they cared about the people of Surrey, they would have been on board long ago with the school district trying to figure out this very big problem of portables and overcrowded schools.
I urge the Surrey school trustees – yes, all Surrey First Education, it’s important to note that McNally represents White Rock – to make sure that their scheduled meeting with the mayor and council is more than an opportunity to get together and have lunch. The mayor and council need to leave that meeting knowing exactly what the district needs in terms of stopping this disaster from continuing. The mayor and council need to know that they are part of the problem, and how to advocate the provincial government for more schools. They need to understand the reality of going to school in Surrey and possibly spending your K-12 education in a trailer out in a field or parking lot.
The mayor and council must put the needs of the students of Surrey, the future, ahead of the developers.
Charlene Dobie, Surrey
(Editor’s note: letter-writer Charlene Dobie served as a trustee 2011-2014, running with Surrey Civic Coalition.)