Burnaby School District considering staggered start times

Parents of high school students in Burnaby are speaking out after receiving a letter saying the school district may be forced to begin staggered classes next year.

Morten Rand-Hendriksen is an executive with the Burnaby District Parent Advisory Council (PAC). He says school districts and school boards are being forced to do this because successive provincial governments have underfunded building schools, ultimately short-changing students.

“This leads to the school districts having to spend their operating budgets on building portables,” he said.

“That operating budget is not supposed to be building portables. That means they have to cut services.”

Anne Whitmore is the president of the PAC in Surrey — a city that introduced staggered start times this school year.

“We’re concerned that this is going to be seen as a solution to underfunding school spaces, and it absolutely is not,” she said.

Whitmore says staggered start times and portables should be a last-resort cost-cutting measure.

The Burnaby School District says it’s considering changes to five of its eight high schools for the next school year due to enrollment increases.