Parents are calling on the provincial government for more funding for education following a series of budget cuts, which advocates say is only the beginning.

Members of the District Parent Advisory Council (DPAC) for the Kamloops-Thompson school district made the trek to Victoria on May 26 to join other district PACs at the Legislature, calling for increased funding to deal with the pressures of inflation and rising costs.

Advocacy work underway includes a petition, which will be presented to government in September, and raising awareness of the issue among local parents. To that end, the DPAC held a rally in downtown Kamloops in May.

It was there that Bonnie McBride, DPAC chair, made a plea to parents and demands to government.

“We are asking you to stand with us to ask our premier to invest in our children today,” she said.

McBride said B.C. only invests 1.6 percent of its GDP in its education system, while the average across Canada is 4.6 percent.

“We are dragging the system down. We are way, way behind. We have a high cost of living and our schools pay the same inflation our families do,” she said.

The SD73 board has already had to take action to deal with rising costs. At the end April, the board approved a budget with $6 million in cuts to deal with its shortfall. Staffing cuts include library and science assistants, custodial staff, counselors, learning assistant teachers, and more.

McBride said she wants to see action before the start of the next school year.

“You need to come to the table and very seriously commit to a funding model that takes care of children moving forward,” McBride said.

Both Kamloops MLAs, Ward Stamer and Peter Milobar, attended the downtown rally to show their support.

“We’ve raised this several times. The answer back is that ‘There’s more money in the budget than there was last year,’ and they refuse to hear that operational costs have gone up more than the budget cost,” Milobar told the Chronicle.

Milobar said with every district needing to make a series of cuts, it points to a system that is “systemically underfunded,” and said government isn’t willing to acknowledge that.

At its mid-May meeting, the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board added its support to the voices calling for more funding by writing to the province.

“Inadequate provincial funding has left school districts struggling, placing immense pressure on school boards, classrooms, families and, most importantly, students,” the letter reads.

“We’ve got PACs being asked for more money for everyday basics, like paper, school supplies, even the coffee in the staff room we’ve been asked to fundraise for,” McBride said.

“We can’t ‘bake sale’ our way out of that.”

McBride’s petition is available online at change.org. It can be found by searching Invest in BC’s Public Schools Now.