Vision Vancouver’s education platform includes promises to build child-care centres in schools slated for seismic upgrades and look at alternate public uses of underutilized schools.

The party is also vowing to restore the ratio of specialist teachers, such as school librarians, counselors, and English language learning instructors, help raise funds for modern and accessible playgrounds at elementary schools, and work on increased community outreach with non-English speaking families.

At a news conference held today (October 27) to release their plan for schools, both Mayor Gregor Robertson and Vancouver School Board chair Patti Bacchus took aim at the NPA’s education platform, stating their policies would “open the school doors to companies like Chevron to pay for programs in our classrooms”.

The Vancouver school district rejected funding from Chevron’s Fuel Your School program earlier this year due to the board’s policy on corporate sponsorship—a policy Vision candidates are promising to uphold.

Bacchus said that program requires teachers to apply for funding that comes in the form of classroom materials.

“That area of getting into the classroom and who funds what is taught in the classroom is the big concern,” she told reporters.

“We have strong policy where we have put up these protections to protect the integrity of the school system, so while we have great donors–we have donors like Telus and Vancity that support after-school programs and breakfast programs–they don’t ask to get into the classroom. And that’s the critical piece and that’s what scares me about the NPA.”

NPA mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe described the rejection of the Fuel Your School program as "a question of ideology trumping practicality in our class."

LaPointe said the NPA would look at accepting funding through the program as long as it was clearly not an incursion of corporate messaging into the classroom, which he said the party is "dead set against".

"It's a silly suggestion by Patti Bacchus that we would somehow favour that," he told the Straight by phone. "We understand that schools have to not have any corporate influence in them."

Another promise outlined in Vision's platform is to invest $400,000 a year to double the school board’s breakfast programs, a plan announced by Robertson last month.

The party intends to continue advocating for the provincial government to fast-track construction of new schools for International Village, Coal Harbour, and Olympic Village, and to help find options for increasing energy and water efficiency in new schools.

They are also vowing to provide teachers and schools with resources “to infuse programs, curriculum and events in Vancouver with historical and cultural content that supports a deeper understanding by all students, teachers and staff of the history of Vancouver and the First Nations whose unceded lands we share.”