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With the provincial election looming, the B.C. Teachers’ Federation and others are once again flogging the dead horse of public funding for independent schools — although, I suppose, no horse is ever truly dead in politics.

Before last month’s provincial budget, the BCTF publicly urged the province to phase out over a four-year period the public funding of private schools. It didn’t happen, nor do I believe it ever will under future provincial governments.

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Here’s why: Cutting off public funding to independent schools is a bad idea.

Look, I get it. The notion feels good to some in an “eat the rich” sort of way. BCTF officials and others on the left like to mischaracterize all parents of private-school kids as multi-millionaires, undeserving of public support, even though they know it isn’t true. Ninety per cent of those parents are middle-class people, often professionals with reasonably high salaries, who sacrifice to send their kids to independent schools. They do it for a host of reasons, the most predominant of which are that they highly value education and want their children to be well prepared to apply to university, or that a particular independent school offers special programs not available — or inadequately available — in the public system.