A parent is sounding the alarm about how budget constraints are forcing students to go without paper towels in washrooms and to share worksheets in classrooms.

Alison Speed is a mom with children at Ellendale Elementary in North Surrey, where paper is scarce and the school can't afford to purchase more, she says.

"It's really bad," Speed said, who found out about the situation at Ellendale two months ago.

"But I think this has been an ongoing issue for the last two years, but I think they've been trying to keep it quiet from the parents, it sounds like."

The school contacted the parent advisory council for help in paying for more paper two months ago as the budget for the remainder of the year sat at only $500 for every expense.

Speed, along with other parents, held a bottle drive, which helped the school buy more paper, but it now needs to last the school for the remainder of the year.

"Teachers have been directed to not print worksheets, and if they do, it's one worksheet per five kids," Speed said, adding that the washrooms at the school no longer carry paper towels for hand-drying.

"We get a really, really small budget at our school because our student population is quite small at our school, so the funding the district provides is based on how many kids you have at the school. Unfortunately, however, if something happens like a photocopier breaks down, that costs the same amount whether you have 200 kids or 500, so it really eats into their budget so we end up with not a lot of spare funds for anything."

District spokesperson Rena Heer said Surrey Schools works with each school to help manage issues around supplies and resources.

"Administrators for each school, including principals and vice-principals, manage their budgets and resources according to the needs of their school to deliver on student learning. The budgets for individual schools for the 2024/25 school year for supplies were not changed and are designed to keep pace with enrolment," Heer said.

Ellendale is not the only school facing these issues, as North Ridge Elementary is another school grappling with not having enough paper for students. But it may not stop there, as the mother has also been active in reaching out to parents from other schools who have raised similar issues at their schools.

"It sounds like this is quite a widespread issue. ... It's not just our school, I know it's happening at other districts too," Speed said.

"What they have right now is all they have so they can't buy more, so they're conserving the paper towel that they do have. With paper, they had completely run out of it and the PAC was able to give them money to pay for more, but they're trying to conserve that until the end of the year."

Surrey Teachers' Association president Lizanne Foster corroborated Speed's comment about paper and other resource shortage being widespread in the district.

Where some schools don't have enough paper, others don't have any or enough textbooks, she said.

"Now people are getting an understanding of what chronic underfunding looks like," Foster emphasized. 

Fundraising with PACs is all well and good until it comes to a school in an area with more poverty causing fundraising to be more limited, Foster said.

More than a decade back, schools began relying more on technology rather than paper. But with funding not keeping up with inflation and student enrolment, the STA president said, that technology is not being replaced when needed, causing more reliance on paper once again.

"This is why teachers are photocopying worksheets, but that is now leading to a shortage because funding is not keeping up by government."

Parents were initially concerned that the extra help from the district for more paper would come out of their school's funding for next year, but district spokesperson Rena Heer confirmed that "in the context of North Ridge and Ellendale this is certainly not the case."

Paper is just one of many areas where some schools are struggling with having enough resources as the district is facing a for next year resulting in many cuts. This has so far included , a significant , and .

At Ellendale, Speed says the school is struggling with other "basic necessities" as well that other schools have been helping fill the gaps.

"They have been offering donations to our school or things like chairs for seating. We're so short on so many things," she expressed.

"Why are my kids in this situation just because of their postal code? This wouldn't be happening at another school, and I think it should just be the same across the board.

"It's not school's fault, and I think on some level it's not the district's fault either. I don't think the district is being given enough money for the system that they have, and that's very hard as a parent because who are you fighting really? And how do you get the help?"

Foster agrees that this issue is systemic and stems from not enough funding being put into education by government.

"The province does not provide enough money to Surrey for inclusive education," she said.

"When we don't fund the education system, it becomes an all system problem."