The Kaohsiung Teachers’ Association (KTA) is going to hold its first large-scale outdoor campaign tomorrow to drum up support for its upcoming referendum on reducing the size of the city’s elementary and junior high school classes, the association announced yesterday.
The rally will be held between 3:30pm and 6pm in front of Exit 2 of Kaohsiung Rapid Transit System’s Central Park Station, the association said.
The referendum proposal is the first in the nation to be initiated by the public instead of a political party.
It seeks to bring the number of students in an elementary or junior high school class from 35 or so down to 25, but city officials have been arguing against the proposal, saying that the city government would be faced with NT$32 million (US$999,000) in additional expenditures each year for teaching staff and extra classrooms if the referendum were passed.
The Kaohsiung Election Commission has scheduled the vote for Nov. 15.
“There are less than two months left until the day of the vote, but most Kaohsiung residents still seem unaware of the proposal,” the association said in a press release posted on its blog dedicated to the referendum.
To raise the awareness of residents of the city, the association had been appealing for support from all circles.
Chen Ming-pin (陳銘彬), a board member of the association, urged the city government to think of small classes as a kind of “infrastructure” to boost the nation’s competitiveness.
“It’s better to build more classrooms than to build more prisons,” the association said.
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