About Be A Fan

Chairperson of the Vancouver School Board, Patti Bacchus, describes the Be A Fan of Vancouver Public Schools campaign

We created the Be a Fan of Vancouver public schools campaign to expand the conversation beyond the numbers. We want to engage people around value of public education in their lives, and in their community.

As part of this, we asked a number of prominent people who graduated from a Vancouver public school to reflect on what their kindergarten to Grade 12 education meant to them. And what it means to their community to have a healthy and vibrant public system.

The campaign launched on October 18, 2010 with our first fan, Chief Constable Jim Chu of the Vancouver Police Department. Read more about Chu's experiences with Vancouver public schools in this interview.

In addition to Chief Chu, the campaign will also feature former Prime Minister Kim Campbell, who graduated from Prince of Wales Secondary; former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci who’s a Britannia graduate; and businessman Jim Pattison who graduated from John Oliver.

But you don’t need to be a successful political, lawyer or businessman to be a champion of Vancouver public schools – anyone can be a champion. 

And that’s the power of the approach we’re taking with this campaign.

How do people access the campaign?

Be a Fan will not be a traditional advertising campaign. In these days of tight education budgets, we don’t have excess money to be buying television time.

So instead, we’re using taking the campaign online using the district’s website, Facebook and Twitter. 

The district’s website will be the primary location for information about the champions and their thoughts about public education.  We’ll host digital postcards, biographies and a Q&As with the champions on these pages.

We’ll use a Facebook page built specifically for this campaign as a location where everyone can join the conversation about public education. Through this page, anyone can become a fan of public education, sharing their personal stories about the impact it’s had on their lives.