EDITORIAL: Time for trustees to stop squabbling and protect our schools
by Rossland Telegraph on 04 Feb 2010
This week the board of School District 27 (Cariboo-Chilcotin) voted to develop and submit a deficit budget to the Ministry of Education for the coming fiscal year. As reported in the Williams Lake Tribune, trustee Bruce Mack said, “The board will develop a budget for the coming year that retains quality education for our students. We recognize that with the current funding projections that this may mean a deficit budget.”
Well spoken, Mr. Mack.
While our own board snarls and fights turf wars over funding scraps, Mack's district is doing something constructive politically about a totally unacceptable funding formula. Could this be the start of a movement for real funding change in this province?
It might be if other districts are brave enough to follow suit.
Here in the lower West Kootenay (or however you choose to refer to this underfunded chunk of geography), the school board seems to be making a kind of logical error in their thinking. The dominant belief seems to be that, because enrollment is currently shrinking, losing as much funding as we are is an inevitable, if dismal, reality. What doesn't seem to be taken into account is that while part of the decrease in funding is--fair enough--due to declining enrollment, part of it is also due to the provincial government's current policy of funding all BC schools on a strict per capita basis.
This funding formula discriminates against rural communities and rural students while favouring urban schools. Communities in rural areas are smaller and more scattered than in urban areas. Serving these communities, therefore, tends to cost more. They are--sinful phrase--'less cost-effective'.
From a pencil-pushing Victoria or Vancouver perspective, this fact doesn't even appear to register. When we complain, we don't get any sort of meaningful response.
As a result, the schools in our district fall into the crack between urban centres like Vancouver which are naturally more cost-effective and schools like Salmo Secondary that qualify for plentiful extra funding due to their being classed as 'remote' through the accident of being a few kilometres further from town than ours.
The whole situation is absurd. And the fact that our board allows it to continue unchallenged is just plain wrong.
The role of a school board is to protect the quality of education in their communities. Our board, currently, is failing to do this in a responsible and effective manner. Part of this is due to internal divisions—some trustees appear to be so bogged down in partisanship that they have lost all sense of the bigger picture.
These trustees are so busy fighting among themselves that the real enemy is left free to sit in Victoria and pursue its anti-rural agenda with the effect that not a peep of cohesive opposition emerges from this region.
At the same meeting where it decided to write a deficit budget, SD 27 also dropped plans to close a number of its own threatened schools. Wouldn't it be something all our own trustees would be glad to agree upon: to decide not to close our own communities' schools? Imagine signs, not just in Warfield and Trail, but all around the region reading 'Save Webster AND Glenmerry AND Maclean AND Castlegar Primary'. Wouldn't that be something? Might that not stop the board squabbling, bring them together, and allow them to act as they should—in the true best interests of our children?
The farsighted trustees of SD 27 plan to write a letter to all the other school districts in BC encouraging them to also submit 'needs-based' budgets. We can only hope that our own trustees will jump on board what ought to become a rapidly-growing chorus of refusal to accommodate an anti-rural and short-sighted provincial government. If every underfunded district joined in this protest, accompanied by their urban brother and sister districts in a gesture of solidarity, would the government have any option other than to negotiate? We think not.
In terms of any legitimate 'planning for the future', this should be proposal number one.
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Comments
Janis
You do go on...District 20 will not be "destroyed" if the Board submits a balanced budget.
Besides, as of this writing, Part 2 of the consultation document Planning for the Future has been scrapped. It's back to the drawing board.
Hopefully, now, the number crunchers will start to make some sense and not propose closing already full schools and focus on the ones that are not cost effective.
Just a note, that Warfield, Trail, Castlegar, Montrose and Fruitvale all pay for community halls for their functions. Only Rossland seems to insist on using education dollars for weddings and such.
Bigger elephant re: school funding
Over the past 9 years, I have watched how the Liberals have transferred social responsibilities from social welfare ministries onto the Ministry of Education. At the same time, things that used to be covered under the MoE budget are transferred to some other ministries (gaming grants, as an example) and then that ministry’s funds are cut.
In 2002, the Liberals cut $350 million out of operating funds and cut capital funding in half (from $450 million to $225million per annum). At the same time they switched to a per-child funding formula. Subsequently, budget increases averaged about 1%, but inflation most years averaged just under 3% - so we lost 2% per year for 8 years. At the same time, the Liberals increased health premiums (twice) and legislated the teachers back to work with salary increases while removing the class-size restrictions the teachers were fighting to protect. When they talk about “the largest increases in funding” – they are talking about ‘since their own new baseline and funding formula were established’. We are not even close to being back to pre millennium education funding in real dollars.
There is a much bigger 'elephant' in the room.
FP, if you think we should constantly try to fit into a ‘tighter shoe’, consider what is happening in Vancouver, where the district is proposing that approximately 800 teachers will be laid off. If the govenment were paying attention, they would be working on a strategy (e.g. a mentorship program?) to retain young, tech savvy, energetic teachers as they will surely be among the first lay-offs. If the government will not support the future of our education system, the people must continue to push them to do so.
Careful what you wish for
Editor,
You compliment and encourage our local trustees to follow the example of SD 27 and submit a deficit budget. What you didn't tell your readers is that this was tried in 1985, when 35 districts submitted "needs budgets" and eventually complied with the requirements of the government of the day. The board that didn't was the Vancouver School Board and the trustees were all were fired. How did that help their particular district?
You are advocating the same thing and without a plan. Pretty dumb tactics if you ask me.
District 27 is a far different situation from SD 20. The distances to be traveled are unreasonable. Such is not the case here. Give your head a shake.
SD20 can work within its means by addressing the elephant in the room. FP
Jeez, FP--that 'dumb' stings!
Jeez, FP--that 'dumb' stings! Can't we speak a little more respectfully? I'm a sensitive fellow!
To reply to your point, any 'strike' is doomed to failure if the strikers back down; if backing down is even a possibility, one should never start a strike. I agree with you that far. However, that doesn't mean that a strike, in and of itself, is a dumb idea. A strike is often a very good tactic, clearly.
The question individual trustees need to ask themselves is, 'Can I do the job I signed up for within this funding context?'. If the answer is 'yes', then submit a balanced budget. If the answer is 'no', then submit a deficit budget and be prepared to get fired. And why not? Why would you want to continue to preside over the destruction of this district?
Besides, I bet if half the districts in BC submitted deficit budgets and refused to back down the BC 'Liberals' would find themselves with their own elephant in the room...--ed.
Sorry Adrian
Didn't mean to offend.
Even if all the trustees in BC chose as you suggest, they'd only be replaced by ministry officials and there goes your local control...or what is left of it.
Waiting for some NDP saviour isn't very productive, either. Just ask them how they would pay for increased funding to inefficient schools and to increasing healthcare costs. What? More taxes? Not if half your workforce is retired and living on a fixed income.
The big crunch is coming and I'll be damned if I'll sit by quietly while socialists take more of my income. It's bad enough with the Campbellites! FP