The Vancouver School Board is warning parents about impending cuts to its budget, which could mean a shorter school year, faculty and staff layoffs, and cuts to ESL and special education. Other districts face similar reductions.
In a letter to Vancouver parents, Board Chair Patti Bacchus wrote:
The VSB must address a severe funding shortfall of $18.12 million for 2010/2011. Without money to cover this shortfall, we must either sell off assets, find ways to increase revenue or reduce spending, as the Board is legally required to balance its budget.
Based on the preliminary operating grants announced on March 15, the VSB will receive $447.8 million for 2010/2011. This year’s increase is intended to fund, in part, the partial implementation of full-day Kindergarten and provincially approved collective agreements.
However, the current funding formula does not provide for the following annual cost increases faced by school districts:
•salary increments for employees on pay grid systems such as teachers, administrators and other professionals;
•increases in employee benefit costs such as CPP, EI, WCB, MSP, extended health and dental benefits, and employee pension plans; and
•inflation on goods, services and utilities.
I cannot overstate how difficult it will be to make up next year’s funding shortfall. The VSB has already made $51 million in accumulated annual spending reductions in the past eight years, and further reductions will make it increasingly difficult to meet the needs of all students.
As trustees, it is important that we hear from all our stakeholders – parents, students, employees and the general public – about what is essential to maintaining a quality public education system. I invite everyone to participate in our budget process in order to prioritize expenditures and provide feedback on proposed reductions.
Other districts face similar problems. Burnaby School Board's website offers a review of the 2010-2011 budget that projects a $7.8 million shortfall. The shortfall for 2011-2012 would be $9.1 million, and $10.6 million in 2012-2013.
In North Vancouver, the district anticipates a shortfall of $10-12 million over the next three years. On March 30, Prince George announced the closure of six schools.
Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.
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kootenay
2 years ago
Mass Resignation
This Government has created annual, and recently bi-annual education funding crisis.
All school boards across our province have twisted themselves and their resources inside out trying to meet the terms of the financial shortfall of the day.
Hasn't it become painfully obvious to even the most optomistic school board trustee that this government will continue to cut funding no matter how innovative you are?
Little by little, piece by piece they break the system down. It won't be long untill the public is begging for public schools so their kids can get a decent education.
I guess there aren't a lot of options but to comply with this madness; have you ever thought of mass resignation from the school boards. Turn the whole mess over to government and let them take direct responsibility for each school they close.
Crawford
2 years ago
Passing on the costs
While Campbell's Liberals have certainly created multiple funding crises, they're following in a grand old BC tradition. The Socreds did it, especially under Bill Bennett in the early 80s, and the NDP in the 90s preferred to sit by the schools' bedside and offer sympathy rather than a real remedy.
Everyone in politics understands that the costs of a financial crisis can always be passed along to those who can't fight back, like children too young to vote. (With a dwindling birthrate, parents have become a demographic too small to threaten the politicians.)
A lot of politicians groan about how deficit spending just means passing on our debts to our children. In reality, school cuts are the easiest way to do just that.
W Laurier
2 years ago
VSB is Crisis
I see the VSB is in crisis again. I would like to see a year where the VSB has not been in a funding crisis, and I can't recall one.
They do have a way of miraculously making ends meet at the 11th hour, though.
Sask Resident
2 years ago
Cut High Paid Administration
Why will the Vancouver School Board not consider reduction in the highly paid central office. Fire the superintendents and hire replacements at much lower costs. Also, why do they need all those 'consultants'?
The people briefing the Board are only concerned over protecting their own little kingdoms and their own phony-baloney jobs. Time for the Board to find better advice.
Van Isle
2 years ago
Hey Sask resident
Yer right. Got a brother-in-law who works for the VSB (and no, he ain't a teacher) and he say's the administration folks are a bunch of fukk-ups. Should be interesting to know how much they spend on 'studies' and 'consultants' every year. For that matter it should be interesting to see how much the whole Dept of Education and other school boards spends on consultants every year. Betcha it won't be pretty. There use to be an employee in school district #71 administration who use to hire himself out as a consultant. He's no longer around cuz he went off to greener fields, but his employer said at the time, that they didn't think there was anything wrong for an employee to be hired as a consultant
Crawford
2 years ago
Deja vu
I heard the same nonsense about overpaid administrators back in the 1980s, when it was all a matter of carving the supposed "fat" out of the system.
As a lifelong teacher, I never had much time for administrators--they'd gone over to the dark side, switching the fun of the classroom for the tedium of the boardroom.
But administration costs are a miserable fraction of the total costs of running a school districts, even a small one. A good administrator ought to be able to save at least her own salary in wise budgeting. A bad one costs far more than her salary. Word gets around about both good and bad administrators, which is why good ones get headhunted and bad ones get fired.
Education is expensive because you're not paying for a warm body to babysit--you're paying for well-trained, rather scarce persons capable of good judgment about an enormous spectrum of decisions.
For the classroom teacher to succeed in those decisions, a host of others need to be working backstage, making decisions that create options: course materials, counsellors, and even consultants who can advise on everything from information technology to how to deal with traumatized refugee pupils.
A modern BC school district is a very complex operation that needs a complex and competent bureaucracy to keep it running.
God knows educators don't always make the right decisions. But reduce their options by getting rid of the backstage folks, and their decisions won't improve.
Grandma_J
2 years ago
Systematic underfunding and privatization
It seems like the systematic underfunding of the public school system is a way for the government to advance the neocon agenda of privatization. With charter schools and funding for private schools already a reality, how long will it take for concerned parents to demand more options to improve their kids’ education. I’ve read that some charter schools in the US don’t have to hire unionized teachers. (Wouldn’t breaking the back of the BCTF be a great side benefit of privatization for the government). We could easily end up with a multi-tiered, publicly funded education system. Apparently in the US, some charter schools are run by “for profit” companies. I wonder how many of us understand the implications of the neoconservative/Chicago school agenda. Confession - I’ve just read Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein) and it scared the heck out of me.
P.S. Blaming overpaid administrators seems to be the government’s preferred way of shifting blame. Here in Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, the MLA said as much in the local paper – no facts or details - just blame.
G West
2 years ago
Five ring circuses
Aren't looking so great any longer are they?
Maybe Campbell and Furlong could arrange to hold another street party every year, cancel school attendance for two or three weeks a year to help the school boards meet their budgets and give some more money to private schools.
http://www2.canada.com/vancouvercourier/news/story.html?id=eec7c441-30de-4a1f-830b-b047b43e31db
It's more and more clear about where the current government's sypathies really lie.