The New Wealth Divide in Public Schools

Only the four lanes of Capilano Road divide West Vancouver from North Vancouver, but when it comes to education funding, the division between the adjacent school districts is an abyss.

While North Vancouver trustees agonize over the closing of three neighbourhood schools, a decision that marks political suicide for elected school officials, West Vancouver is opening a new school to house students in its burgeoning French Immersion program.

Teachers with up to five years of seniority have been handed lay-off notices in North Van, but not a single pink slip will find its way into the mailboxes of West Vancouver teachers.

Socreds made equitable funding the goal

Since 1988, when the Social Credit government of the day made it virtually impossible for Boards to raise supplemental school taxes from local residents, British Columbia's public school system has been marked by equity among districts. It didn't matter whether a student attended school in Cranbrook, Prince George, Port Alberni or West Vancouver, the provincial government ensured that the same programs and resources would be available to student throughout the province.

The provincial government allocated resources to school boards according to a formula that compensated for differences in the cost of transportation, heat and light, and average teacher salaries. This ensured equal learning opportunities to daughters of mill-workers, physicians, or parents dependent upon social assistance. Provincial funding remains formula-driven and equity-oriented. However, encouraged by the provincial Liberal government of "new era" entrepreneurial initiatives, a two-tiered public education system has emerged featuring "have" and "have-not" schools.

The extent of the gap can be seen in the audited financial statements of school boards. Board accounts list two sources of revenue: the revenue provided by the provincial government and locally generated funds. It is the varying capacity of school districts to generate revenues beyond those provided by government that separates the boards that are closing schools, laying off staff, and cutting programs, from those that are maintaining and even expanding programs despite a four-year government freeze on education funding.

Tight budgets vie for international tuitions

The major source of local revenue is international student programs. These programs, started in West Vancouver more than a decade ago, welcome international students willing to pay $11,000 to $13,500 in tuition (room and board not included) to attend BC public schools. By September 2005, two thirds of the districts in the province will be recruiting students from Taiwan, China, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Korea and other far-flung lands in a desperate attempt to balance books and preserve the quality of education for locals.

Unfortunately, not everybody can compete. West Vancouver charges $13,500 tuition to its more than 500 fee-paying students, nearly 200 of whom attend elementary schools. It can charge this amount, more than double the $5400 per pupil allocation it received from Victoria for educating students from West Vancouver, because of an enviable record of student achievement and palatial home-stays that Port McNeil and Smithers are unable to provide.

School boards have tapped into other sources of revenue, including renting unused facilities, selling curriculum, running hockey academies, and opening schools in Asia that grant much coveted B.C. Dogwood diplomas.

How much money and how big a gap are we talking about? According to its 2002-03 audited statement, West Vancouver augmented the $37 million it received from the Liberal government by a staggering $7 million! Roughly one dollar in six spent by the district was raised from non-governmental sources, the vast majority form international students. This represents nearly $1,100 per West Vancouver student on top of the grant form the Ministry of Education.

Per student, West Van raises 100 times more than many districts

No other board approaches West Vancouver's entrepreneurial success. The $7 million represents 19 percent of the funding provided by the Ministry. Only New Westminster (10.7 percent), another early entrant into the race for fee-paying international students, raises ten percent of its budget via local initiatives. Only 11 of the provinces 60 districts were able to generate local revenues in excess of 5 percent of their budgets. On the other end of the spectrum is Bulkley Valley, which raised a grand total of $9,809 in local revenue, the equivalent of $3.65 per resident student.

There are many more Bulkley Valleys than West Vancouvers in British Columbia. Twenty-four districts, forty percent of the total, were able to raise less than $100 per student in 2002-03.

Districts such as West Vancouver and Coquitlam have become dependent upon international student funding. Trustees must shudder to think of the impact of the loss of these funds. The SARS outbreak of last year made educators painfully aware that many of the educational services provided to their students can be jeopardized by a virus, the fluctuation of currencies, or a news story about a Korean student assaulted in the park.

Surprisingly, little attention has been paid to this major change to public schooling in our province. After all, if school boards can raise funds through entrepreneurial initiatives, overburdened taxpayers get some relief. Maybe Bulkley Valley and Southeast Kootenay, which raises $5.65 per student, can imitate the success stories of New Westminster and West Vancouver, close the gap, and benefit students. Data in the audited statements give little promise that the competitive model will do anything other than exacerbate the gap between have and have not school districts.

The financial statements reveal that equity in B.C. public schools is being subverted and inverted. Ten of the 11 school boards that raise the greatest amount of revenue as a percentage of Ministry funding are urban (eight are in Metropolitan Vancouver). Howe Sound (5.47%) is a stones throw away from the Lower Mainland and boasts Whistler as a magnet to lure international students. Another nearby school board, Gulf Islands (9.6%) also gives great brochure.

Unequal opportunities

Meanwhile, the communities hardest hit by the downturn in the resource economy, and those whose young people arguably need more rather than fewer educational resources, see their schools closed and their teacher-librarians reduced in number.

Equity is a core value in Canadian public institutions. It is compromised only when as a society we seek to compensate for disadvantaged circumstances. This value is evident in the additional funding provided to students with special needs.

In British Columbia, equity has been abandoned with the encouragement of the government charged with ensuring that every student is given equal opportunities to succeed. It is not likely to be recaptured by encouraging Bulkley Valley and East Kootenay to become better entrepreneurs. Our public schools are remarkable institutions. Arguably, no other public institution bolsters our democracy as do our public schools.

In Failing our Kids: How we are Ruining Our Public Schools, former B.C. Deputy Minister for Education Charles Ungerleider, asserts that the major purpose of public schools is to enable young people to overcome the disadvantages that derive from accidents of birth.

In 2002-03, the province's 60 school boards raised nearly $145 million in local revenue. The uneven distribution of these revenues among school boards results in some students having smaller classes, newer textbooks, more specialist teachers, better maintained schools, newer learning technologies and safer schools than their counterparts in other publicly funded schools.

A society that values the opportunities that public schooling brings to children cannot allow this inequity to persist.

Kit Krieger [email protected] is the President of the West Vancouver Teachers' Association