In the last 14 years, School District 57 (Prince George) has closed 22 schools.
Parents were furious at trustees, teachers were ticked off with administrators and nobody was happy with the superintendent but everyone, to varying degrees, understood that it made no sense to keep the same number of schools open for 6,000 fewer students. No one was happy with what had to be done and some disagreed strongly with the decisions, but everyone felt they had been part of a difficult democratic exercise.
The schools were closed.
Life went on.
Parents and kids adjusted.
School trustees moved on to many more decisions on how to support new ministry programs and edicts with insufficient funds.
And so it has gone around most of the province, as the population ages and fewer children enter school. According to the Victoria Times Colonist, 44 of the province's 59 school district have closed 240 schools since 2003. The rural areas of the province have been the hardest hit but those communities have worked hard to soften the blow in a variety of creative ways.
Now contrast that to the ridiculous situation that has been festering over the last year in Vancouver. Unlike in Prince George and most everywhere else in the province, political parties are behind all of Vancouver's school board trustees. Vision Vancouver and the Non-Partisan Association both have four trustees, while the tie-breaker is a Green candidate that sides with Vision.
The Vision-Green trustees have been militant in their opposition to the B.C. Liberals. Now that a $15-million deficit looms due to fewer kids in metropolitan Vancouver, the school board is refusing to close schools or address its deficit. They are daring the Minister of Education to fire them and appoint a ministry trustee to replace them. With a spring provincial election on the horizon and those vote-rich Vancouver ridings in play, the Liberal government has been unusually delicate and patient in dealing with these insurgents.
Don't be too quick to cheer on these brave trustees for standing up to Christy Clark's government and demanding more funding for education.
As it stands right now, the superintendent and the five other members of the school district's management team are all on stress leave, prompting an investigation by WorkSafeBC into possible bullying and harassment by the trustees.
The Globe and Mail reported Thursday that the board chair is concerned about confidentiality as internal emails have been turned over to an independent auditor. That begs the question about whether the worry is really about privacy or more about how damning those emails might be to trustees in regards to their conduct towards staff.
Serving as a school superintendent is a thankless job, as Prince George residents found out last December when Brian Pepper abruptly resigned from his post with School District 57. His official explanation for his departure was for "reasons connected to health and opportunity." His working conditions, however, told a darker story.
Although he was paid $147,000 a year, Pepper hadn't seen a raise in five years. Furthermore, he was responsible for a bureaucracy significantly larger and more complex than the City of Prince George's, yet he was being paid two-thirds the salary of the city manager and even below the pay received by directors. At the time Pepper called it quits, he was also doing three jobs - his own, one of the assistant superintendent's duties and serving as the principal of the Centre for Learning Alternatives.
As school districts across the province felt the funding pinch, the first place trustees cut was administration, demanding the high-priced help do more with less and insisting that every dollar possible go into the classroom. The end result, at least in Prince George and Vancouver, seems to be one person doing the job of several, sudden resignations for health reasons and an entire management team out on stress leave.
If WorkSafeBC finds Vancouver trustees were to blame for making their employees sick, those responsible need to be fired. Running schools is a hard enough job without having trustees believe that getting elected gives them the licence to harass their staff.
