Budget concerns. Deficit. Cuts.
For this entire century so far, those are the most common words and phrases heard from school board trustees when talking about education spending in School District 57.
With declining enrolment, the school district has seen its per-student funding slashed. School population levels are no longer falling for the moment but the Liberal government continues to demand school trustees and, by extension, administrators, principals, teachers and support staff do more with less.
As board vice-chair Brenda Hooker explained in Tuesday's Citizen, it's getting harder and harder for this school district to make ends meet. Not only is Victoria demanding school districts cut "the low-hanging fruit," to use Premier Christy Clark's harsh and unkind description, and saying it's up to school trustees to make it work, they're tying the hands of those very same trustees to do their already difficult jobs.
"On one hand they're saying that we have to make these cuts out of administrative savings and we can't affect the classroom by them but on the other hand, they're taking part of per-student funding and applying it to capital (costs)," she explained.
Like their colleagues around B.C., Hooker and board chair Tony Cable have been increasingly bold with their comments and criticisms directed towards Victoria but it's a risky strategy, she pointed out.
"It's a fine line between really expressing our frustration and concern about this and having someone else step in and the board being replaced," she said.
In other words, bureaucrats in the ministry of education decides how much money school districts get and how those school districts should spend the money, leaving the elected trustees with little discretionary power to meet local needs. Worst of all, those same bureaucrats, along with the minister of education, can fire the locally elected officials at any time, for any reason, and appoint a new board.
To be fair, the erosion of the power and authority of school boards started under Social Credit, continued under the NDP and became entrenched by the Liberals. It wasn't so long ago that school districts had taxation authority but those were taken away. More recently, school districts negotiated their own contracts with teachers and support staff but that was taken away, too.
School trustees today are left with the job of making the best out of a bad situation, of making the cuts that hurt the least, and of providing oversight for the superintendent. It wasn't so long ago that school trustees had an active hand in delivering education but now it seems they've been relegated to fighting to save the education that's left.
But they can't fight too hard because the hand that feeds refuses to be bitten and will punish any offenders.
On one hand, the provincial government should just end the charade and get rid of school boards altogether, going for the same model in education as in health, where the province is governed by large authorities under the auspices of an appointed governance board.
The decisions would be even worse but at least Victoria would more directly own 100 per cent of the blame.
As bad as it is, however, the current situation is still better. Hooker, Cable and their colleagues are residents of this school district and care deeply about its schools, students and teachers. They go to incredible lengths to find creative solutions to funding problems and to consult with the public to find the least-worst solution to the latest budget concerns/deficits/cuts.
They, and other people like them, campaign to be elected for school board because they know, at the very least, they can do a better job than Victoria representing local interests and concerns when seeing education delivered to area children.
For that, we should be thankful but there has to be a better way.
