2014-15 Budget Thoughts

The school board is currently looking at the 2014-15 school district budget and will be giving it first reading on Tuesday May 13th.  As it goes with any budget that has cuts and shifts in resources, there are many differences in opinion on whether we've got it right as a school district.  I agree with almost everyone in BC Education that our system in underfunded and we seem to make perpetual cuts rather than ever make improvements.  This year our board has had to find more cuts to cover reduced enrolment, the unfunded CUPE raise, and other changes.

One of the issues I have with our current budget is that we have not yet come up with a successful way to take trustee and partner group input and turn it into budget direction.  The Extended Committee of the Whole process was supposed to do this, but after our third year of doing this it is still not clear how trustees can actually set direction for the school district in the budget other than making unpopular motions at last minute meetings. My other issue is that we are making cuts to some areas that I don't think are necessary while at the same time increasing budgets in other areas that I also do not feel are necessary.

I would like to bring a motion forward about this at an upcoming meeting.  If it turns out to be in-camera, I'll be able to report the results. If not, I guess I'll have to wait until the result of the final budget are known. We have a funny system where the trustees are often sworn to secrecy about things everyone else already knows about, but that would be another blog post. Maybe the motion won't even get a second, that's happened to me before. You definitely know you have a minority view when none of the other trustees will let the motion have a discussion. I'm not sure of the chance of success, but I think this needs to come forward as a responsible use of money for the benefit of staff and students. Here's is my idea:

Motion:

• That the budget increase to C&I of $248,000 for the implementation of the “Essential Eight” be reduced to $124,000 in order to mitigate cuts to other departments and allow the hiring of a Speech Language Pathologist. 

Rationale:

• we should not be making cuts to services that directly impact students and teachers (e.g. school allocations, professional development support) while increasing department budgets at the same time for work that is not actually essential 
• a SLP position generates new funding for the school district in the form of 1701 designations, enough to pay for the position after the initial hiring year. This is the same logic that being used to justify hire another position
• reducing the amount by half is a compromise. It allows C&I to continue work on the Essential Eight (district initiatives and positions related to the Achievement Contract) but gives the trustees room for other decisions in a deficit year
• senior administration said last year that the Essential Eight would not require additional funding because it described or rebranded work that was already being done. This motion goes part way towards allowing them to keep their word
• in 2010, the Sustainability Report p. 41 acknowledged that part of the budget problem was that district infrastructure had continued to grow while enrolment had declined.  In other words the board office had grown too big for the size of the district.  Many positions were in fact cut, but since then they have built back up and now the board office infrastructure is as big as ever.  Adding another quarter million to infrastructure does not make sense, we should probably be going in the other direction