The Greater Victoria school board is short $5 million, according to chairwoman Edith Loring-Kuhanga. While the budget has been balanced for the coming year, the extra money is required to offer a full range of classroom services.
The predicament is shared by all four school districts in the capital region. Sooke wants a top-up of $4 million. Saanich needs to squeeze an additional $1 million out of its budget. Gulf Islands is one of the province鈥檚 smallest school districts, with little room to manoeuvre.
The problem is clear enough. Declining enrolment has led to flatline funding for several years.
Solutions are more difficult. K-12 administrators have limited choices when it comes to economizing. Nearly 90 per cent of their budget goes for salaries and benefits, and those are mostly negotiated at the provincial level.
Closing facilities is an option, and across sa国际传媒, more than 200 schools have already suffered that fate, including 14 in the capital region. Yet no one wants to see kids bused long distances, and that鈥檚 where this policy leads.
Education Minister Peter Fassbender has encouraged boards to share more of their administrative services, and some say they鈥檝e complied. Saanich sent the minister a list of areas where the district has moved in this direction.
A transport manager is being shared with the Sooke school district, and an energy manager works part time with sa国际传媒 Hydro. That鈥檚 a good start, but it leaves huge areas of duplication untouched.
There are probably few options for the Gulf Islands district 鈥� geography and extreme small size are both barriers.
However, the other three boards could find significant savings if they merged more of their management and support services. Each district retains a full complement of senior executives 鈥� superintendents, assistant and associate superintendents, secretary treasurers and so on. Few of these officials makes less than $150,000 in pay and benefits, some considerably more.
In addition, do we really need three human-resource departments, three information-technology departments, three finance departments, three facilities departments, and so on?
This is, after all, the information age. Most routine office work these days is easily conducted off-site with computer technology and email.
How much could be saved? Well, the three districts spend more than $9 million a year on support services. That suggests an opportunity for significant economies.
We鈥檙e not suggesting a merger of the school boards themselves 鈥� that is to say, of the elected officials. That might make sense, but it raises a more difficult set of issues.
Many parents like the idea of a school board in close proximity that responds to their needs. Provincial approval would probably be required for a governance merger, and that could take forever.
But faced with a choice between cutbacks in the classroom and a slimmer administration, most parents would probably opt for the latter.
No doubt, merging support services would be initially disruptive. It鈥檚 asking a lot from managers who already have plenty of work. And for the first year or two, some of the savings will be consumed with system upgrades and the like.
But the funding problem is not going away. If anything, it will get worse.
The provincial government has already published its three-year fiscal plan. There is no relief in sight for the education system (or other public agencies).
It comes down to this. Our school boards are nibbling away at classroom services, while clinging to an obsolete support model that both government and the private sector are rapidly discarding.
We have a right to ask the leaders of our school system to do better. Let鈥檚 put an end to triplicate empires and build one first-class consolidated service.
