Students, teachers and taxpayers need a long-term solution to the perpetual funding crisis in sa国际传媒鈥檚 schools. Education Minister Peter Fassbender has given school boards the welcome news that the province will cover the cost of any pay increases for teachers this year. He would do well to look for a way to end the roller-coaster of money questions that seem to confront school boards every year.
The promise to fund teachers鈥� pay increases does not extend to raises for support staff such as custodians and education assistants. For these workers, who have not had a raise for four years, school boards have been told they will have to find the money through cost savings elsewhere in their budgets.
The double standard is glaring. Support staff will draw obvious lessons from the observation that while they quietly go about their jobs and are treated like second-class citizens, the teachers 鈥� whose labour disputes throw schools into chaos 鈥斅爃ave their pay increases covered by the province.
The government might not like the fruit of those lessons down the road.
The difference, of course, is that the province is driving teacher negotiations in an effort to secure a 10-year contract that will buy peace. It has pushed the sa国际传媒 Public School Employers Association out of the picture and appointed a single negotiator for the government.
The contrasting 鈥� and changing 鈥� policies are confusing for everyone. In December, the government told trustees that they would have to find savings to cover any raises for support staff. It later backed down in the face of trustee outrage. Then this summer, after the election, the order was back on the table: Trustees would have to find the money themselves.
The message is that money is available for the things the government wants, but not for things that trustees or staff might want. The rules change, and money appears out of nowhere.
Budgets are tight and savings must be made, but this is not the way to do it.
The province is spending $5.3 billion on education this year; of that, more than $4.7 billion is block funding to school districts. The government, teachers and trustees argue over how that compares to previous years and whether it鈥檚 enough. The government says the block funding is the same as in the previous year and will stay steady until 2015-16, even though enrolment has fallen 7.9 per cent since 2001.
Costs don鈥檛 fall in lockstep with enrolment, so school boards say they struggle to make ends meet. Schools have to be heated, regardless of how many students are in them, and other costs also go up even when enrolment goes down.
The Cowichan Valley board members got themselves fired en masse for turning in a deficit budget. Mike McKay, the administrator appointed to replace them, found ways to cut costs, including closing six schools.
So the question of whether there is enough money depends a great deal on perspective. An independent, detailed probe of education funding in the province would help all of us understand the possibilities, instead of relying on the perspectives of those with vested interests.
Fassbender, who comes to the portfolio with a long record of work on public-policy issues, has the skills and experience to navigate through the minefield of education. It will take creative thinking and good negotiation to craft a solution to sa国际传媒鈥檚 education conundrum.
We must find a way to pay for education in this province without constantly changing the rules and budgeting by brinkmanship.
