Photo Credit: Les Bazso, PNG

The Vancouver School Board is trying to find $18.12 million in savings in order to balance the budget for the 2010-11 year. For their part, the VSB has blamed the province for downloading costs onto the schools. Increases in payroll costs in the form of employee benefit deductions, such as Canada Pension Plan, Employment Insurance, and Workman’s Compensation Board, are all straining the education system.

Because of this, Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid has dispatched a “special adviser” to Vancouver’s board of education to try and find savings where the school board has failed.

“This is a serious situation. We felt it was important to take action,” Ms.MacDiarmid said yesterday in Victoria.

“They [members of Vancouver's board of education] have said they’re having trouble managing with their budget. They are talking about cutting programs they say are going to jeopardize learning,” she added.

“There are 50,000 students in Vancouver, and we owe it to them to make sure their educational outcomes are the best they can be.”

This kind of language has infuriated the VSB chair Patti Bacchus, who implied it’s ridiculous to believe the province can find $18 million that they missed, and is further annoyed at the shifting all of the blame onto the Vancouver school board.

Ms.Bacchus said she was not informed by the ministry of education about the appointment of B.C.’s Comptroller General, Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland, who also looked for savings last year in BC Ferries and BC Rail.

“I hope she’s not considering this some kind of game, a political game,” Ms.Bacchus said.

But the education minister certainly seems to be playing some kind of game, particularly in her choice of words.

“The Vancouver board of education is either unable or unwilling to manage its resources to protect the interests of students,” Ms.MacDiarmid said in a press release.

Ms.Bacchus rejected those statements.

“It is inappropriate for her to make those allegations,” she said. “I find it insulting.”

Part of the problem comes from within the School Board itself, as the cost of teacher salaries and administration has risen despite the economic slowdown. But the idea that the province can find $18 million in savings that the VSB could not is a direct challenge to the board’s diligence in finding a solution to the deficit. It certainly comes off as being arrogant, coming from a government that is running a substantial deficit of its own by breaking its own no-deficit law last January.

The BC Liberals’ new-found “green” ideology is also straining school boards across BC, because the province has mandated that the entire public sector has to become carbon neutral this year. For many school boards, that means purchasing ridiculous “carbon offsets”.

For school boards across BC they see this as another example of giving with one hand and taking away with the other, particularly when it comes to things like the carbon tax, for which boards have to pay a heavy price in heating and electricity costs. To have the province then turn around and accuse the boards of being unable to properly balance their budgets is understandably infuriating.