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Vancouver School Board gets slapped with an advisor - when will Victoria trustees take this same strong stand?


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#1 think local

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Posted 15 April 2010 - 10:23 AM

Things definitely seem to be heating up and it's about time. The Vancouver School Board has thankfully been calling the liberal's to task while the Victoria trustees write quiet letters. It's time to blow the lid off all this spin doctoring, "Public Education funding has never been higher" gibberish.

The Minister of Education is slapping the Vancouver School Board with an advisor to "help" them find effeciencies and yet the budget process hasn't even finished. The minister states she's done this in Vancouver because they're different yet I'd like to see what other board in the province is going to be able to balance their budget without negatively effecting students? Vancouver is no different, in my opinion, just thankfully louder. Wonder when the Victoria trustees will find their outdoor voice and stand up for public education students.

Special adviser will review Vancouver school budget
http://communities.canada.com/VANCOUVER ... udget.aspx

Disrespectful, says Vancouver board chair Patti Bacchus
http://communities.canada.com/VANCOUVER ... cchus.aspx

Times Colonist
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Speci ... story.html

#2 VicHockeyFan

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Posted 15 April 2010 - 03:33 PM

The way to cut budgets is to close some schools, cut admin jobs, reduce hours worked each week, and yes, look at who is willing to reopen their collective agreements and take a pay-cut in exchange for saving some jobs.

I don't know why salaries are the thing that can't be examined in the public service.

#3 piltdownman

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Posted 15 April 2010 - 04:49 PM

School Boards also just flat out waste money on expensive perks and flat out useless programs. My mother is a teacher at an unnamed School District in the GVRD. Whilst they are cutting jobs and money for textbooks, they just burn money in other areas. My mother just 'won' a trip to a conference, from some crazy draw the School Boards has to send X teachers to the conference of their choice. They don't even apply. They just get and email saying they have won and then they have two weeks to decide where they want to go. Its pretty much a $5k vacation lottery with the publics money. Her school board is also going crazy with these crazy $10k electronic whiteboards in every classroom. They don't bother to actually show the teachers how to use them, so only one in five teachers even use them. Hopefully this outside adviser will remove alot of this rubbish from their budgets and focus on fundamentals first.

#4 victorian fan

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Posted 15 April 2010 - 04:58 PM



British columbia annual education budget % spent on "teachers salaries"

#5 sebberry

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Posted 29 April 2010 - 10:21 AM

The way to cut budgets is to close some schools, cut admin jobs, reduce hours worked each week, and yes, look at who is willing to reopen their collective agreements and take a pay-cut in exchange for saving some jobs.

I don't know why salaries are the thing that can't be examined in the public service.


I agree. Unless I was making a crappy wage I would generally prefer a pay-cut than a termination.

As for an outside advisor, my experience with consultants is they generally just screw something else up. These are the sorts of people who want fewer teachers, larger class sizes and would likely insist that kids share textbooks.

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#6 VicHockeyFan

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Posted 29 April 2010 - 10:48 AM

Some kids can also handle larger class sizes.

When I went to elementary school, we generally had three classes for each grade. Div 1, 2 and 3. It was pretty obvious to me, even as a elementary school kid, that they generally grouped the strongest kids together in one division, the weakest ones in another, and the others in between, and then the principle obviously chose which teacher got which class.

Now in my mind, the strongest class could afford to have a higher number of students as the brightest in that class needed less attention.

Also, why do we have half-empty schools and yet all three districts around here maintain stand-alone offices? Why not move into a school?

Why not contract out some of the building and grounds services, maybe even contract it out to a willing municipality? Why should one guy mow the lawn at a school, then another guy with another set of equipment mows the lawn of the park next door?

#7 Bingo

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Posted 17 October 2016 - 02:45 PM

Education Minister Mike Bernier has fired all nine elected Vancouver School Board trustees.

It's a rare move, but one trustees knew could be coming since they rejected a proposal from the B.C. government to balance their budget last June, which was required by law.

In a written statement, Bernier said the board was dismissed for missing that deadline, and raised a number of other issues with the board's operation.

more; http://www.cbc.ca/ne...fired-1.3808674

 



#8 Jill

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Posted 17 October 2016 - 04:06 PM

Didn't the province do the same thing to a school board on the Island? Cowichan?



#9 VicHockeyFan

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Posted 17 October 2016 - 04:41 PM

Didn't the province do the same thing to a school board on the Island? Cowichan?

 

YES.  Look, the rules (when you were elected as a trustee) says you have to balance the budget, and if the other however many can, then you need to as well. 


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#10 LJ

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Posted 17 October 2016 - 07:19 PM

^I agree. Vancouver SB keeps thinking they are more important than any other SB so they can make up their own rules.


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#11 Awaiting Juno

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Posted 18 October 2016 - 10:27 AM

I don't want my school trustees trying to make political points with my kids' education - being a school trustee shouldn't be seen as "minor leagues" for politicians.  I want them to do the best they can with what they have available, and I want them to effectively communicate what isn't available and what can be done to solve those problems, I'd also expect some creativity when it comes to solving problems - not just, "we don't have enough, lets beg the government to give us more".  When the numbers of students to be educated declines - I'd expect that the costs associated with educating students would decline somewhat and it would be nice if there was a better break down between things that are truly "variable cost" versus "fixed costs".  At a minimum, I'd expect that they would refrain from creating a toxic work environment for school board staff.

 

The stand against corporate sponsorship might not be reasonable (note there may need to be rules with respect to the kind of sponsorship that is acceptable) - many companies attempt to engage in corporate social responsibility (Chevron being one example) and perhaps those opportunities need to be explored further.  I recently found a junior high school yearbook (Lethbridge, Alberta circa 1991) that actually had advertising in it.  The adherence to the "traditional school calendar" may also not be reasonable when a different calendar might result in more efficient facility use.  I'd like to see more collaboration between school districts to enable more shared services - is there any really logical reason why there are so many school districts??  Perhaps capacity building with respect to fundraising efforts (ie. hospitals seem to have no qualms fundraising for large capital items, why are schools so adverse)?   There is also a lack of transparency when it comes to international students use of the public school system (FYI - districts set their own tuition rates, typically between $12,500 and $15,000 per student per year).  Why not encourage entrepreneurship by allowing schools to set up Community Contribution Companies with profits going back to the district? 

 

My problem with Vancouver is that they saw their job as being to actively oppose the government and beg, plead or otherwise demand more funding from the government for public education.  Government funding for public education may not be adequate - but that does not mean that other sources of funding or efficiencies should be rejected as a matter of principle.

 

I really hope that the trustees in Victoria have as their primary focus the educational wellbeing of students - and if they started to "be like Vancouver", I'd hope that somehow, the government would press a reset button so that the spiral into dysfunction that harms students would be stopped.


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#12 nagel

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Posted 18 October 2016 - 10:37 AM

There is irony in BC firing the VSB for this while whining to the feds for more health care $$$.


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#13 lanforod

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Posted 18 October 2016 - 12:13 PM

There is irony in BC firing the VSB for this while whining to the feds for more health care $$$.

Somewhat. BC isn't mandated to run a balanced budget by the feds though.



#14 nagel

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Posted 18 October 2016 - 12:20 PM

Somewhat. BC isn't mandated to run a balanced budget by the feds though.

No, but the point is instead of 100% focusing on making do with the money provided they're focusing on getting more from the $$ provider.



#15 rjag

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Posted 18 October 2016 - 01:51 PM

No, but the point is instead of 100% focusing on making do with the money provided they're focusing on getting more from the $$ provider.

 

But somehow its more than money with VSB. They have been well known to politicize the process, this isn't about the kids, its a standoff between them and the hand that feeds them. The kids are collateral damage, Lombardi and Bachus et al are social activists with no history of actually running anything. They play the martyr victim role very well to the media, yet 50+ Boards were able to sort it out without multiple senior staff taking stress leave and a bullying investigation by WCB.

 

 

The real victims are the kids who are used as pawns


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#16 Danma

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Posted 18 October 2016 - 02:06 PM

Also, why do we have half-empty schools and yet all three districts around here maintain stand-alone offices? Why not move into a school?

 

I don't think SD62 has a bunch of 'half-empty schools'.



#17 LJ

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Posted 18 October 2016 - 07:44 PM

The whiny lady they interviewed on Global news at 6 was pathetic. "we don't want much", no you just want all the taxpayers of BC to pay more for your precious children to attend a half empty school. And then they get kids parading around with sign saying "save ------ school" like the kids really care what school they have to go to.


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#18 Awaiting Juno

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Posted 19 October 2016 - 09:10 AM

I'm pretty sure most kids would trade a school with more kids in it, for adequate course choices, field trips and other educational enrichments that are lost when money is misallocated to heating, cleaning and maintaining a half-empty building.  That said, those half-empty buildings could be opportunities - if the School Board rented them out to other community groups for other purposes and then used that revenue to fund programs.  But they don't do that, or if they do, they don't adequately report the income as they could have balanced their budget if keeping the schools was the right thing to do.



#19 North Shore

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Posted 19 October 2016 - 09:16 AM

Long past time, IMHO, to ditch a number of school districts, and their associated admin costs.  Is there any real difference between the socio-economics of Victoria and Saanich, such that they have two school districts?  Why not amalgamate on the Island, and have three: North, Mid, and South Island school districts?  And so on...


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#20 Awaiting Juno

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Posted 20 October 2016 - 11:05 AM

Sadly, the idea of amalgamating school districts seems as likely as seeing an amalgamated Victoria....that said they managed to do it with local health areas becoming health authorities....



 



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