School Budgets

In simple terms, the way school board financing works is that the Minister of Education announces by February 1st how much money the province will give each board on a per student basis, and by June 30th each board produces a budget showing how it will spend the money. In recent years that means each board has less than five months to determine where cuts will be made.

School boards operate on a fiscal year that runs from July 1st through June 30th while the province operates on an April 1st - March 31st fiscal year. The school board fiscal year beginning July 1, 2003, will be the first year that all boards operate on generally accepted accounting principles - a change that has been years in the making. That means that it will be possible to compare expenses between boards without a concern that one board is using accrual accounting while another is using cash accounting.

During the last election campaign, Premier Campbell and his candidates didn't say that classes would be larger, special needs would go unmet and schools would close in the New Era. Now they claim to be increasing funding on a per student basis while overlooking how costs have risen because of the 50% increase in MSP premiums and the unfunded costs imposed through a legislated "contract". Those factors are part of the finger pointing as school boards rightly argue that Victoria is responsible for the cuts they are forced to make. Unfortunately for the school boards, they must determine precisely which cuts to make, or be fired. How each board makes those decisions provides interesting contrasts in public consultations.

The Ministry of Education provides a map and list of all school boards at http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/schools/bcmap.htm with links to the board websites. The Vancouver School Board's website at http://www.vsb.bc.ca/default.htm features a graphic that links to a page of information on its budget process and opportunities for public input. By contrast, the Surrey School Board's website at http://www.sd36.bc.ca/ features a letter from the Chair of the Board on the Supreme Court case they lost on excluding same sex books, but nothing can be found on how the public can participate in the Board's budget process. Entering the word "budget" in the site's search engine produces references to previous board meetings, but nothing on the current process. News reports indicate that the Surrey Board may lay off 200 staff this year.

I have not reviewed the website for every school board, but of those I've seen, the Prince Rupert School Board deserves praise for its work at http://www.sd52.bc.ca/finance.html. That site presents finance and budget information in a simple straight forward way that doesn't leave anyone wondering if the facts are tainted by spin. A letter from the superintendent at http://www.sd52.bc.ca/0304bud.html outlines the opportunities for public input that are in addition to the invitation elsewhere on the site to directly email the Secretary Treasurer.

School boards should compare how their websites deal with the budget process. Of course, what really counts is how each board makes its decisions. Boards that provide little on their websites may argue that they extend opportunities through the old technology of public meetings. Over the next few weeks, media reports are bound to be full of reports on the difficult decisions the Campbell government is forcing school boards to make - how many schools to close, how many staff to lay off, how large to make class sizes!