Vancouver Board of Education trustees call on provincial government to fully fund public education
Board & Committees
Vancouver, B.C. – (September 9, 2009) – In support of its position that the education of our children and youth is the best investment of public funds, the Vancouver Board of Education passed a series of resolutions Wednesday night calling on the provincial government to:
• fully fund increased costs to school districts;
• restore grants that have been cancelled or reduced;
• fund the costs of H1N1 prevention;
• fund increased employee MSP premium increases;
• grant 75 percent Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) rebates to school districts;
• alter legislation to allow boards to carry deficits;
• and fully fund all-day Kindergarten implementation.
The resolutions were passed at an emergency board meeting called to give trustees an opportunity to update stakeholders and community members on the current budget situation and consider possible responses.
A staff report outlining the district’s three-year budget projection showed the district will require almost $15 million in additional funding for the 2010/11 school year to compensate for salary and benefit increases, inflation, purchase of carbon offsets, potential impact of HST (if no rebates provided) and the MSP rate increase, assuming the facilities grant funding is reinstated. If it is not, the shortfall would rise to more than $25 million. The report also notes that almost $7 million of the current year’s operating fund came from one-time transfers of monies from a previous surplus and the district’s reserve fund. The district does not expect those funds to be available for the 2010/11 school year.
“We received some short-term relief yesterday when the Minister advised us that she is approving our request to access our shared $5 million restricted capital reserve fund and $2.5 million savings we realized on Combined Seismic Mitigation projects,” said Board Chair Patti Bacchus. “We made a special request to access those funds to help us grapple with the Ministry of Education’s abrupt cancellation of our $10.6 million Annual Facilities Grant (AFG) funding.
The district was hit yesterday by the news that gaming grants to Parent Advisory Councils will be cut in half, which means a funding reduction of more than $500,000 to Vancouver schools.
“In addition to the cancellation of the facilities funding, we’ve also been advised that the ministry is taking back $400,000 in what they refer to as ‘holdback’ funding that we received in June,” said Board Vice Chair Jane Bouey. “We allocated some of that funding to provide all-day Kindergarten to some of our inner-city schools, but now the money is gone.”
“It’s critical that government provides at the very minimum funding to cover the increased costs of school districts,” said Trustee Sharon Gregson, who chairs the board’s Finance Committee. “We submitted a Needs Budget in the spring calling on the government to restore funding so we could return to 2001/02 service levels, and to do that, we would have needed a minimum of $40-million increase for this school year, and we know costs will be higher next year.”
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For more information, contact:
Patti Bacchus, board chairperson: 604-250-1130
Jane Bouey, board vice-chairperson: 604-345-4246
Sharon Gregson, trustee: 604-345-5031
