Schools and school districts

[sly_karma]

Schools and their funding is a hot button issue anywhere, and it will likely be an issue in the upcoming provincial election. I'm fairly neutral when it comes to the sadly adversarial BC Govt - BCTU relationship, but I do believe BC needs further amalgamation of its school districts. We had a small reorganization in 1996 but it could and should go further now. Surely we don't need 56 school districts when our population doesn't exceed 5 million. IT advances since then would permit administrative changes to be made more easily. To me it makes little sense to have 14 school districts in metro Vancouver when they could all be administered from a central office and everything within a one hour drive. Sure, the situation would require a more nuanced solution than that very simple model, but that should be the path forward. After decades of electronic media and an increasingly mobile population, you can't tell me there are such serious cultural and social differences across a major metro area that it's necessary to have fourteen separate governing bodies. The districts complain incessantly about being underfunded by the province, but they studiously overlook this (to me) obvious path to longterm administrative savings. Obviously, admin staff don't want to endanger their own jobs. The province itself did a major review of its own operations and made serious reductions in its administrative units. There sure as hell aren't 56 forestry districts or highways districts.

 

[bigbruce]

I'd be looking at amalgamating cities, municipalities and regional districts before I took a run at School Districts. Here in the Comox Valley we have 4 municipal/city/regional district authorities as well as an improvement district - for 55,000 people. Victoria is a right mess with, what, twenty something local governments and three police organizations?

 

[trophywife]

how dare anyone think of cutting bureaucracy? its what our govt runs on!!

 

[kaelc]

550,000 students or almost 10,000 a district, with an average of 390 teachers. It would create pretty massive organizations to consolidate. If they were all well ran or had a great model to point to then consolidate but unless you can point to great improvements the organization size, on average, may be an effective one.

I second the motion on municipalities, governance is becoming a huge problem as well as funding and there are good models like Mississauga.

 

[KCW]

Worked for saanich school districk 22 years ago . The lack of accountability was staggering

 

[sly_karma]

I'd be looking at amalgamating cities, municipalities and regional districts before I took a run at School Districts. Here in the Comox Valley we have 4 municipal/city/regional district authorities as well as an improvement district - for 55,000 people. Victoria is a right mess with, what, twenty something local governments and three police organizations?

Agreed, but that's a much bigger can to kick over. I was looking to start small! The districts never stop moaning about lack of funding and point the finger squarely at the province, but when do they take a hard look at their own governance? Everyone knows schools are stretching dollars very thin already, most people would probably agree it was worth at least doing a study.

It wouldn't be a good fit to lump in rural areas like say Hope and the Fraser Canyon with Langley, Abbotsford etc, but why shouldn't North Van and West Van be managed as one? Suburban areas, physically close etc. Betcha the admin budget of the combined district would be 25-30% less than the total of the two separate admin budgets. A million bucks a year freed up to go to actual education.

 

[fish brain]

Betcha the admin budget of the combined district would be 25-30% less than the total of the two separate admin budgets. A million bucks a year freed up to go to actual education.[/QUOTE]
I betcha any savings made by consolidating the school districts wouldn't be re-invested back into education.
Not saying it shouldn't be done, just that the money wont go where it's needed

 

[sly_karma]

Yeah it could happen that way. Look at N Okanagan district, they quietly squirrelled away almost $10 million and then announced they were building a new district admin office - at the same time as they were crying poor and announcing school closures. Fortunately the education act has some safeguards in place; the minister fired the board and appointed a trustee.

It's quite clear that some school districts are better managed than others. Some have been moaning about budgets for a decade and closing schools for almost as long, whilst some others have gritted it out and found the savings to balance the budget without closing schools. It's hard to counter the inevitable force of declining enrolments as our population ages, but some districts are more sensible than others. I'd just like to see them hold off blaming the province for funding shortfalls whilst they continue to ignore the potential savings of amalgamation.