The chickens come to home roost. You reap what you sow. And so on.

During the boom years before the 2008 global financial meltdown, Wall Street gambled with other people's money, promising security inside a teetering house of cards. New York stockbroker Bernie Madoff assumed exalted status among the greedy guilty, eventually earning a 150-year prison sentence for his directorial role in history's grandest Ponzi scheme. Last December at the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina, a fellow inmate savagely beat Madoff who suffered facial injuries, broken ribs and a collapsed lung.

Fast forward to June 2010. Confronted by a $17.23 million projected budget deficit at the Vancouver School Board, provincial Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid ordered comptroller general Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland to investigate. Two weeks ago, in a scathing report dripping with contempt, Wenezenki-Yolland blasted the VSB--including board chair Patti Bacchus--blaming the deficit crisis on chronic mismanagement and political hackery perpetrated by school board trustees.

Despite the partisan tinge of the Wenezenki-Yolland report, it accurately describes VSB culture. However, like the global financial meltdown, the problems in Vancouver public schools began years ago and predate Bacchus's reign as board chair.

For years, school board trustees have pandered to special interest groups, spent like sailors and ballooned the district bureaucracy while ignoring the limits of public education.

Activities once bought and paid for exclusively by parents are now subsidized within public school walls. Montessori and Mandarin bilingualism. Specialized arts programs and so-called outdoor schools. Weight training, camping, skiing, ocean kayaking, rock climbing. According to the VSB website, something called the Circle of Care refugee program targets the "settlement needs of young refugee children... and their primary care givers."

Whatever happened to the three Rs?

Over the past decade, the VSB budget, paid for by taxpayers through the provincial Ministry of Education, has increased every year despite a coinciding drop in student enrolment partly attributed to the growing popularity of private schools.

Back in 2000, 58,145 students attended Vancouver public schools. The VSB budget was $357.8 million, which translates to $6,155 per student. This past school year, student enrolment bottomed out at 55,116 yet the budget hovered at $443.1 million or $8,040 per student.

Simply put, despite dwindling enrolment and increased funding the VSB still wound up $17.23 million in the red.

Why?

Like the Wenezenki-Yolland report said. Politics and mismanagement.

The VSB is a partisan paradise dominated by Vancouver's three main civic parties: COPE, Vision and the NPA. The parties, which also rule city council and the park board, are bound by ideology and enlist ideologues into their ranks.

The current nine-member board, dominated by four Vision trustees and three COPE allies, leans left. It's NDP orange and union true blue. Big government. Deficit spending. A program for every problem.

Bacchus epitomizes the activist trustee. Why? Because before winning election to the board in '08 she was an activist, lobbying the school board and province on behalf of special needs students. Despite Wenezenki-Yolland's recent indictment, Bacchus struck a defiant pose and announced last week that she remains "proudly political."

The board's "it takes a village" attitude also courts squeaky wheels of every stripe.

Case in point. In January, a handful of parents successfully lobbied for district-wide Mandarin bilingualism slated to start (at an unknown cost) next September. Last June, the board bowed to pressure from aboriginal leaders, ratifying the Aboriginal Education Enhancement Agreement thus guaranteeing more aboriginal-only programs despite the myriad of programs exclusively available to aboriginal students.

Not to be out done, in 2005 the NPA-dominated board helped create the district's so-called Diversity Team, an office of full-time pencil-pushers hired to indoctrinate teachers with "inclusive" teaching methods. As taxpayers look on.

According to many economists, the massive government bailouts in late 2008 and early '09 guaranteed decades of deficit for western countries as the majority suffer for the misdeeds of a few.

But take heart. Last week when Bacchus and her beleaguered school board asked for more money from the province to balance their bloated books, (unlike Harper, Brown, Bush and Obama), MacDiarmid said no. And like an old-school educator with metre stick in hand, MacDiarmid ordered the VSB to deliver a draft balanced budget by Friday.

Perhaps the great budget crisis of 2010 will prompt a new era of responsibility at the Vancouver School Board and a better understanding of public education.

In a perfect world, they'd streamline the bureaucracy, close near-empty schools, honour the interests of students above all else and distribute pink slips to teachers according to ability, not seniority.

In a perfect world.

In reality, and for the time being, they'll have less time to hatch wild new plans for public schools and fewer reasons to run for re-election.

mhasiuk@vancourier.com