The Vancouver School Board’s budget for next year may be balanced, but the process so far has been confusing and opaque.
Given the district has a new board of trustees, a new superintendent and a new secretary-treasurer, perhaps it’s not entirely surprising the first budget would be a bit challenging.
First off, staff announced a new process for this year, as I outlined in an earlier column. Rather than starting with a deficit and suggesting cuts to balance it, the budget would be presented as balanced from the get go.
But it isn’t balanced in the sense that there just happened to be enough money to cover existing expenses. Rather, it uses prior year’s surplus to balance the books.
So far, district staff has presented two draft budgets — the first included management recommended changes and used $2.3 million of surplus left over from 2016-17 to arrive at a net zero bottom line.
The second draft removed those management-backed changes and added them and others as “proposals to be considered.” This draft relies on only $187,000 of prior year surplus.
The proposals, which total $3.2 million, include money for extra staffing for alternate programs, district resource teachers, hosting and student forum and several other ideas. Adding them into the budget will require using surplus funds, a process VSB secretary-treasurer David Green says is not sustainable and will put cost pressures on future years.
“We have to be very prudent on how we think about the future,” he said at the public meeting.
Neither draft has been approved by trustees.
Nobody is being laid off as a result of budget reductions, said David Green, the district’s secretary-treasurer.
“We’re trying to do the best we can for students and trying to keep any changes we make to the budget as far away from classrooms as possible,” Green said in an interview.
Ideas that were raised by the public, but were not considered by staff include the reestablishment of a music program, increased staff at mini schools, learning resources for libraries and increased maintenance in schools.
The VSB has a history of contentious budgets, with most years forecasting massive cuts to services in initial projections, but often ending the year with a surplus.
The 2016-17 audited statements show an unrestricted surplus of $2.5 million, which may sound like a lot of money, but is actually less than one per cent of the nearly $500-million budget. Then again, 2016-17 was the year the board was fired for refusing to pass a balanced budget that called for $21.8 million in cuts – so it’s a tad unusual the district would end that particular year with a surplus.
This year, teachers in Vancouver say thousands of hours of service to students with special needs have been lost because teachers who provide support have been pulled into regular classrooms to cover for teachers who are sick.
The draft budget includes an $8.7-million increase for salaries, including about $3 million for teacher salaries. I hope that some of that money will go towards replacing teachers and other staff who are away sick, which was not always done this year, due to a teacher shortage.
At the first public budget meeting, trustee Carrie Bercic asked about a “restoration budget,” something the VSB has been doing annually to show the positions lost since 2002.
In the second public meeting, board chair Janet Fraser suggested that a “needs budget” be prepared, using past budgets and comments from district groups like teachers and support workers.
Trustee Lisa Dominato spoke against both ideas, but a majority of trustees supported Fraser’s motion to go forward.
The last restoration budget, prepared two years ago before the teachers’ court win, showed $79.4 million required annually to match the services provided in 2002 and 810 entry level teaching positions lost. It’s impossible to compare that to today because a restoration budget wasn’t made last year and a lot of new money has come into the system to restore the contract.
But it would sure be interesting to see what has been regained, given the teachers’ win in court. Also bearing in mind that many faces around the table are new to the district, preparing either a restoration budget or a needs budget seems a small, but wise, nod to accountability.
To make a presentation at the board meeting on May 16, send an email to [email protected].
Tracy Sherlock writes about education and social issues. She can be reached at [email protected].
