The Vancouver School Board decided Wednesday evening to continue its contract with PricewaterhouseCoopers to review the district’s expenses and revenues.
Education Minister Peter Fassbender recommended the VSB cancel its contract after he surprised the district March 12 by appointing EY, formerly Ernst and Young, to serve as special adviser on the board’s budget. Fassbender denied knowing the VSB had hired PwC earlier in the month to undertake similar work and offered to reimburse the board for costs related to cancelling the PwC contract.
But NPA VSB chairperson Christopher Richardson said the board felt it would benefit from the continuity of rehiring PwC to update its 2012 Resource Allocation Report, comment on the district’s proposed balanced budget for 2015-2016 and identify opportunities for additional savings, even though there could be duplication between the two reports.
The board has asked the Ministry of Education to delay EY’s review until after the VSB’s budget process is complete to reduce demands on district staff during the busy budgeting period.
The provincial School Act requires school boards to submit balanced budgets to the ministry by June 30, but the VSB makes budget decisions by April 30 to advise unions and administrators about staffing changes for September before the summer break.
PwC is to provide an interim report to the VSB by April 27, in advance of final deliberation on the budget, a final report by May 15.
Richardson said the board has asked PwC to provide any recommendations that unions and other stakeholders would want to discuss as early as possible.
The ministry has asked EY to provide a report by May 31.
Richardson said both consultations require staff to do more than merely hand over a financial information package. Richardson said Fassbender didn’t react to the VSB’s request for a delay when he spoke to him shortly before he spoke to the Courier Thursday morning, other than to say he would discuss the matter with ministry staff.
During his campaign for his seat on the school board in the Nov. 15 election, Richardson and other candidates with the NPA emphasized they would work more collaboratively and less combatively with the ministry than they felt Vision Vancouver trustees had in recent years.
Richardson said recent events haven’t changed his outlook on how the VSB and ministry interact “dramatically.”
“Certainly I was surprised,” he said of the special adviser announcement. “I’m confident as we move forward that, both in the [delayed] seismic area and the operating area, we will be using an evidence-based approach to address various issues that we have, and then rather than simply saying Statistics Canada says that you’re underfunding, give us more money, that we will be on an issue-by-issue basis trying to have them examine areas that we think need some further consideration.”
