Costly report 'not worth paper it's printed on': None of 42 ideas makes financial sense, say Vancouver trustees
By Andy Ivens
The Province
June 15, 2010

An expensive report ordered by the provincial government to recommend ways the Vancouver School Board can make up a massive budget shortfall was a total waste of time and money, board chair Patti Bacchus said Monday night.

B.C. Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid relied on a report by Comptroller-General Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland to criticize the trustees last week for overlooking numerous ways to make up a shortfall in the 2010-2011 budget -- estimated at either $17 million or $11 million, depending on whose figures are used.

But VSB staff crunched the numbers and found none of the comptroller-general's 42 recommendations added up to any savings, and a few would actually make matters worse.

"The minister has said our staff are excellent staff and we should listen to them," Bacchus told The Province Monday night after a tense board meeting.

"The staff, who are professional, non-political staff, have confirmed that this report is of no use."

She said the report cost provincial taxpayers "several hundred thousand dollars."

"In my opinion, it probably wasn't worth the paper it was printed on because it has provided nothing that we didn't know," said Bacchus….

"It's going to contain some pretty devastating cuts," Bacchus predicted.

B.C.'s 60 elected boards get most of the money they need for their budgets from the provincial government. Unlike the government, school boards cannot run deficits or sell properties.

Longtime trustee Ken Denike said the board is facing a Catch-22 when it comes to submitting a balanced budget.

"The catch is, if we go with the estimate from the comptroller-general of [an $11.8-million] deficit, we'll probably get fired because we're not relying on agreed-upon accounting principles," he said.

"On the other hand, if we go with the number our management team has came up with, of $17.3 million, then we're not complying with the comptroller-general's report."

Many trustees told the meeting they feel MacDiarmid is setting up a situation in which the government will appear to be politically justified in firing all the boards and replacing them with powerful, appointed regional boards along the lines of the province's health authorities.

None was more pessimistic than trustee Sharon Gregson.

"Given the political nature of the actions and comments to date from the minister, it leaves me thinking that their long-term goal, their secret plan, is to do away with democratically elected school boards and to replace us with the unaccountable, unelected, regional-health-board model," said Gregson.

"We are still the place where parents and teachers have a connection to education and to decisions that are made around what actually happens on the front lines of schools.

"People are going to lose that voice if there are nameless bureaucrats in Victoria running our schools," she said.