Re: School district doing a good job, Letters to the editor, Burnaby NOW, April 14.
I thank BCA trustee Baljinder Narang and colleagues for listing so many of the good things the district offers to its 23,000 students. (She helps me make my point, and for that I thank her again.)
Like the current trustees, I watched district secretary-treasurer Greg Frank forecast millions of additional dollars in budget cuts beyond this year's painful $3.1 million and 27 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions.
Perhaps like them, I also read Ms. Naylor's coverage of Burnaby Teachers' Association president James Sanyshyn stating that there may be 100 cumulative staff cuts to be made by next year (Union prez: 'Not a celebratory budget,' Burnaby NOW, April 25).
Unlike the current trustees, I refuse to believe that the district should just make quality eroding budget cuts, loudly blaming Victoria in doing so, when there is an opportunity to instead raise further district revenue to match rising district costs and thereby avoid these cuts.
I reassert my key point. There is, here in Burnaby, a potential pool of annual education funding $63-million deep to tap with a proper district revenue-raising strategy.
This is based on written sources noting that there are 7,000 school-aged children living in Burnaby not enrolled in a district school and that each child (upon enrolment) automatically releases from Victoria about $9,000 on average in provincial funding.
I cite references for Ms. Narang. The $9,033 funding per enrolling child is in Chart c-12 at www.bced.gov.bc.ca/accountability/district/ revenue. The 30,474 children aged five to 18 are at www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/Demography/PopulationEstimates.aspx. The 23,122 FTE student enrolment is in Table 2b (page 4) at www.bced.gov.bc.ca/k12funding/ funding/13-14/operating-grant-tables.pdf.
Do Ms. Narang's quibbles with "exact" age cutoffs (for example, age 17 vs. age 18 as the upper bound on "eligible" students) really obscure for her more than $60 million in potential annual funding? Secretary-treasurer Frank's forecast was for $4.5 million in cuts. ($60 million is more than 13 times as big as $4.5 million!)
In closing, I repeat: The district does offer its enrolled students many good things.
And I wish the district to continue offering many good things to its students for many years
to come.
Given the current situation in Victoria - where the size of the base per-pupil education grant is frozen but provincial revenue transfers still rise as enrolled-student count increases - the pragmatic, education quality-preserving strategy is an outreach campaign to local parents with children not enrolled in a district school.
Just a few hundred net additional enrolments (drawn from approximately 7,000 identified non-enrolled children) can raise the revenue required to protect education quality for 23,000 enrolled children - and the jobs of teachers, custodians and other staff.
How much plainer must the figures be?
G. Bruce Friesen is with the Burnaby First Coalition.
