The Burnaby school board is urging the education minister to hold a by-election as soon as possible to replace the Vancouver school soard trustees it fired and replaced with a public administrator.
The Vancouver school board was in a big mess as several senior staff were off on stress sick leave and complaining of bullying. It was about to pass a balanced budget several months late, when the minister acted.
Burnaby has not been shy about criticizing what it perceives to be a lack of adequate funding in the school system. But, so far, it has always managed to pass a balanced budget and meet ministry guidelines
And, as Ron Burton says in our page five story, the NDP in the past has also come under fire for inadequately funding the school system.
It can be a very thin line between being an advocate or a steward for education.
In Peter Milburn’s “Forensic Audit of Board Expenses and Review of the Vancouver School Board” report released last week, he writes: “There is an inherent conflict in the outlook of an ‘advocate’ versus a ‘steward; advocacy is most successful when it can be demonstrated that more funding is required to successfully provide any defined program. On the other hand, stewardship involves the appropriate oversight, planning, and management of the available resources to successfully achieve the entity’s strategic goals. However, the more successfully the resources available are managed, the harder it is for advocates to demonstrate that more funding is required.”
Some might call this a “chicken and egg” quandary. If school boards did receive what they consider truly adequate funding, would they continue to be “advocates” rather than “stewards.” And if school trustees are elected based on their party affiliation eg: NDP or Liberal, with a baked-in position on education funding, how can they not call themselves partisan advocates?
Milburn writes, “There are examples of school districts in similar jurisdictions where trustees elected on a party slate successfully carried out their appropriate … responsibilities. It would appear that the most important determinant of success is the will of the trustees to work together.”
We’d like to think he’s referring to Burnaby. Only time will tell.
