I say “as I read the draft budget,” because it’s one of the more confusing documents I’ve seen, and despite numerous requests for clarification, no one from the school board got back to me. Finance staffers in government call this kind of offering an example of the Washington Monument Syndrome. That term gained fame when the U.S. National Park Service was asked to economize and in response, proposed closing the Washington Monument. The idea was to prove how financially strapped the agency must already be, if such difficult measures had to be taken. I have a better idea. Let’s cut where it doesn’t hurt.
“And that’s a $5-million question, so we think that’s extremely positive for our local context right now,” she said. It’s not clear whether there’s enough funding in the budget to avoid programming cuts entirely, Howe said. Due to the deficit, the Greater Victoria School Board has been discussing cuts to music programs, education assistants, meal programs and programs for gifted students. Students, parents and teachers have expressed concern at the potential cuts, with one class at Lansdowne Middle School holding a roadside concert last week to show its support for music programs. The annual K-12 budget in B.C. is rising to more than $7.1 billion, a hike of about $500 million from the 2019/2020 budget. However, with about $1.1 billion of that being absorbed by wage increases and enrolment, “it’s essentially status quo,” said Kevin Kaardal, president of the British Columbia School Superintendents Association.
Status quo budget offers no relief for school districts facing shortfalls timescolonist.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from timescolonist.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
by Patti Bacchus on March 11th, 2021 at 3:10 PM 1 of 9 2 of 9
A Greater Victoria School Board public committee meeting March 1 was a rude reminder of how far school boards need to go in moving from performative territorial acknowledgements at the start of school board meetings to authentically welcoming First Nations to participate in decision-making.
That public online meeting started with the chair, Trustee Ryan Painter, taking the Indigenous-territory acknowledgement further than usual, saying it was “super important” to him to “really position ourselves in place and space where we are in terms of whose land we’re occupying and whose land we’ve come from, and I think it’s super important to situate ourselves in that space when we do this work, so just really opening my heart and being very open to that and hope that others are as well.”
B.C.’s francophone education authority is looking to purchase land adjacent to Lansdowne Middle School to build a new school. The Conseil solaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique (CSF) . . .