Looking past the spin on education property taxes

In response to and building upon Deveryn Ross’ column “Higher school taxes a preventable problem” from earlier this week.

As the president of the Manitoba School Boards Association, I, along with our team often need to steer our organization through the tricky balancing act of building partnerships and repairing relationships while at the same time speaking truth to political spin. On the subject of education property taxes and the funding of public education in Manitoba, there has been no shortage of political spin in recent months and years.

First, some facts. Manitoba is not the only province in Canada to fund public education with education property taxes. In fact, most provinces charge education property taxes in order to fund their public schools. In Manitoba, our system remains by far the most responsive to local community needs because our locally elected school boards are the last remaining in the country that have the democratic autonomy to set local mill rates on those education property taxes.

In other words, when the provincial government underfunds our public schools, the local school board has the capacity to supplement that funding with locally derived education property taxes as part of consultative budget development.

Which brings me to my second point. School boards in Manitoba are, by definition, non-partisan. As a trustee for the past 15 years, I would offer that this is one of my favourite characteristics of the job. We’re not tied to a particular ideology and more importantly — we’re not toeing any party line. Ever.

With this in mind, like most Manitobans, I frequently find myself cringing at the partisan political commentary that is flung back and forth between government and opposition parties both here and abroad — cringing not only at its vitriolic tone but also at how it so consistently seems to be offered up with the hope that the public has no long-term memory whatsoever.

For example, when the current opposition blames the current government for putting school boards in the very difficult position of needing to increase education property taxes in order to avoid massive cuts in programs and staffing in local schools.

Any Manitoban who has paid any attention to public education here in the last decade will recall very clearly, that the majority of school divisions received cuts to their provincial funding from the Pallister government on an annual basis, and then when that same government’s attempted “public sector wage sustainability” measures collapsed and tens of millions of dollars in back pay needed to be paid out, those same underfunded school divisions were left holding the bag while being prohibited from generating new revenue through local education property taxes.

While the late Education Minister Nello Altomare’s decision to allow school boards to once again generate new revenue through education property taxes has proven absolutely life-saving for the fiscal health of school divisions in Manitoba, it only works if that local autonomy is maintained and more importantly, if provincial funding is increased in order to meet the needs of the system while reducing the burden on local property taxpayers.

Which brings me to recent political commentary from the current government on its commitment to increasing teacher and EA staffing levels in Manitoba while at the same time reducing the burden on education property taxpayers. As Deveryn Ross rightly points out, many school divisions in Manitoba are facing the same bleak fiscal future as the Brandon School Division — namely, the significant costs associated with harmonizing teacher salaries as part of the new provincial teacher collective agreement while hearing very little in the way of tangible support for those costs from the provincial government.

Let’s be very clear.

The new provincial teacher collective agreement model was legislated onto our sector by the Heather Stefanson government, in keeping with similar moves in all other parts of Canada where local school boards no longer bargain with local teacher associations. While boards continue to navigate our way through the complexities of this first negotiated agreement under the new provincial format, there remains grave uncertainty around the provincial government’s willingness to adequately fund divisions for this provincially mandated cost.

The positive impact of every overdue addition to the number of teaching and non-teaching staff in this province is diminished when the school boards that actually hire and employ those positions remain underfunded and over-reliant on their local property tax base for the revenue required to cover the associated costs.

The Manitoba School Boards Association and our member boards remain committed to respectful and non-partisan relationship building with current Education Minister Tracy Schmidt and all MLAs on Broadway, regardless of political stripe. As we continue this important work for the good of students, families and communities across our great province, I hope this offers some clarity on what should be an education-focused dialogue, rather than a political one.

» Alan Campbell is the president of the Manitoba School Boards Association, the president of the Canadian School Boards Association and the chair of the board of trustees of Interlake School Division.