LOCAL VIEWPOINT: The sentiment is right, but the message is wrong

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/03/2022 (1465 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Monday, the Brandon School Division board of trustees passed its 2022-23 operating budget, including $114,491,500 in projected expenditures for the next academic year. It’s the biggest spending plan in the division’s history, and an increase of almost $4.7 million compared to last year’s budget.

Despite a greater-than-inflation spending increase, the board was forced to cut staffing and programming costs. As the Sun reported, “This involves a decrease of 10.69 full-time equivalent (FTE) teaching positions, including speech-language pathologists (one FTE), psychologists (one FTE), high school lunch supervision (one FTE) and the Reading Recovery program (0.75 FTE).”

There are also cuts to the Brandon Community Drug and Alcohol Education Coalition, the Youth Revolution program and the health-care aide program, which the division runs in partnership with Assiniboine Community College.

After the budget was passed, trustee Jim Murray expressed the frustration felt by many of the trustees, complaining that the provincial government’s decision to restrict the division’s ability to raise the property tax rate backed the board into a budgetary corner.

“This is a position where you’re really darned if you do and darned if you don’t, because we have to make cuts in this budget,” he said.

He added: “I tried to make it clear on budget day that this is coming down from the top. This is because of pressure that we’re put under, a financial position that we’re put in.”

Jim’s been a school trustee for a long time and, like his fellow trustees, his heart is in the right place. They want what’s best for Brandon’s children.

When they see a need, they want to address it. When they see a program that will make a positive difference — Youth Revolution, for example — they want it to be implemented.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but the budget crunch that Manitoba school divisions find themselves in every year is more complex than the provincial government preventing school divisions from raising property taxes. There are many other factors at play.

First, this isn’t a new issue. Successive provincial governments — both NDP and PC — have been forcing school divisions to “hold the line” on property tax increases for years now. For example, I can remember the Selinger government using a grant program in order to coerce school boards to keep tax increases very low.

Second, a shrinking number of provinces rely on property taxes to fund children’s education. Manitoba was moving away from that approach before Bill 64 was withdrawn. Now we’re in some sort of purgatory on the issue, where we receive partial rebates.

It’s not hard to understand why the government would want to take property taxes out of education funding. That’s because it isn’t fair; it penalizes property owners and favours renters. It hurts economic development.

Even worse, it favours divisions that have large property tax bases to raise revenues from, while hurting those that don’t.

Third, school divisions are spending more and more each year on things that aren’t their responsibility. For example, many divisions are seeing the cost of health-related staff and services go up each year. Those costs should be borne by the provincial health department, not school boards. Growing security-related costs should be paid for by the justice department.

When school boards see a problem or need that the province isn’t addressing, they try to step in and find the money to make it work. The province is happy to sit back and let them do it because it means the education department won’t have to come up with more money or staffing.

Over time, however, the problem continues to grow and it becomes increasingly difficult to fit those expenses within what is basically a frozen budget.

Fourth, upward of 90 per cent of the school board budget is made up of staffing costs, and the board has very little control over those expenses. Salaries for teachers and most other staff simply reflect the “going rate” in the province.

The board can either agree to pay that rate or have it forced on them by an arbitrator. That means that school boards are virtually powerless to control upward of 90 per cent of their operating expenses.

When you consider all of those factors, it’s obvious that Manitoba’s approach toward the funding of children’s education is an irrational, arbitrary mess that creates unfairness at multiple levels. Giving school boards the power to increase property taxes as high as they want won’t solve the problem, however. It would only make it worse.

What’s really needed in this province is thoughtful, permanent changes to the way children’s education is funded. That requires political courage and effective communications, however.

Sadly, both of those commodities are in short supply these days.

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