We have major education problems in BC Public school cuts, university strikes and cuts . Our province is becoming dumber and weaker, BC is falling way behind many education standards .

How does reducing administration affect the classroom? What does eliminating the low hanging fruit on the bureaucracy side have to do with the “…dire needs in our classrooms”?

I find it out that at last nights meeting they were going to discuss allowing teachers to use their sick time for other then being sick yet they squawk about having to cut admin costs?

“Families First” said Clark, maybe that was families are the first ones to attack financially?

Axeman, I think you hit the nail on the head!
Brenda Hooker knows exactly what Premier Clark is talking about when she labeled cuts as “low hanging fruit”.
Administration in school districts, as well as Health Authorities, is plump.

Ah, the perennial letter opposing funding cuts. I guess it’s a comforting gesture to make the board members feel like they have some control.

The low hanging fruit comment is offensive, and shows yet again the disconnect between Christy Clark’s mouth and any sign of intelligence.

Yet I have to wonder why people run for school board when they make comments like “I don’t know how else to express the dire needs in our classrooms.” C’mon people, put your creative thinking hats on!

Apparently axman and Nicky Glasses don’t have kids in the public education system. There is no “low hanging fruit,” anywhere. Take a walk through any school, pick up a text book, look at the date on it and the condition it is in. Then go and talk to the librarian (oops, there isn’t one) or get your special needs kid assessed by a professional (oops, not there either) and try to get them support in class (nope, no funds for that either). The public system is in shambles and anyone claiming there is low hanging fruit to cut from the system is completely out of touch with reality.

While Christy is bankrupting the public system, she’s more than happy to increase funding for the private system. Apparently they need to grow some low hanging fruit, hence the millions more she’s giving the private system in this budget.

There is a reason and method to this madness, and it’ll come right after the Liberals (heaven forbid) win the next election. Vouchers. and the gap between those that have and those that don’t will widen even further.

No low hanging fruit? Good grief. Give your head a shake on that one. There’s plenty of it; all that’s missing is someone with enough of a backbone to address it.

PS. Your assumption that removing the low hanging fruit refers solely to job cuts is erroneous. Someone needs to look at making the system work more efficiently as well.

Less money for the public education system. The longest wait times in Canada for hip replacement surgery. We now see the result of electing another Liberal gov’t that lied about the HST, budget deficit, and of course the famous CC quote of families first.
Hopefully next election will bring a different result.

All you have to do is watch the BC budget debate in the house and you will see how out of touch the Liberals are on everything that is going on in this province.

Axman, how can a review of the making the system work more efficiently be considered low hanging fruit? It takes a lot of time and resources to do an effective review.

Axman, please give us some examples of low hanging fruit that there is “plenty of.”

Posted on Wednesday, March 4, 2015 @ 10:19 AM by lbear

Axman, how can a review of the making the system work more efficiently be considered low hanging fruit? It takes a lot of time and resources to do an effective review.

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“Someone needs to look at making the system work more efficiently as well.”

My point was that there is more to trimming a budget besides cutting jobs. Maybe I should have put the “as well” at the beginning of my sentence.

Axman, please give us some examples of low hanging fruit that there is “plenty of.”
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Not that I believe for a moment that you are interested in anyone’s opinion other then your own but, here’s where I would start:

1) Administration salaries. I took a look at the Surrey School District salaries and went as far as page 20 and there were still people with the title “ADMINISTRATOR” making over $100,000 a year. That’s something I would look closely at because that’s an awful lot of ADMINISTRATORS.

2) Real Estate. I would like to see what the school district owns and start looking at divesting those interests. I’d start by taking a look at that building on Ferry, I’m pretty sure it’s way more then necessary.

3) Trustees. Do we really need 7 of them?

“Families First” said Clark, maybe that was families are the first ones to attack financially

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I like that comparison. All our kids are paying taxes to help education. And don’t forget that they balanced the budget lol.
Cheers

Couple of thoughts. We beat this to death during the teacher’s strike, but it keeps coming back. Private schools actually leave more money in the government’s hands than if they didn’t exist – what the government chooses to use that money on is a different matter. A private school get’s 30 to 50% of what a public school get’s for teaching a student. So, if that was $7,000.00 to a public school, it’s only at the most $3,500.00 to the private school, leaving the government a savings of $3,500.00 per student. If all private schools were unfunded by the government, it remains to be seen if those kids all ended up in the public system, or the parents of private schools just paid more. If they end up in the public system, a ton of extra cash would be needed, and likely the government would just average down and put in the same amount. If the private school parents decided it was that important to them, they’d step up and pay it, and the government would actually win in that scenario. But no one really knows how it would play out.

A balance budget doesn’t mean we’re not in debt. A balanced budget just means this budget cycle we’ve decided not to spend more than we take in. I.e., we started the year owing 100 billion, take in 10 billion, spend 10 billion, still owe 100 billion. A deficit, start owing 100 billion, take in 10 billion, spend 11 billion, owe 101 billion. So it’s not like there’s a big pool of cash to fund all sorts of feel good programs. Also, the balanced budget isn’t balanced. The government doesn’t count capital projects. It adds their cost in over the life of the project. I.e. borrow 20 billion for a highway, expect it to last 40 years, add 500 million to expenditures every year till highway paid for.

@Axman
1.Administrator to student ratios are set by the ministry, not something the local district can control.
2. Technically they dont own the properties, and even if they were allowed to sell them all revenue goes to the government general revenue fund, not to the school district to allow it to balance their budget.
3. Do you know how much a trustee makes? Seriously? That’s the low hanging fruit you’re going after? Trustee make $14k a year, that’s your big savings? So we’re supposed to reduce our (yours and mine) say in how the school board is run to save maybe $28k a year? Again, the number of trustees is set by the provincial government, not something the school board has say over anyway.

Got any other low hanging fruit that there is “plenty of” that the school district can actually get rid of?

So long as people keep saying “can’t” there’s really no point in trying is there? And that’s just a cop out.

You told me to “give my head a shake” and that there was “plenty of low hanging fruit.” I asked you to identify some that of low hanging fruit that you felt was in abundance. When I showed you that your assumptions on potential low fruit were wrong, you told us it’s just a cop out to not try to do things that have been tried before and the provincial government controls, not the local school boards. The directive from the government was that school boards are to find savings, not that they are to get the government to change their regulations.

The board of education, and thus the government, controls the number of admin in schools. The districts have no say. Nor do they have any say on what they are paid. It’s all centralized.

When we went through the school closures 4 years ago the district went down the road of selling assets. It was an emphatic no. Do you really think the Vancouver school board wouldn’t sell some of it’s properties if it were allowed? Seriously?

Forgot one thing about the trustee suggestion. The next election is in 2018. If you want to petition the government to decrease the number of trustee, please do. That may help (minuscule amount that it is) for the 2019 budget. Unfortunately, doesn’t help this year, or next.

So again, please tell us the low hanging fruit that are in abundance in the local school district. You feel there is plenty so you must have many more ideas other than the three you were wrong on.

Reducing the number of trustees is also not a good idea in a district like ours which is so large. We already have calls for special representation for outlying communities like McBride and Valemount.

Can anyone point to the provincial regulations that set the number of administrators?

@Fate – not according to The School Act – it is up to the districts to determine the employees they require to run the system.

Fate@You speak of “the board of education” as distinct form the district. What do you mean? At the provincial level there is the Ministry of Education. There is no provincial board. The authority resides in the Minister. The “board of education” is the body in control of a district.