Hey SD 57!
Your core business is educating our youth.
Get back to basics and quit all the nice to haves.
Cut at least half of the administration staff, your organization is too top heavy like many intitutions.

If it is not teaching, it is not a core activity. Contract out everything that is not a core activity to the lowest bidder.

Contract out building maintenance, infrastructure, I.T., custodial services and food services.

Busing students to super schools is not cost effective and does a dis-service to the students. Right sized neighborhood schools are the way to go.

How about all these school boards just resign and push the responsibility back on the Campbell government?
Obviously,they are so under the control of the government that they can't function properly anyway?
Make them count the beans and see what they come up with!

Get Pat / Shirley to give an donation of $250,000 to SD#57 instead of BC Hydro CEOs - and all those other wasteful things this government is doing in the name of Olympics and this district would not have a deficit.

woodwoman, good idea, let's expand that thought; how about immediately cancelling all bonuses to all government employees at all levels for the next year or more, allow no salary increases for any level of government, cancel all junkets and trade missions, no travelling to conventions, no office remodelling at any level of government, no new vehicles unless really needed, and much more. A lot of expense could be saved, and the funds applied to help the school districts and the medical system.
metalman.

What, and take the luxuries away from those that govern a population that cannot afford necessities let alone luxuries.

On some Japanese school documentaries on the TV I see all the Japanese brats at the end of the school year attack the school with mops and pails and cleaning everything. But then again, I betcha Japanese schools don't have the likes of CUPE hanging around. But that is their culture and mindset over there. Good for them. Oh well....

Japan has a different culture indeed, and there are a few of their customs that would benefit Canada, if we were to adopt them. I am not referring to any of the strange trends that come out of Japan, but some of the deep rooted traditions of respect, some of which are still hanging in there despite the constant onslaught of americanization oops, I meant globalization.
metalman.

metalman: have you ever been in close contact with our youth.
no respect for themselves or others
no ambition beyond twitching the thumbs
No work ethic

Loki, I am not in daily contact with the youth of our land, but what I see dismays me, and frankly, I despair for the future. Pop culture rules the lives of so many young people these days, and their lack of self respect is like a well paved road to becoming involved with drugs, gangs, and sex ( I mean where men take advantage of young girls and corrupt them ) Life is very cheap on the streets, just look at the case the other night where the pedestrian was stabbed in the neck in an apparent random encounter, or the lawyer who was selected at random for a severe beating in the name of robbery.
Our society is in decay.
metalman.

"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders.... They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their
legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.
Socrates (469-399BC)

You always hear about the 5% of the youth who make the news. The 95% that are not in the news are pretty good kids. Many of them are exceptional.

and from Plato:

"What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions.
Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"

ah well Loki and metalman, you're in good company