Sustainability Review Revelations

On March 5, 2009, some of the planners from the school board held an information session on the greater Hardisty area sustainability review. The school board is hiring a consultant to recommend how to proceed. I’m not sure if the presenter let it slip or he misspoke, but he said one criterion for the review was consolidation. When pressed, he backed away from that statement. The key is, if the board lays out consolidation as a requirement of the report, that is exactly what they will get back. He did say the best interests of the students was the chief guiding principle.

I asked some questions on budget. The whole idea of school closure is to save money. The example most often used is that it is more expensive to maintain three elementary schools than two. I asked for some clarification here. Maintenance represents less than 10% of the budget for Capilano school, in other words, staffing costs represent more than 90% of the cost at the school. Closing a school will result in small capital savings. So I probed into that. The presenter then said that the target for staff costs is closer to 80%. This needs to be deconstructed. The maintenance costs for a school won’t change too much depending on student population. It is more a factor of the physical size of the facilities. Assuming that facility costs remain constant, the only way you get capital costs as a greater percentage is to lower staff costs. Closing a school, it seems to me, is about reducing staff costs. Fewer staff means a higher student to teacher ratio. This is not in the best interests of students, which is supposedly the chief guiding principle.

Russ