Dear Editor:
Re: Burnaby forced to rethink budget, Burnaby NOW, Sept. 29.
Ms. Naylor deserves kudos for drawing attention to looming cuts to district programs and staff.
Your readers may already know that in April 2014 secretary-treasurer Greg Frank presented his latest budget: projecting a $4.5-million spending cut for 2015/16 and a $1.65-million spending cut for 2016/17 (before the loss of summer revenue and "savings" clawback).
Mr. Frank optimistically assumed that the district headcount would rise by a net of 15 full-time equivalent (FTE) enrolments. This is important because each net enrolment lost post-strike reduces revenue by $9,033 after averaging all funding allowances. (So each 111 net enrolments lost deepens the deficit by another $1 million.) Events since April have dented this assumption.
Expressions of concern from abroad to cancelation of regular and summer school suggest erosion of the perceived quality of public schooling among international students. Acceleration in the observed rate of student "flight" from public to independent schooling suggests erosion in the perceived quality of public schooling among B.C. students.
This pressure on the district budget must be countered. The Burnaby First Coalition (BFC) believes that trustees can do more than complain about "frozen" funding while directing administrators to gut programs and cut staff. We challenge the BCA to make public their plan to avoid further cuts. Four of our own ideas for growing district revenues follow:
1. Attract non-enrolling local students: Seven thousand resident children aged five to 18 are not enrolled in a district school. This is nearly one-quarter of the 30,000 children found here in the last census. The BFC has launched a petition aimed at parents of non-enrolling children.
We have already identified 60 children (representing $540,000 in expected revenue). We believe that these families see the extra burdens implicit in non-public schooling. We also believe that they would listen if the board began dialogue with them to explore changes in programs, policies or practices intended to encourage them to select district schools. (And more such parents sign each day.)
2. Encourage local parents utilizing distributed learning to register with Burnaby: Districts get funding (about $7,000) from Victoria for each FTE student in a distributed learning program.
There are currently between 246 and 296 Burnaby children in distributed learning programs run by independent schools or other districts. They represent perhaps 146 to 188 FTE net new enrolments (yielding $1.3 to $1.7 million in revenue) if their parents can be encouraged to use Burnaby distributed learning.
3. Find new parent "partners": Home-schooling parents currently draw no benefit from their school tax dollars, while B.C. districts draw just $250 per child to "supervise" parent teaching.
There are 2,000 home-schooled B.C. children, each one potentially sending $7,000 in revenue (total: $14 million) to that board (like Burnaby's) which persuades their parents to register in distributed learning. Burnaby First Coalition trustees will explore marketing Burnaby distributed learning to homeschoolers.
4. Find new institutional partners: Burnaby has school buildings generating costs as though they are "full" but earning revenue as "partially full," and three completely empty buildings earning no revenue. Meanwhile, new accredited education providers, like the Traditional Learning Academy (TLA), offer "group" distributed learning programs in "school" space organized by parents.
Leasing out empty schools (or empty rooms in active schools) to alternative providers like TLA can increase district revenues in the short-term - while trustees develop more robust marketing programs to fill these empty and partially public buildings with district students.
I close by noting that creatively seeking revenue to avoid budget cuts better serves today's children and staff than sitting in a room blaming Victoria for forcing cuts to programs and staff.
G. Bruce Friesen, chairman, Burnaby First Coalition Campaign
