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From The Owen Sound Sun Times
Fri Sep 19 2014
Page: A4
By Terri Preston
As reported last week, Bluewater District School Board’s finances are showing an in-year budget surplus of $262,000.
A good-news story, for sure, and in election year too—why, high-fives all round! After all, what’s not to love about a surplus?
In this instance, quite a lot.
Because if you look beyond the balance-sheet story at the way the surplus was actually achieved, it looks a lot less like good news. And far less when you consider–as Bluewater’s trustees should have done–the consequences for the learning environment in Bruce and Grey counties’ schools and the message that it sends to our region’s 16,600 students.
In fact, the impressive black ink in Bluewater’s budget was achieved almost entirely through the removal of 200 weekly cleaning hours from the board’s plant operations budget.
These cuts alone amount to $200,000 in cuts to the board’s operations budget and represent the equivalent of five fewer full-time custodians in schools.
Then, for the beginning of September, Bluewater directors ordered the closure of 150 classrooms throughout the district. These rooms are now locked up indefinitely, with the furniture and materials inside completely out of bounds for anyone’s use.
Suddenly, the board’s fiscal management doesn’t look so clever. After all, when combined with additional funding from the Ministry of Education, a willingness to sacrifice clean schools, 150 classrooms and jobs doesn’t indicate a genius for finances– just the ability to tolerate dirtier schools, fewer classrooms and a few more unemployed people in our communities.
Bluewater’s trustees and directors seem to want to be congratulated for doing less with more. After all, they don’t have to live with the conditions they created–but our children, families and neighbours do.
The students of our counties’ 41 elementary and 11 secondary schools will soon get the message, delivered via growing neglect of their schools. That same message was already given to the custodians of Bluewater DSB, who are going through a mass layoff and bumping process.
The custodians of Bluewater DSB are fighting back, because they maintain that the layoffs violate their collective agreement.
But their fight is just as much on behalf of students and their right to receive their education in a safe, clean and well supported learning environment.
Ultimately, if the custodians’ grievances are successful, ratepayers will be on the hook for costly payouts and penalties to illegally laid-off workers. And school custodians will likely be blamed unfairly for putting the board’s finances at risk; we’ve certainly been there before.
Meanwhile, it is trustees’ lack of foresight and stewardship that have done the damage to the health of our district’s education system.
Surely in a year that we elect our school trustees, we can give priority to the kind of schools our children deserve.
We should start by demanding elected representatives who think through the consequences of their decisions and electing trustees who are committed to ensuring students’ education in clean, safe schools.
Terri Preston is the chair of the Ontario School Board Coordinating Committee of the Canadian Union Public Employees (CUPE)
