Halifax Politics dot ca

Tonight, the Imagine Our Schools process will unveil the first draft of the new capital plan for Halifax peninsula. The consultants were hired in September and given until March, all of seven months, to produce a proposed capital plan.

This was mandated by the Department of Education to address the lack of community consultation in the Halifax Regional School Board’s previous capital plan, which was rejected. That proposal was for all of HRM. The new consultants process is for all Darmouth/Cole Harbour schools, and the Halifax peninsula.

Some ideas were revealed at a so called “community focus group” meeting last week. Two draft proposals were floated, one which would see just six, 650 student, P-9 schools on the peninsula, and another that would see eight P-6 schools, about 350 students, and just two 550 student junior highs, grade 7-9.

The nearly universal response from parents and many administrators to these grand proposals? A resounding silence. A “Meh” if you will, of grand proportions.

“What is the problem now” you ask? For a change, the issue relatively simple.

Leave aside the poor consultation, where parents and community members had a bare hour to respond to a 14 page questionnaire.

Leave aside the fact that the enrolment projections continue to be questioned by, among others, HRMs own planning department.

Forget, for the moment, that the proposed process presented by an embattled and battered HRSB administration in June of 2007 was not at all what went ahead, when the School Advisory Councils were marginalized the last voice of actual elected people was removed completely from the decision making process by October 2007.

The issue is far simpler than that. The problem is that the two proposed and far reaching ten year plans would require a massive capital infusion, something in the range of $50-80 million dollars, JUST ON THE PENINSULA, to completely reconfigure the school system. This when we need maybe that again in Dartmouth, and again in Cole Harbour, not even mentioning Hammonds Plains and Kingswood.

It is hard to get excited, whether you are for or against a proposal, if you think it will never see the light of day.

On another level, participants, especially engaged and informed parents, find the process exhausting, because the whole system is stupid. HRSB is so undefended by the province that it cannot and does not maintain its schools adequately.

The total maintenance budget for about 150 buildings is nine million bucks. That is about $60,000 per building. No wonder they are falling down!

HRSB is desperately under funded, for maintenance, for special needs, for enrichment, for ASL, for core programming, for support staff. The Province needs to provide adequate funding for all theses things, and ultimately, the buildings maintained and built by an adequately funded school administration.

Please note this was updated at 8:00am to reflect that Arts and Music will be protected by the contract.
BACKGROUND:
There is a proposal to change Supplementary Funding that will be presented to HRM Committee of the Whole on Tuesday night (MARCH 20).

There are many areas of concern with the current proposal, but simply put, Supplementary Funding was intended to provide funds to enhance education over and above core curriculum. The proposal will remove most restrictions on how the HRM’s money is spent. In essence, the HRM will be in the business of providing funding to support the Province’s core curriculum as outlined in the Public School Program, something that is strictly a provincial responsibility. The funding will no longer be for supplementary enhancement, and will become core funding.

HRM has been somewhat successful at forcing the HRSB to spend money in specific areas for enhancement. A further protection provided to ensure specific funding was the creation several years ago of a specific “Arts and Music Area Rate”.

The proposal eliminates area rates for music and education – This removes dedicated area rate funding for the former city of Halifax schools of $2,029,100.

While the Halifax Regional School Board commits to maintaining Arts and Music funding at current levels, the reason the separate area rate for Art and Music was create to address concerns that HRSB was not using the money as directed, and to ensure the money from the local community got where it was intended.

Some areas of HRM desire enhanced programming at the cost of additional area rates. Some areas absolutely do not want additional levees for any educational funding. The proposal will harmonize the supplementary funding rate across all of HRM, while lowering the total amount of money collected for HRSB from $20,396,100 by $450,000 a year for four years.

The ability of individual areas of HRM to raise, lower, create and direct funding raised through area rates would be eliminated for the duration of the agreement by section 6 of the proposed contract, that states “There shall be no specific educational area rates for targeted areas within the HRM without the approval of the HRSB.”

ANALYSIS:
It is not acceptable that this levy be transformed into ongoing core funding. It is inappropriate for the municipality to fund a provincial program. HRM should not allow spending on any core curriculum, as outlined in the Public School Program, from these revenues.

Supplementary Funding is intended to enhance education based on local needs and desires at the direction of the local population. Some areas wish to opt out and not pay any tax, some wish to spend significantly for enhanced services.

However, a new model is needed. Areas of HRM are deeply divided about whether or not they wish to pay for enhanced education. The desires of one area should not be forced on the others, as this levy is in its nature an area rate.

Residents served by each Family of Schools could determine, through plebicite, whether and what level of Supplementary funding they wish for their areas. The administration could follow the model used in the former Halifax County, where the each individual Family of Schools determines how the funding is spent in their community.

The Province is obliged to provide adequate funding to deliver the Public School Program. HRM should only fund enhancements to that program at the express request, and funded by, local communities.

MORE INFO:

http://halifax.ca/council/agendasc/documents/070320cow3.pdf

Community vs. big-box schools
ECOLOGY ACTION CENTRE

SCHOOL closures, and the building of new schools, is a hot topic in Nova Scotia. It’s a sore spot for parents whose kids face losing their local school in favour of a larger, consolidated one outside their community.

Financial savings are often cited for this worrying trend of closing small, community schools and creating “big-box” schools. Money is a convincing argument. However, there are just as convincing arguments for smaller schools, including financial ones.

The issue came to a head in October when the Halifax regional school board (HRSB) released a list of proposed school replacements. Ten new schools are slated to be built between 2009 and 2015. Most will replace two or more schools at a time.

From yesterdays Herald….

Lance Bean, President
Canadian School Board Association

Mr Bean,

I am writing to you today regarding the comments you made regarding the suspension of the Halifax Regional School Board that were printed in today’s Chronicle Herald.

I appreciate your concern, but with respect, I would like to challenge the basis of your thesis, but also to ask for your input.

Education is not a level of government. It is a service. Services are rarely run by elected boards in Canada. The police and water commissions, the utility and review board, the lottery corporation, regional health authorities, are not elected.

We are not Americans. We do not elected judges, district attorneys, sheriffs and dog catchers!

There are a great many reasons why I personally feel the Board here needed to be done away with. In Halifax, the service delivery area is bigger than PEI, and the population is only 350,000 people. It takes three to four hours to drive from one end to the other. The Board, as a part time affair, can never visit every school in their elected district, let alone visit a smattering of schools in the districts on the other side of the region. The Board is not paid enough nor as part timers with full time jobs are they able to research issues and understand community concerns to a sufficient degree. The Board’s districts were political “riding” style districts, rather than adhering to school family or education service area lines, and those that were elected were often “wannabe” politicians.

We have had several elections since elected boards were introduced in 1991, and several since the regional board was created in 1996. The results speak for themselves. We have elected two boards in the last two elections that were populated, in the majority, by people with petty agendas, malicious goals, and destructive agendas, that played one community against the other. Time has shown that electing boards is not producing good results.

In Nova Scotia, the Minister of Education, the Cabinet and the Premier are responsible for administering and funding the Education Act. It has long been argued that school boards exist to obscure that fact and “keep the heat off” the Minister. We have elected and accountable officials, they are called MLAs and Ministers.

With all this in mind, we get to the part where I ask for your input. There is definitely a review underway on how school systems should be administered, what form of oversight should be in placem in the province. What would you do differently? Smaller boards, more pay, full time chair, elected by SACs in each family of school, some elected some appointed, all appointed, made a department of the Municipality, no board (Nova Scotia is about the size of Calgary, but has a half dozen boards), are all being discussed.

What are your thoughts? Where school boards work, what have they done differently? Are there models that we should be looking to?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Thank you,

Waye Mason

Cindy Littlefair, parent, activist, friend, and editor of Shambala Sun wrote this blushworthy blog for the Heralds website…. *cringe*

The Near North by :: Cindy Littlefair
Birth of a District
Posted by: Cindy Littlefair 01/31/2007 07:59AM
Anyone consuming local media in the last few months would have come across stories to do with the proposed closure of three peninsula elementary schools. The Halifax Regional School Board had announced in the fall that construction of a single school to replace them was imminent. Saint Mary’s, Inglis Street and Le Marchant would have to go. Reaction was immediate and fierce. The decision had been unilateral. The Board was big-footing the individual and collective concerns of the schools involved and trying to muzzle detractors. The response was a finely tuned and orchestrated counter attack led entirely on the fly by a single group of parents representing all three schools. The effectiveness of their efforts owed almost entirely to the concerted efforts of one Le Marchant parent.

Waye Mason focused the fight in a way I’d never experienced in my 15 years in the school system. There’d been similar worthwhile opportunities in the past but the nature of grassroots protest is such that few are capable of both taking up the cause and leading the charge. Forming the opposition to a body like the school board requires tremendous amounts of sustained energy and focus and for the average parent civic-mindedness on top of their day job simply isn’t in the cards. Waye Mason has been the exception. Not only did he rise to the challenge but he led us to success. Now he’s spearheading another cause and those who are like-minded can join him in what he sees as a way of preventing and providing an alternative to the type of confrontation that gave rise to the recent fight.

The Citadel District School Association is a new body intended to bear the weight of large, lumpy issues that affect area schools and communities and require input and feedback from and on the whole. It will do so by initiating discussion and change as well as responding to it. The CDSA will have connectivity to all schools via the latter’s PTAs and SACs and move to represent them with a single voice. Since many of the issues that affect each of us also affect the group it is a way of pooling our resources and streamlining their handling; attempting the best usage of scant time and energy.

Waye’s qualifications now speak for themselves. He doesn’t want this to be about him but the fact remains that a three-month pitched engagement resulted in what stands to become a policy of consultation on school closures applied peninsula-wide and he was largely responsible for seeing that through. For the first time ever schools will be invited to participate in the decision-making surrounding their own fate. It was a significant step for those who feel strongly about kids, school and community and the Citadel District School Association is the means to go on expressing that. The meeting of all district school reps will take place Thursday, February 8, 7:00pm, in the Atlantic Room, Civic Centre, Halifax Forum Complex. Enter through Halifax Forum doors (Windsor and Almon) walk right around the concorse of the main rink to the end, follow the signs.