Random Access

The cat will be let out of the deficit bag Wednesday when proposals come before the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board on how to stem the flow of red ink over the next two years.
It’s been a weird and wonderful ride to get to this point, starting with Gerard Kennedy (“We won’t micro-manage from Queen’s Park”) dropping in to chat with trustees in February about their fiscal follies and then stomping out in disgust... to an April report by auditors who slapped the board’s wrists ... to the appointment of special advisor Peter Lauwers, who has been working with senior Board staff for the past few weeks to try to sort out how to close the gap between what the funding formula generates and what Dufferin-Peel spends.
Parents, who were involved in this process in the beginning when the board used them to boost a petition campaign to convince the ministry not to disassemble the local system, are going to be invited to come forward Sept. 14 at a special meeting to tell trustees what they think of the cuts before they are dealt with.
Too bad meaningful public consultation before the fact has become a victim in what has developed into a nasty tug-of-war between the ministry and the board. It would be nice to see what exactly is on the chopping block before the axe is in the backswing.
Board Chair Peter Ferreira is as mystified as anyone about how things got in such a poor state between the Ministry and the board. He’ll get a peek at the recommendations tomorrow. They’ll become public next week.
Ferreira is taking solace in the fact that a coalition of northern school boards, both Toronto boards and the Peel public board are all screaming that they can’t balance budgets with the inadequate tools the ministry provides: a dysfunctional bus funding system that has been broken for years and a directive to close small schools (like Port Credit’s St. James) with none of the promised guidelines on how to do it. Yes this “education government” has provided more money. But it does so in envelopes targeted for its own political agenda (i.e. smaller class sizes) that don’t usually help with the big picture problems.
Sharon Hobin, who chairs Dufferin-Peel’s Central Committee for Catholic School Councils, won’t be surprised, or too upset, if busing to so-called “lighthouse” programs like St. Sofia and Holy Name of Mary is cut, or if noon-hour busing to kindergarten is gone. She’s more concerned about the more insidious, less visible hacking that happens when the bottom-line mentality hits the local school yard.
“I’m more worried that the cuts may not be on things that are as high profile and public. They may really hit the schools, and the principals will just have to suck it up,” said the Erin Mills resident. When schools lose vice-principals and are paying supply teachers out of the money taken out of pop machines, something’s terribly wrong, Hobin said.
Remember how the McGuinty Liberals promised to review the school funding formula?
They have their hearts in the right place and they’ve opened the wallet some. The public battles with boards will just continue, however, until the basic problem of the flaws in the funding formula is finally faced head on.