Braid: Alberta's education cuts mirror fiasco in health

By Don Braid, Calgary Herald

The government is giving Alberta's education system a dose of health-care medicine; fiscal starvation now, to be followed at some distant point by a gush of relief funding.

This destructive pattern laid waste to health care and could be every bit as dangerous for education. The emerging parallels are eerie and unmistakable.

Health care was deliberately underfunded for years. Most of the old health regions (seven of nine in the later stages of the provincial strategy) were forced to run deficits.

The Tories then demonized the regions, softening up the public for their replacement by the single superboard.

By then, of course, health care was truly in crisis, with ever more crowding, waiting and cursing.

Finally the government supplied a mammoth dose of funding to wipe off the deficit while happily taking the credit for solving the very problems it created.

Which brings us, with trembling heart, to education.

Look out, education. Exactly the same thing is happening to you -- except relief funding is a long way off.

With provincial grants virtually flat this year, Education Minister Dave Hancock is encouraging school boards to borrow to cover their shortfalls.

Politically, this is useful. Next spring the province will show a lower deficit because the debt burden is being pushed off to the local bodies.

For the boards, the galling thing is that the province agreed to a teachers' raise of nearly three per cent this fall. After being shut out of the talks, the boards are expected to pay for the raise out of current funding.

The Herald's Sarah McGinnis has already revealed the ugly gist of the Calgary public board's looming budget; there will be up to 165 job cuts and a deficit of $10.4 million, even after the board spends $19.1 million in savings.

It's the same story at the Catholic board, where the trustees will be forced to burn through $11.8 million in savings, cut 85 full-time jobs, and still run a deficit of $3.7 million.

When Hancock talks about this, he sounds exactly like the health ministers who shortchanged the system, and then pompously urged the local authorities not to make unpopular decisions.

"I don't want to see teachers cut," he said recently.

"We need the teachers we have now and we need the new teachers coming in because we have a growth in student population, particularly in Calgary, Edmonton and the corridor."

He's right about the need. But how on earth do the boards meet it when the Tories freeze funding and won't pay for raises?

Sadly, Tory policy has long since turned school boards into pathetic things with none of their former power over local education.

The job of elected trustee, once high-profile and significant, is now about as prized as an internship shining Ed Stelmach's shoes. No wonder there's so little interest in running for this thankless job.

Having turned the boards into operation centres with no political power, the government is now preparing to change the governance model it has so thoroughly discredited.

Once again, the health care parallel will give school boards no comfort whatever.

Local autonomy has vanished from the system. The central authorities run everything. The government appoints the ruling body.

Local school boards have some lifespan left, if only because they're so useful as scapegoats for a new era of underfunding.

But when the money comes back, look out. The province will take credit -- and maybe take over.

dbraid@theherald.canwest.com

This editorial was published in the Calgary Herald on May 29, 2010. Read the full article on the CalgaryHerald.com website.