Five of nine trustees elected Saturday night are new to the Vancouver School Board.
“It’s quite a change,” said VSB secretary-treasurer Rick Krowchuk Wednesday afternoon. “The last time we had two or three.”
Within the next five months, trustees will decide how to deal with a multi-million dollar budget shortfall, which is estimated to be $23 million.
The board’s preliminary operating budget for 2014-2015 is nearly half a billion dollars.
The newly elected trustees have been advised of the B.C. School Trustees Association’s Trustee Academy in Vancouver Dec. 4 to 6, where they can learn about board budgets and provincial funding and conflict of interest.
Trustees will take office at a board meeting Dec. 8 when they’ll select their chair.
The board chairperson is to ensure proper operating procedures and decorum and acts as spokesperson for the board. They also recommend who should serve as vice-chair, chair the board’s committees, liaise with which schools and represent the board with the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association, the library board and other agencies.
“So therefore they have some influence on who the other key people [are],” Krowchuk said.
The chair is to make recommendations after consulting other trustees. Who assumes which roles will be decided Dec. 15.
Board watchers are wondering whether the chair will continue to be Vision Vancouver’s Patti Bacchus or new Green Party of Vancouver trustee Janet Fraser, who holds the balance of power between the four recently elected Vision and four NPA trustees.
Newbies to the board can expect a deluge of information on the board’s finances (“or lack of,” according to Krowchuk), bylaws, committee structures and facilities.
The VSB oversees 92 elementary schools, 18 high schools, seven adult education centres and the largest distance education school in the province.
Workshops for trustees will run into January.
Krowchuk noted a couple of the new trustees are former teachers and he’s spotted at least one at a board meeting
“The good thing is they’ve got four years this time so it actually has a little bit more time to learn and then still have some impact before the next election,” he said. “It is a learning curve for them but we’ll do our best to support them.”
A Good Book Drive
Storytelling lovers Lizzy Karp and Cory Ashworth want you to donate a new copy of your favourite children’s book to the third annual rendition of A Good Book Drive. The books will go to a kid’s literacy organization called ONE to ONE that sees 300 volunteers tutor more than 850 students at 68 Vancouver area schools. Buy a book, write your name and story of why you love that book on a book plate and drop the book off at a Good Book drop box location. Locations are listed at agoodbookdrive.com.
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