This year's school board race is about "responsible management," according to NPA trustee hopeful Stacy Robertson.
"One of the things [the NPA] emphasizes is the school board has about a half-a-billion-dollar-a-year budget and it needs some professional management and some real review of expenditures to make sure everything is being placed in the right place, to use the colloquial phrase, to get the biggest bang for the buck."
Robertson, a first-time candidate and a lawyer, argues that hasn't been the Vision/COPE-dominated board's focus. He said they take pride when criticized for "advocacy on steroids."
"They take it like a real badge of honour. The problem with that is when it becomes the sole focus you lose perspective of what your real job is, which is to try to spend the money you have as wisely and as best as you can. Their zeal for advocacy has really turned out to be a waste of money."
He pointed to the school closure process, which Robertson said cost about $168,000, but didn't result in any schools being closed or any additional funding for the school district.
"It was political gamesmanship-trying to get parents rallied against the provincial government, which was 100 per cent, in my view, a political game that I don't think we have the money to pay."
Robertson is running with four other NPA candidates: incumbent Ken Denike, a longtime trustee and professor emeritus at UBC; Fraser Ballantyne, a retired VSB administrator; Sandy Sharma, a businesswoman who's been on the District Parent Advisory Council; and Sophia Woo, a mental health clinician.
Ballantyne said his focus is also on fiscal responsibility and transparency. He cited the controversial 2010 comptroller general report on the VSB's finances. It criticized trustees for "focusing on advocacy at the expense of stewardship"- a charge COPE and Vision trustees have denied.
"I'm not a confrontational kind of person. I'm more into relationship building," Ballantyne added. "I'm advocating for kids and I'm advocating for parents as an independent [decision-maker]. I'm not having to answer to unions or whatever on every single turn of whatever goes on. I respect unions and collective agreements, but ultimately my decisions land with what's right for kids."
The NPA's control over the board has been sporadic over the last 15 years. Its candidates captured all nine seats in the 1996 election, but that number dropped to six in the 1999 race. In 2002, the NPA won a single seat, then its fortunes turned in 2005 when NPA candidates landed six seats. The Non-Partisan Association lost control of the board again in 2008 when only two candidates-Ken Denike and Carol Gibson- secured seats.
The party's 2011 election platform includes improving ties with the Ministry of Education and supporting the "neighborhood of learning" concept to integrate schools with libraries, community centres, neighbourhood houses and parks.
NPA candidates also promise to support walkand-cycle-to-school initiatives and to review land holdings in areas where student populations are increasing, such as the Olympic Village, Fraserlands and Coal Harbour, to "leverage assets" for new schools based on the no-cost model used to build the VSB's education centre at 1580 West Broadway in the 1990s. It involved a deal with Bentall Corporation. The VSB owns the block bounded by Granville Street, 10th Avenue, Fir Street and Broadway. It agreed to lease two-thirds of the site to Bentall for 99 years. Bentall redeveloped the entire site and, in exchange, provided a new building for the VSB.
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