The provincial government is drawing flak for releasing an infographic intended to underline the Vancouver School Board’s “history of predicting large deficits early in the budget process, and ending up with a large surplus.”
Education Minister Mike Bernier presented the chart at a press conference June 30 when he announced a forensic audit of the VSB. It was later posted on the B.C. government’s website and Twitter account.
The chart, pulled from Ernst & Young’s independent review of the VSB’s finances, has been slammed on Twitter as misinformation against the school board, which is involved in an ongoing battle with the education ministry due to funding shortfalls.
Vision school board trustee Patti Bacchus said the chart is misleading to the public’s perception of the VSB’s finances because the surplus pointed out has already been allocated in the year’s budget.
“They say you have a surplus but it’s not a true surplus,” Bacchus told the Courier. “That’s often money committed through different purchase orders or other internal restrictions. It may still be in the account at the end of the budget year but it has already been committed.”
Bacchus said sometimes the board does end up with an operating surplus because the government releases funds toward the end of the school year. The money is deposited into the current year’s account but it might not come in until June when it’s too late to spend.
The board holds on to the money for the next school year and it’s allocated into that year’s budget. Bacchus said the funds don’t go unspent and are allocated accordingly.
“There often can be a million dollars or two million dollars out of a half billion dollar budget that comes out as a surplus, but we’re budgeting over 99 per cent accurately,” she said.
Andrea Sinclair, co-founder of the Parent Advocacy Network for Public Education [PAN], said the graph is questionable because it fails to account for inflation and downloaded costs.
“That graph is spin. It’s pure spin, and a lot of people have pulled it apart,” said Sinclair. “It seems ludicrous to keep making all the school boards work under such a paradigm that doesn’t account for the downloaded costs, doesn’t account for inflation.”
PAN is a collective representing parents from more than 49 schools across Vancouver. The organization has pledged its support to the VSB and condemned the government’s recently announced audit of the board.
“Bernier seems to think there’s somehow money sitting around that’s not been used for students or has been wasteful,” Sinclair said. “Our argument is that the auditor hasn’t found that to be true.”
Bacchus said the board often finds itself the target of baseless allegations by the education ministry.
“They [the government] have a large bureau of public affairs people whose job is to put a certain kind of spin that we’re paying for with our tax dollars,” she said.
The Ministry of Education told the Courier in an email that the “chart is factual” and based on the Ernst & Young report released in 2015.
Education Minister Mike Bernier was unavailable for comment.
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