HANSARD
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services
Mr. Graham Steele (Chairman)
Mr. James DeWolfe (Vice-Chairman)
Mr. John Chataway
Mr. Gary Hines
Mr. Howard Epstein
Ms. Marilyn More
Mr. Daniel Graham
Mr. David Wilson (Glace Bay)
Ms. Diana Whalen
[Mr. David Wilson (Glace Bay) was replaced by Mr. Leo Glavine.]
In Attendance:
Ms. Mora Stevens
Legislative Committee Coordinator
Mr. Roy Salmon
Auditor General
Ms. Elaine Morash
Assistant Auditor General
Mr. Roger Lintaman
Audit Manager
WITNESSES
Halifax Regional School Board
Ms. Carolyn McFarlane
Chairman
Ms. Carole Olsen
Superintendent
Mr. Richard Morris
Director of Finance
Mr. Don Buck
Senior Staff Advisor
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HALIFAX, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2004
STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
9:00 A.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. Graham Steele
VICE-CHAIRMAN
Mr. James DeWolfe
MR. CHAIRMAN: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I would like to call to order this meeting of the Public Accounts Committee. We are very pleased to have with us today representatives of the Halifax Regional School Board. Before we introduce the members from the school board, I would like to ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves.
[The members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to now recognize Ms. Carolyn McFarlane, the chairman - still the chairman despite last weekend's election, still the chairman for another couple of weeks - of the Halifax Regional School Board. I will ask Ms. McFarlane to introduce the colleagues she has with her today.
MS. CAROLYN MCFARLANE: Mr. Chairman, committee members, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. My name is Carolyn McFarlane, and I am the chairman of the Halifax Regional School Board. On behalf of the Halifax Regional School Board, I want to thank the Public Accounts Committee for the opportunity to appear before you this morning. With me today is our superintendent, Carole Olsen, who, with the committee's indulgence, I will turn things over to in a few minutes. Also with us are Richard Morris, our Director of Financial Services, and Don Buck, our Senior Staff Advisor.
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As a point of reference, the Halifax Regional School Board is Nova Scotia's largest school board, in terms of student population, serving more than 55,000 students in 138 schools from Moser River to Hubbards, a geographical area covering approximately 5,600 square kilometres. For the 2004-05 fiscal year, we have an operating budget of $306 million. The board is governed by 13 elected members and a 10-person senior staff team, who are responsible for the day-to-day operations of the school board.
The Halifax Regional School Board employs approximately 6,000 full- and part-time staff, including 3,421.1 full-time-equivalent teaching positions. Approximately 84 per cent of our expenditure budget is allocated to salaries. I will now turn things over to Carole.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Olsen.
MS. CAROLE OLSEN: Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I want to reiterate the comments our board chair has made by thanking the Public Accounts Committee for the opportunity to appear before you today. In your letter of invitation to appear, you indicated that you wanted an opportunity to discuss with us the Auditor General's findings from his audit of the Halifax Regional School Board.
As the committee knows, the Auditor General has conducted two audits of the Halifax Regional School Board in the past four years. In 2000, the Auditor General's office was unable to give an overall opinion on our budget process because certain pieces of information were not available. Specifically, they were unable to provide an opinion on the process, because, one, certain budget assumptions, such as enrolment projections and targeted class sizes, were not explicitly documented as part of the budget process and approved by the board. Two, some supporting budget documentation was not retained.
In response to the findings, the board invited the Auditor General to return two years later to provide further observations and advice on how we could continue to improve our budget process. In the Fall of 2003, the Auditor General's office completed a follow-up audit on the implementation of the recommendations provided in his report of 2000. We're extremely pleased with the Auditor General's findings.
It is our goal to have strong, efficient and effective financial management practices. We've made significant progress in this regard, but that doesn't mean that we can sit back and be satisfied with our accomplishments. We still have more work to do. The people of Nova Scotia need to know and they deserve to know that we're spending their money wisely, and they need to know and they deserve to know how well our students are doing. That's our primary mission, how well our students are doing. I believe that every child can learn, and when I say every child, every must mean every child, that is those with the most severe learning needs to those with the most exceptional talent and every single child in between, nothing less is acceptable.
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I have challenged our principals, our board members and our staff, both those working inside our schools and those who support schools to think of the spectrum of learning needs of all of our students in the system, and ask themselves the question, what do I need to do to meet the needs of every child. In fact, I have to ask that question of myself as I go about my daily work. I would pose the same question to the staff of the Department of Education, as well as the Members of the Legislative Assembly. All of us need to ask the question of ourselves constantly in order to ensure we reflect on our priorities, we identify areas where we can work together, and we set our sights on improving our education system for all of our students.
The Halifax Regional School Board, in attempting to answer this question for ourselves, both at the elected board level and among our staff, have undertaken a number of strategies. We have a strong business plan with improved student achievement as its focus. We have aligned our administrative structure to provide more direct support to our schools. We have committed to collecting, analyzing and using a wide variety of data to support decisions we make regarding every aspect of our operations.
For example, we have surveyed every student, every parent and every teacher in our system to gather their opinions on the effectiveness of our schools. We got a wonderful response rate, both in terms of the information we received, but also the percentage of responses that we got. It was overwhelming. We've taken that data back to schools, so they can use it in their planning. We've provided the data to parents, and we've released that data publicly. In addition, we've gathered Stats Can data on the neighbourhoods our schools serve, so that our schools and our board can be better informed and, consequently, in a better position to respond to the needs.
We've undertaken board-wide assessments in literacy in Grades 2 and 9, and mathematics in Grade 3 and 9, which supplement the assessments that the Department of Education is doing. This is what the board has undertaken, individually and internally. We've given that information back to our classroom teachers, our principals, to our parents on their individual children and their school data, and to our board members. So everyone knows how well we were doing, and where we need to improve. These are a few of the things that we've undertaken in the past year.
In asking the Legislative Assembly, the Department of Education and our school boards, how we could work together to meet the needs of every child, I would encourage all of us to look at the recommendations Mr. William Hogg will be bringing forward in November in relation to a new funding formula to support students in Nova Scotia.
Funding of public education is vitally important. It is an investment in both our students and our province. Since funding is centralized in Nova Scotia and school boards have limited ability to raise additional revenues, it is critically important that the centralized
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funding mechanism satisfy the needs of all students and all school systems throughout Nova Scotia.
When I joined the Halifax Regional School Board just over two years ago, I set a goal to make the Halifax Regional School Board the most improved school board in Canada within the next five years, in terms of measurable increases in student achievement. I'm even more committed to that goal today than I was, even two years ago. We're not going to be distracted, we're not going to be derailed, and I look forward to working with the members of the Legislature to improve our education system for all students, because I know you share our commitment to serving the public.
In closing, I'm reminded of a saying that if you want to touch the past you touch a rock. If you want to touch the present you touch a flower. But if you want to touch the future you touch a child. That is why all of us are here today. So I would be pleased to answer any of your questions, thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The first 20 minutes will belong to the NDP caucus.
The honourable member for Dartmouth South-Portland Valley.
MS. MARILYN MORE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, thank you all for coming today. As you know, I have a strong affinity for school boards, I strongly support that level of government, having been on the Dartmouth District School Board for 10 years in my earlier years. I raised a question last week with the Department of Education that was first brought to my attention as a member of the school board over 25 years ago and I think it's still an issue with the amalgamated school board, and I would like to discuss it a little further with you today, and that is the whole question of equity.
I realize that the board and staff have themselves brought this issue up, both with Mr. Hogg in your presentation to him, and in various board reports that I've seen. I'm the first to recognize that equity doesn't mean the same resources for all children in schools, I appreciate that difference. But I am a little concerned about the variation in children's opportunity to learn the public school program based on where they live.
As I mentioned earlier, the board has raised this question, both in terms of the supplementary funding, where the determining factor is basically where they live geographically, how much of that supplementary funding is allocated to their schools, but the other issue is the degree to which fundraising goes on in the individual schools. I was quite surprised in reading your report to the board last Spring that it can vary anywhere from under $3,000 to a maximum of almost $650,000. Now mind you, that's a difference between an elementary school as well as a high school.
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I want to talk a little bit about the individual school fundraising and I have to give you credit for actually putting together a summary report, so that the board and senior staff are aware of the fundraising. I'm just wondering, does the board receive any additional information on what that fundraising is used for, or do you just get the subtotals of how much is raised, how much is spent, what's left over?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morris.
MR. RICHARD MORRIS: We do get additional information. As you would gather, the report that went to the board is a summary report but there is much more detailed information that's provided by the schools for each bank account. They list all of their receipts, all of their disbursements, so it's a great deal more information but it's summarized more for the board. Certainly, more detail is available if there is any further follow-up.
[9:15 a.m.]
MS. MORE: Do the local schools break it down by whether or not it goes to complement the public school program offerings, or how much of it is spent on school trips, or other enhancements?
MR. MORRIS: They do separate it out based on the purpose of the fundraising or the revenue generation, so it depends on the nature of the project or whatever, so certainly school trips, school athletic programs, graduations, different kinds of projects would certainly be accounted for separately.
MS. MORE: Do you have any sense what proportion, even roughly, would go toward the core programming in the school, the core services? I'm thinking lab fees or library resources or whatever.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Olsen.
MS. OLSEN: My understanding is that the Department of Education, through the deputy minister, with the superintendents across the province, are going to do an investigation of that very issue. We would need to gather the data from our schools before we would be able to answer that question definitively. We're not sure.
MS. MORE: So you're not sure at this point how much of it goes on the core program, fair enough. I'm interested also in what policies the board has to sort of regulate or control school fundraising. Do you have any policies around who decides when fundraising is going to be undertaken, how the money is raised, what it's spent on, the frequency of fundraising, anything like that, or is it left up to individual school practices?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morris.
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MR. MORRIS: The board does have a fairly extensive policy on school-based funds, which provides guidance to the principal and school communities, both on the proper financial management and control of monies that are raised at the school level, as well as monies that are provided by the board through the board's budgeting process for school-based funds and so on. The policy is more directed at financial management and accountability, so there is still a fair degree of judgment left to the school community as to what kinds of projects and activities they would undertake to raise revenues at the local level. Certainly, when decisions are made to undertake a fundraising project or whatever, then that's when the policy really kicks in, in terms of appropriate accountability, management, control and reporting of the activities that take place.
MS. MORE: Has the board or senior staff ever indicated an interest in having a broader policy to cover these other factors or issues?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Buck.
MR. DON BUCK: All fundraising that takes place at the school is the responsibility of the principal, but it's also in consultation with the school advisory councils. Those are locally elected and/or appointed individuals who come from that community and they make the decisions in the communities in terms of the fundraising that they would undertake, and what their priorities would be. So there is that local control that works with the principal deciding how frequently or what types of things we would do.
MS. MORE: Are you aware of any studies or reports, either in your board or in Nova Scotia, that look at the impact of this degree of fundraising on students, families and neighbourhoods anywhere in Nova Scotia? I understand that a pilot project was actually done in Newfoundland and Labrador and some of their conclusions were quite startling as to some of the impacts, actually, on students choosing to not go to school on a certain day when a fee is going to be charged for a trip or an activity; some students having to get jobs to supplement the fundraising expectations in their school; and just the whole social and educational inclusion aspect. Has there ever been any discussion either through the School Boards Association or through the boards looking at some of those issues?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Olsen.
MS. OLSEN: I'm not aware that any formal research has been undertaken on that particular issue but I know that we've had discussions with all of our schools, particularly with our school administrators, to ensure that no child is left out of an activity because of an inability to pay. But I understand your question goes beyond that in terms of how the students are feeling about coming to school.
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We've certainly undertaken, for example, one project to increase student attendance and student achievement is to be able to provide some bus passes for students who are unable, at the high school level, to pay for the Metro Transit passes. The research that we did in that particular pilot case that we conducted last year, showed both an increase in student attendance and an increase in student achievement, if we could provide the bus pass to the student, very discreetly, so that they could get to school on time and participate.
MS. MORE: I think that is an excellent initiative. I'm wondering, has the board ever considered the differences in fundraising potential of schools and neighbourhoods? For example, let's just take a home and school association in a particularly well-off neighbourhood. They might have a very successful Spring fair and be able to raise several thousand dollars, whereas in another part of town, where families might not have that much discretionary money available, they just wouldn't have the same opportunity to raise that extent of local funds. Has the board ever considered that issue of inequity in terms of being able to raise varying amounts of supplementary funding at that level?
MS. OLSEN: We haven't looked at it, and I'll look at my colleagues as well, in terms of the ability to raise money. But one of the things that we do is look at the schools that you may want to call "inner city schools", or schools that don't have as much flexibility. We provide additional resources out of the board's funding to those schools, in a way to supplement the work that the school can do with funds that are provided by the board. The two major areas of funding there would be, additional staff to perhaps lower class sizes, or provide additional teaching resources, and also, additional resources for supplies and materials for those kinds of schools.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Buck.
MR. BUCK: We also have a budget line that allocates money for bus trips to those schools that are further than 41 kilometres from downtown, basically, so we do supplement our farther reaches of the geographic area with some busing funds centrally.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Olsen, you had something to add.
MS. OLSEN: The chairman also reminded me it wasn't just inner city schools that we supplement, it's also those schools in rural areas that may have similar issues, in terms of the ability to raise funding for the schools' discretionary programs.
MS. MORE: I guess my last question on this particular issue is, are you concerned at all about the extent to which schools in the Halifax Regional School Board feel the need to provide extra funds and do this local fundraising? Does this concern you or is this to be considered an expected contribution or whatever?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. McFarlane.
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MS. MCFARLANE: Having grown up being very active in the schools before I came on the school board and as I'm sure you, too, Marilyn, would know, schools have done fundraising for different issues for time immemorial, it seems. It may be a class trip, or it may be books for the library, or it may be whatever but going back in time, I've sat on many a fundraising committee, so I don't think that it's any different than it was then. Some schools have very active parents, some schools have parents who aren't able to contribute with time, but I think parents have always been involved. It gets parents in the schools and they can support what's going on and I think that's part of being the family unit in the school system.
MS. MORE: I don't disagree with you on that aspect, but I think a lot of the fundraising is actually being done through the children and with the support of the teachers. I have to wonder how much educational task time is being taken up in the publication of information about upcoming fundraising events, the collection of money, and whether it's appropriate for our children, in some cases, to be out knocking, door-to-door, collecting money for whatever cause. It seems to me that as adults we have the responsibility to provide that money, and not have our children going around, almost begging for additional funds.
Thank you for your answers. In my mind, this still goes back to the chronic under-funding of public education in this province. I just think it's shameful that we've gotten to the point where in the largest school board in the province, the schools are raising close to $20 million a year in extra funding to fill in some of the gaps. I think that's very unfortunate.
I just wanted to ask a question on your presentation to Mr. Hogg, about the new funding formula. Something that has struck me over the past 25, 30 years has been the increasing demands on your board for English and French as a second language, and also funding for special education. I'm wondering if you could just quickly summarize those two needs, and why, up to this point, the funding hasn't been available for the board to meet those needs, and that's where some of the supplementary funding from the municipal government is being used?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. McFarlane.
MS. MCFARLANE: If I may, I would like to speak on the ESL needs, because I'm a member of the former Halifax District School Board. It was a real issue for us 13 years ago, and even further back in time than that, because we were having a lot of immigrant population moving, especially to the former mainland north, I'm not sure how to describe it at the moment, in old Halifax. We had done presentations to the city and to the province and to the federal government, because they would fund parents but they wouldn't fund the students. Currently, our supplementary funding pays for ESL training or instructions for these students. We are doing some in the former county board or the outreaches as well. That comes from some of the supplementary funding, because there's a major need. If we're going to have immigrants who really add to our quality of life and improve our school systems and
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what have you, I think we have to teach these children how to get along in the English language.
MS. OLSEN: If I can follow up to the chair's response, research is showing that a child who comes to our schools who doesn't speak English as a first language needs five to six years of additional support. That doesn't mean full-time support in a special class, but they need five to six years additional support to be able to acquire the skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing to fully participate in the academic program that we're offering.
We're providing 11.5 teachers for our ESL students here in Nova Scotia, as the chair has already indicated, out of supplementary funding. When we did the background research for Mr. Hogg, we looked at what other jurisdictions in Canada are doing, and we noted that Manitoba is providing $725 per eligible pupil for English as a second language, to support the kind of additional support that we believe the children need.
MS. MORE: Thank you. Do you want to just briefly comment on special education? I'm assuming that your board still has the highest percentage of special needs children in the province, because families do move here to be closer to the medical facilities and other programs.
MS. OLSEN: Again, we have approximately, in June 2004, 2,300 students out of our 56,000 students who had an IPP and required much more professional, and paraprofessional support. Of this group, approximately 1,200 have very high needs in our school system, and we believe that some of that is attributable to the services not only that we can provide at the school board but the services that are available in our community, through the IWK and other resources such as that. Again, our board has had to supplement the resources for special needs students through supplementary funding. We have many of our EPAs, who support these very high needs youngsters, paid for through the supplementary funding.
[9:30 a.m.]
MS. MORE: So one would assume that if the provincial government, and especially the Department of Education, are going to take both their integration and immigration strategies seriously, that there should be major improvements in the funding of those two particular areas. I wish you good luck. I'm not sure how much time I have left.
MR. CHAIRMAN: You have less than 30 seconds, which you don't have to use.
MS. MORE: I think perhaps I'll allow the next Party to start to ask questions.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We'll move on to the Liberal caucus for the next 20 minutes.
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The member for Kings West.
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MR. LEO GLAVINE: Mr. Chairman, thank you to Carole and her staff for being here today. Certainly, my prediction would be that within a few years you'll be providing an education for half the students in Nova Scotia. So you do have a very significant role to work with legislators in directing some of that future. I certainly applaud and find very laudable the goal of wanting to become the most improved school board in Canada over the next five years. You are two years in, and I guess maybe a little bit of a self-report card, perhaps, on a couple of initiatives that are going well, and to maybe identify a couple of areas where there is some real need to be addressed.
MS. OLSEN: Like all good educators who've set a five-year plan, I believe the first year that I was here was getting an assessment of the school system and where we are. We did a major realignment, so I firmly believe that last year was the year that we set the benchmark. What we did last year was to assess each child individually with an expert in Grades 2 and 9 in literacy, so it was one-on-one, where we have a very well-trained educator going into the schools, withdrawing the youngster for a period of assessment, making records, in terms of how well the student was doing, and we kept track of that data. I will tell you about how we've used the data. We did that for Grades 2 and 9 in literacy, and we did that for Grades 3 and 9 in mathematics, one-on-one.
We provided the teachers immediately with feedback on each child in their classroom, where their strengths were, where their weaknesses were, where they needed to improve. We provided the teacher the classroom data, we provided that to the principals, and we provided it to the board. What we also did at that point was to ensure that we had people who would go into the schools, particularly in the areas of literacy, and work with the teachers to meet the gaps for those individual students. We've just completed year two. In September we are doing the assessments, and while I haven't got all the data and I'll be happy to provide the data to the members of the Legislature when we have it tabulated and I'll provide it to the board as well, but the early indications are that the improvements in both literacy and math are stunning. Part of that, I believe, is that we have directly been able to provide the support in the schools to the teachers because we have been able to analyze the individual student needs and the gaps in their learning.
We have provided professional development with the support of the Department of Education for teachers in their schools and on board-wide days. We also provided workshops this Summer for teachers in literacy and math that teachers voluntarily came in the Summer for these courses to learn how to improve some of the areas in their teaching. We were able to provide very targeted and specific support for the students. So I think that is one of the areas that we have had some major successes with.
MR. GLAVINE: As you look at the comprehensiveness and the interconnectedness, of course, of school boards and delivering the program, perhaps that is an area that is more of a struggle and is more of a challenge, as you take a look at needs. I appreciate the first one you gave. Also - I may as well finish off - I would be very interested to hear the results
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because I felt the province, and our students and teachers, got fudged a bit last year with the Grade 5 provincial assessment, when only 11 out of 53 outcomes were even tested in that particular approach, when we put so much money into this, when we put so much energy and directiveness towards it. That's what we get for the effort. There's something wrong there. That's why I'm interested in your board approach to looking at literacy and math development. That being said, I do look forward then to some of those results. What do you see as a big challenging area for your board?
MS. OLSEN: One of the major challenging areas - and I would also ask the chairman or Mr. Morris or Mr. Buck to comment on this as well - we identified the needs of students at risk, Youth Pathways and Transitions, as being a major area that we need to focus a lot of our attention on.
We did a comprehensive report to the board and workshops for the board last year, in terms of all the strategies that we would like to put in place. We have begun this fall and I am really pleased to say that we have begun this fall. But we have only been able to implement a very tiny portion of what our staff are recommending that we need to do for these youngsters, in order to have a comprehensive program for students at risk. Part of that is going to be a budget process in terms of being able to find the money within our budget to be able to broaden the scope of the services that we can provide.
MR. GLAVINE: Thank you. You have given your presentation to Mr. Bill Hogg and I had a quick review of that, and several others throughout the province.
Did you impress very strongly, both, I guess, maybe, on the record in the formal presentation and documentation, but also, maybe, even informally, that adequacy of funding may not be addressed here and this may, in fact, undermine - again, there may just be a shifting of the deck chairs here and that we may not get the required funding that, especially, you know, your school board will require in the coming years?
MS. OLSEN: Again, I would invite my other panelists to elaborate on my response but we firmly believe that if the funding formula is open, is transparent, is accountable and we know what's generating the funding for what, and we can look at the bottom line, for example - and let's use ESL as an example. If ESL is listed as a funding requirement and there's no money there, then I think the members of the Legislature are going to be able to see whether or not the funding envelope is adequate, but we were respecting, very much, Mr. Hogg's mandate to say what needs to be in a funding formula, how should it be accounted for, how should it be open and transparent, and then we believe, at the end of the day, the dialogue will take place in the right form, in terms of whether or not that's going to be adequate.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. McFarlane.
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MS. MCFARLANE: I would agree with what Carole said, because, certainly, we were not allowed to address adequacy with Mr. Hogg, but we wanted to see a very clear funding formula as opposed to lumps of money just being given to cover a lot of things. We wanted to know that if there was money for ESL, this is what it was for and these are the boards that received it, depending on their ESL. The same thing with special needs.
When I look at the funding, and certainly with the latest Stats Can data that says that our province is the lowest funded province in the country and the fact that we know, in the averages - it's $6,200, and Halifax receives close to $2,000 less than that. Yes, the deputy can tap dance over that, because of transportation, but we have a huge board. I don't agree with all his statements. I think our board is underfunded, and we try very hard to do the very best we can. I'm not sure that the new funding formula will be, as you said, the movement of chairs on a deck. It would be obvious then - we don't know whether we'll get any more money or another board will get any more money, but it will be very obvious where the money is going and what is needed to be able to do the job in education that needs to be done. I do not think that education has had a high priority.
Speaking as a chairman who's on her way out, I have absolutely nothing to lose in saying I think education is terribly underfunded in this province. I realize it's hard to find the dollars and it's a very difficult thing to do, but I do not feel that there's a lot of money put into education. The Stats Can data bears that thought in mind. That would be my comment.
MR. GLAVINE: I'm sure in the second half, my colleague, Mr. Graham, will have some comments on that. I appreciate, Carolyn, you being strong in that statement. As we know, when the budget came out last year, the minister, himself, said that education came up enormously short and really played second fiddle to health. We know that. It's been stated. I think the onus is certainly back on Mr. Hogg and the government to also meet the adequacy question, which is what I was driving at there.
Just maybe a few short questions, I know time is moving along here. Perhaps Mr. Buck could address this, having been a former principal, but a couple of areas that I feel, in our province, have been really neglected, and maybe those kinds of underpinnings create a lot of difficulties in our system, are breakfast programs, proper nutrition, physical education. Again, I'm a strong believer in educating the whole person. Sometimes, perhaps, these areas are not addressed adequately. I feel that a number of boards across the province don't do a very good job in those areas. I'm just wondering if you have any reflective comments on that, and again where we tie it in with the financing of education and so on.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Buck.
MR. BUCK: We have one employee, basically, whose main mandate is breakfast programs across our board. She's working with a number of our schools, and that number is increasing each year. The second thing we're looking at is what kinds of foods we are
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offering in our schools, and that's going to be a bigger project to change that around. The cafeteria operations in our schools are a big source of fundraising for schools. We do recognize the importance of that, and we have a number of corporate sponsorships that are supporting that breakfast program, some of our big corporations in town.
The second question on phys. ed., those kinds of programs are ones that are tied more to funding in terms of being able to provide appropriate staff to deliver those programs and, in many cases, in our elementary schools, it's having proper facilities to offer those particular programs, so it's kind of a multi-faceted thing. Supplementary funding somewhat complicates that in that we offer a different level of service for physical education in Halifax and Dartmouth than we do in the former county. So we have two cycles, a six-day cycle in the county and a five-day cycle in the cities. Even to bring that up to a common delivery would have a significant impact on our budget.
[9:45 a.m.]
We know there is legislation there from the Department of Education that says that students should have 30 minutes of physical activity a day but we're nowhere close to that now on our board.
MR. GLAVINE: Thank you very much for that sort of overview. My question wasn't as a result of perhaps one of my latest e-mails from the Halifax area where people in schools handling the municipal elections were astounded to find the number of vending machines in our schools, when we should be leading the way and educating the next generation on that health area.
One other one which could really come back at any given time to be an enormous difficulty for us, of course, is the maintenance of our buildings. Again, could you give this committee a little bit of a sense so it's something that perhaps we can take forward about the general maintenance level and requirements of the board, to deal with its 138 schools. I can only believe that there would be significant deficiencies, perhaps you can clearly identify a few of those.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Olsen.
MS. OLSEN: I think that the maintenance of our schools is a very, very significant issue. Our oldest school was built in 1921, and I think we need to be able to provide significant resources to our schools to maintain them. We are fortunate right now to have, from the Department of Education, several replacement schools for building, on the books over the next several years. But I can assure that even when we get a new school built, if we don't start maintaining them from day one, so that they will last for the 25, 50 or 75 years that we need them to last, we're not going to be in a very good position.
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Now, maybe, Richard, you want to be able to tell us that the money that we got for the major maintenance on our schools last year through the funding formula would only provide about two roofs.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morris.
MR. MORRIS: Just to put some facts in context, we have approximately 7.2 million square feet of school space that the board maintains, that excludes the P3 schools, over which we don't have responsibility. For that 7.2 million square feet, we have a budget of approximately $3 million for minor repairs and maintenance, the ongoing plumbing, electrical, heating, those kinds of ongoing repairs, so that's less than 50 cents a square foot. Then for capital, which is more or less the larger projects: roofs, windows, those kinds of things, this year we received a grant from the Department of Education of approximately $750,000 and that has been supplemented by the board making a decision to allocate its own resources as well into the capital area, of approximately $1.2 million. So, again, it's less than $2 million a year for 145 buildings, 7.2 million square feet, that we're putting into sort of major upgrades and retrofits. That kind of puts it into context that, by any industry standards, we should certainly be putting more money into maintaining and prolonging the life the our buildings, and getting the maximum efficient life out of our school buildings.
MR. GLAVINE: I'll probably have time for one more question, so I guess I will hit the topical question of the day. Two superintendents have shared very candidly with me their view on provincial exams, where we are right now, where they think we should go. As an educator, Carole, and caretaker of the biggest system in the province, what is your viewpoint?
MS. OLSEN: I believe very strongly that having province-wide assessments is very positive for the school system. This provides us comparable, objective data that we can use to analyze where we are and where we need to go to improve. I understand that the province may be expanding its province-wide assessments, but we haven't been given any details with respect to that right now.
As I indicated earlier, in order to be able to do the early interventions, particularly in literacy and math, where the curriculum is building, if we lose children in Grades 2 and 3 in literacy and math, by the time they get to high school the gap can be very significant for students to be able to catch up. So, I'm a very, very strong supporter of province-wide assessment as one tool to help us do the analysis and improvement of our school system.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We'll move on to the Conservative caucus. It has been indicated to me that due to another commitment, the Conservative caucus would like to combine their first and second round, and that's agreeable to the other caucuses, at least for the time being. It's certainly not something we would want to do on a regular basis, however, today, we will give the next 30 minutes, combining rounds one and two, to the Conservative caucus.
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The honourable member for Pictou East.
MR. JAMES DEWOLFE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the other caucuses for accommodating that request. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I want to thank you for your presentation. I also want to say that I believe we need a formula that easily demonstrates that the funding distribution across the province is indeed fair, fair to HRM, major centres like HRM, I think you have a third of Nova Scotia's student population, or handy that figure, and fair to rural areas like Pictou County which I represent.
You previously made reference at the Human Resources Committee and in the media, that the education funding formula is equity, accountability and adequacy, and you've addressed some of those issues. I would like you to expand on them and perhaps I'll just leave it at that for the moment, and perhaps you could expand. I'm sure you have more to say on those three topics, particularly accountability and adequacy.
MS. OLSEN: I think our board firmly believes whether a child lives in Cape Breton or the Strait, a rural area, or inner city urban area, that he or she deserves to be able to have access to the support and the educational support for being able to have educational opportunity to meet the public school program outcomes. That being said, I think what we were presenting to Mr. Hogg was that there should be some very strong and objective data that would support how the money is distributed to the schools, whether it's on a per kilometre basis of students that need to be transported, or the number of IPP students. We need to be able to agree on the factors that need to be in the funding formula, and we need to agree on how we're going to collect that data. It should be able to be verified by an independent or an outside auditor, and then come up with a formula that would generate the funds for our school boards.
In terms of accountability, I think all levels of the education system, from the Legislature, the Department of Education and the school board, and the schools and our principals need to be absolutely open, accountable and transparent for how they are using public dollars. I don't know if we want to be . . .
MR. DEWOLFE: We may move along there in a minute but is it the position of the Halifax Regional School Board that those in the education sector should determine what adequate funding should be?
MS. OLSEN: I believe the adequacy of funding for the education sector rightly lays with the Legislature.
MR. DEWOLFE: Otherwise, that would be like having a paving contractor decide how much the budget should be for paving, by illustration.
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MS. OLSEN: The adequacy has to come from the Legislature and the government that are providing money to the school boards and that's where the accountability, I think, has to be for the adequacy of the funding.
MR. DEWOLFE: Perhaps we can come back to you in a moment and just go to Ms. McFarlane, the outgoing chairman. You spoke about funding and I was wondering if you have any idea how much the funding, per child, went up in the last five years?
MS. MCFARLANE: How much it's gone down?
MR. DEWOLFE: Gone up.
MS. MCFARLANE: I don't know that I could tell you that off the top of my head because it seems to me it was in the low fours and now it's up to the low fives. I've been on the board for 13 years, so I've seen costs escalate.
One of my fears about Bill Hogg's report is in one of the last sentences of his mandate was that the government did not have to accept this report. I would hate to think that that might happen, simply because a lot of boards, staff, and board members have put a great deal of time and input into that report. I'm hoping that it will go somewhere because we've had funding formula reviews before and I think the last one really didn't get off the ground.
MR. DEWOLFE: Would you be surprised to know that it went up $1,400 per student in the last five years?
MS. MCFARLANE: Oh, in the last five years, but does that include the cost of building schools as well?
MR. DEWOLFE: The fact is that Statistics Canada didn't give full credit to Nova Scotia for capital expenditures, like building schools, so the figures were a little off. Despite trying to balance education investments with other pressures like health care costs, Nova Scotia was still able to put the funding per student up in the past five years by $1,400. That is, indeed, a fact.
Going back now, I'll leave you with that thought and go back to Ms. Olsen. You talked about Deputy Minister Bill Hogg and the funding formula and I think we'll just kind of move into that, that the former Deputy Minister of Finance, Bill Hogg, is now heading a provincial review of the school board funding. I was just wondering, what specific recommendations would you put on the table for that provincial review? What input would you have towards that?
MS. OLSEN: We would be very pleased to provide you with the full submission that we made to Mr. Hogg.
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MR. DEWOLFE: Perhaps it would be easier if I asked you what specific changes, or what is it about the existing formula, that you would like to have changed? Be more specific, what really stands out there and jumps out at you?
MS. OLSEN: First and foremost, we believe that the current approach to providing funding is not clear, open and accountable, and we're not sure, because 25 per cent is based on enrolment right now and 75 per cent is based on past practices.
[10:00 a.m.]
So our first recommendation, in terms of a belief, is that the provincial approach to funding must be clear, open and accountable. In practice, this means that every factor within the formula will be fully itemized on a line-by-line basis. So if there is going to be money for ESL, then it's there; if there's going to be money for special ed, then it's there. If there's going to be a 25 to 1 pupil/teacher ratio, then we know that if Cape Breton has 25 kids, they get a teacher; if Halifax has 25 kids, we get a teacher. So that's what we mean by clear, open and accountable.
The other thing that we believe is that the funding formula must fully account for the impact of all policies and mandated initiatives at the board, school and classroom levels. Our discussion of special education in our report provides detailed examples of how a linear approach to funding can negatively impact on the operation at all levels of the system and create misperceptions that erode public confidence in education.
There are many aspects of the funding formula. There can be occupational health and safety standards or gym inspections that are required, labour standards. So if we have to do something because of a legislated framework, we believe that that should be fully accounted for in the funding formula.
The other thing that we believe is that the funding formula should provide our elected board officials with the flexibility to meet the very needs of the schools, students and communities within their region. So if we have a block of funding that comes to the board - Annapolis Valley may need a certain kind of program to meet the local needs and we may have another. So there should be some real decision making left at the board level.
MR. DEWOLFE: But not necessarily a trade-off for one funding program through another. . .
MS. OLSEN: No.
MR. DEWOLFE: I guess you would agree that the cost of doing education per child varies from one part of the province to another.
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MS. OLSEN: It can, absolutely, but that will depend on . . .
MR. DEWOLFE: Yes, I guess the busing would be a big factor.
MS. OLSEN: Busing would be a factor; special education would be a factor; ESL will be a factor. Research would show that students whose parents have Grade 9 or less, the education level of head of household will affect their success in school. So if a board has more students where the parents haven't graduated from high school, haven't gone beyond Grade 9, probably the board needs a little bit more support to provide that kind of support to the students.
MR. DEWOLFE: So I guess we have established that you don't believe that the funding formula should be solely on enrolment?
MS. OLSEN: Oh, no.
MR. DEWOLFE: No, because I did see a figure - and the figure escapes me now - some time ago, about the cost of busing. In the Strait area it might have been $680 versus $200 in HRM, something like that. You may even know those figures. But it was a considerable difference per child.
MS. OLSEN: There can be, absolutely, a considerable difference. The other thing that we want within some areas - and busing would be a very good example - we believe, also, if the board - let's use $1 million, for example. If the province were to give us $1 million for transportation but we could provide the transportation for 900,000 because we have efficiency somehow, we would believe that we would be able to use that $100,000 to buy more library books or something like that. So we believe that if we can find efficiencies, that the board should be able to reallocate those monies internally to support where they believe the needs are for their youngsters.
MR. DEWOLFE: I'm just going to ask one more question and then pass to my colleague. I don't want to hog all the time. Considering that student enrolment continues to decline, what are the cost pressures in the education system? If student enrolment continues to decrease year after year, and it seems to be currently going in that direction, why do budgetary requirements continue to increase the way they have? I know it's not a simple question and wouldn't require a simple answer but I think the people of Nova Scotia are all the time wondering why costs increase when the student enrolment is dropping off so much.
MS. OLSEN: I'll begin to answer that question, then maybe we can turn it over to Richard. Certainly, as enrolment declines in some areas of the province, just because the enrolment declines doesn't mean that you can do away with a teacher or do away with a school, that the distances are too great to close a school or close a classroom. So if you only
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have 18 Grade 1s and that's all that show up in the school and our standard is 25 to 1, with declining enrolment that creates a cost pressure.
In addition, I think we have cost pressures in terms of our collective agreements; the teachers' collective agreements are negotiated by the province, so there is an inflationary increase there. I think that our level of understanding in terms of what we need to support students has increased, and therefore we're offering more services. For example, if we want to do assessments - that I believe we should do - they're not done for free, so there's a cost pressure there being able to develop the assessments, undertake them, collect the data, mark them, analyze them, and feed them back to boards. So those are just some of the cost pressures and then Richard can talk about the other kinds of cost pressures that we experience.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morris.
MR. MORRIS: Again, just to put some numbers to it, in the last couple of years, for example, in Halifax anyway, our enrolment decline has probably been 1 per cent or slightly less than 1 per cent per year. Collective agreement negotiations that have resulted in salary increases and benefit increases have been sort of in the 2 per cent, 2 per cent-plus per year, so again, you can see the disconnect between what our costs are actually increasing versus that enrolment decline.
Again, another example is our non-salary areas, I think everybody would agree that costs like heating fuel, electricity, and just the day-to-day costs of maintaining our buildings have certainly increased, again, more than that 1 per cent a year that would be offset by declining enrolment. Those are just some of the factors that would generate cost increases more than our enrolment decline.
MR. DEWOLFE: Thank you, Richard. I believe my colleague, the member for Chester-St. Margaret's, is going to continue that process along this line, so he may ask you more questions.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Chester-St. Margaret's.
MR. JOHN CHATAWAY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning. One of the biggest thrills of being part of this committee is that we investigate various parts of our provincial budget. Obviously, health care is the biggest but education is the second biggest, and we very much appreciate getting more information.
Basically, 55,000 people go to school in Halifax County and there's about 155,000 across the province and many of us have had experience in teaching anyway and all that stuff. At any rate, I think the last topic that has just been raised by my colleague, the member for Pictou East, was the challenge, that enrolment is going down but the expenses are going up
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all the time. I think one of the challenges to everybody, not only in the Legislature but also the people on the board, is to have to explain why this has gone up - it's because of this, this, and this, so everybody understands. It's a positive thing but it has to be explained because I think everybody has to realize that they get very involved with it if they can't understand the system. Certainly, it is somewhat a complex system but it's not unexplainable.
Getting back to that, Section 64 of the Education Act has requirements that say, in any fiscal year a school board shall not incur or make expenditures that will result in the total of the amounts of expenditures that will result in the creation of a deficit for that fiscal year. In the past, the board contravened the provincial law by running deficits. I understand, of course, when the Auditor General came to the board in 2000 he had suggestions and then the last time, two years later, you had a lot of that. How did the board plan to avoid deficits and what kind of budgetary software had the board been using up until the last few years? Another question along the same line is how has the implementation of SAP accounting software, with the help of the province, assisted the board in avoiding deficits and planning budgets more accurately?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morris.
MR. MORRIS: Certainly, the board takes its responsibility to manage within its revenues very seriously. For that reason, the board does take a very prudent and conservative approach to budgeting, to minimize the risk of unforeseen events creating a deficit. For that reason, certainly within the last couple of years, the board has adopted a very conservative approach to estimating expenditures to ensure that we do have positive results at the end of the year.
MR. CHATAWAY: Your thoughts are that we will be on budget?
MR. MORRIS: Oh, for sure, yes, we certainly take that very seriously.
MR. CHATAWAY: No deficit?
MR. MORRIS: No deficit. I think your second question with regard to the software we use, certainly the SAP accounting system has been in use now for two years with all of the school boards and the department and that has certainly allowed us to provide better data to manage our financial affairs. We do have that history now of information that allows us to look at results from the past couple of years that helps us to project our results for the rest of this fiscal year. For example, we can see how we've spent in certain areas over the last three months of the year and we can use that to assist in our projections.
The combination of the data within SAP and using a typical spreadsheet program such as Excel, that's the kind of software that we do use to manage our data for looking at our financial results and projections.
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MS. OLSEN: In addition to that, Mr. Morris and his staff meet with every department in our board, with the department heads every month, to look at the budget relative to the expenditures and forecast forward. When they have met with all the departments then Mr. Morris meets with me, so that we're tracking on a monthly basis, to see whether or not we're off-track in terms of our projections, so that we can take any corrective action well in advance of ever getting ourselves into a deficit situation.
MR. CHATAWAY: You should be complimented for that attitude because it's very important for all Nova Scotians, whatever form of government it has, we have to set a budget and keep the budget. It used to be, oh well, don't worry about the budget, it doesn't matter anyway, it's just a bunch of figures that don't mean anything. We spend what we have to. No, we have to decide how to spend properly, that's for sure.
If I could ask another question, over the past few years the province provided more education funding for capital construction, that is new buildings. Is the funding for capital construction properly reflected in studies which compare provincial per student, per capita funding across the country? Can you say okay, in Nova Scotia we spend so much on capital construction and in New Brunswick they spend this and in Alberta they spend this. Do we ever compare our capital budget and what you do in HRM across Canada?
MR. BUCK: I don't think we have any comparison other than the fact that we feel that new school construction is one of the great ways to reduce educational spending and put it into the classroom. By way of demonstration, for instance, we're building a new high school in peninsular Halifax, and closing two large buildings. QEH alone has 222,000 square feet of space and St. Pat's is not far behind that in terms of size. We'll be replacing that with a school that will be under 150,000 square feet with modern efficiencies. So the operating costs you would save on that alone will be very significant.
[10:15 a.m.]
The Department of Education is working with us now to do a review of all of our facilities, to see what our long-term capital requirements should be. It's our feeling that by consolidating many of our buildings with new school construction, we would offer a better program and make significant savings in the day-to-day operating.
So I think as a Legislature and as a Department of Education, looking at new school construction across the province is an economic generator, a way to save money, a way to provide better facilities, and you would cut down your operating expenses significantly and be able to put them back into the classroom.
MR. CHATAWAY: I think many people on the South Shore will very much appreciate a new high school around Exit 5, to alleviate some of the challenges that they've had to face at Sir John A. Certainly, that part of Nova Scotia is growing tremendously and
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guess what? When the kids get to high school there will be a school there for them, not an overcrowded, run-down building.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Olsen.
MS. OLSEN: We have several examples, in terms of the planned capital construction that will consolidate the schools. One is Robert Jamison down on the Eastern Shore; we have on the books a plan for a new South End elementary school and we'll be able to close and consolidate three elementary schools in South End Halifax. I think that is the kind of good planning to ensure that the schools are going to be in the right location, with the right facilities for our youngsters over the long haul, and also be able to provide better programs for our students.
MR. CHAIRMAN: There is slightly more than four minutes remaining.
The honourable member for Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank.
MR. GARY HINES: Mr. Chairman, I would like to congratulate Carolyn McFarlane on her term as chairman of the association. I found her very easy to work with, very co-operative, she removed the abrasiveness that was present in the past from negotiations with the school board, and I commend her on that and wish her well.
I would like to look at the inequities that exist in your day-to-day job of trying to do your work in HRM. The one that I come to first is supplementary education. I know when I say supplementary education that the urban members cringe, but I want them to know that I understand that the monies they have that we don't in suburban and rural HRM that, yes, you have it and it's duly yours but it causes serious problems for you, as a school board, in trying to determine your budgeting and spending. There is also a controversy over whether it's being spent for items that are identified as supplementary items and so on, so, again, that adds to the inequity and unfairness of the whole thing.
I wonder if one of you could identify or outline the difference in urban and the suburban/rural combination in terms of collecting supplementary education funding? In other words, give the group the source of the funding as it exists today and the inequity in sourcing the funding.
MS. OLSEN: We have $300-plus million that's coming from the general fund from the province to support education in Halifax, and we've got approximately $20 million that comes in supplementary funding, that is coming from the three jurisdictions. Richard will give a breakdown of where that $20 million is raised and where we're spending it because that's where the legislation requires we spend it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morris.
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MR. MORRIS: In the current fiscal year in the former City of Halifax, we are currently receiving approximately $12.5 million, which works out to about $930 per student. In the former City of Dartmouth, we are receiving about $6.5 million, which is about $550 per student, and in the former county/Bedford area, we are receiving $3.3 million, which is about $99 per student, so that is the amount of supplementary funding that we are receiving in this fiscal year.
MR. HINES: Now the source of that supplementary funding, why is there a greater portion in the urban area?
MR. MORRIS: A lot of it, I think, has to do with the history of supplementary funding in the former Halifax and Dartmouth areas. Prior to amalgamation there were different levels of supplementary funding in the former school boards of Halifax and Dartmouth and with amalgamation and the amendment to the Municipal Government Act, that provided certain guarantees with respect to the supplementary funding following amalgamation in 1996. It carried forward the different tax rates in the three areas and certainly, by way of example, in the county/Bedford, there was no supplementary funding at all up until just several years ago. So from amalgamation in 1996, to I think it was 2001, there was no funding at all in the county. Again, I think a lot of it is historical with respect to the different tax rates and there's a different commercial rate as well.
Within the Municipal Government Act the supplementary funding really only applies to the Halifax and Dartmouth areas where the commercial rate is two and a half times the residential rate. With the introduction of the rates in the county/Bedford just several years ago, those are treated, I guess, more like area rates where both the residential and commercial tax rate is the same. It's more historical and what's embedded in legislation that continues that difference in the tax contributions and tax rates.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. That brings to an end the time for the Progressive Conservative caucus. We will turn it back to the NDP caucus.
The honourable member for Halifax Chebucto.
MR. HOWARD EPSTEIN: You certainly got our attention with the comment that there were plans to close three elementary schools in South End Halifax. I think the member who choked the most was my colleague, the member for Halifax Citadel, so I'll leave that for him. I have some questions that relate directly to some of the comments by the Auditor General.
One of the observations was that there is no multi-year funding commitment at the moment from the province. I have to say, I didn't notice that this was an explicit part of the Hogg exercise, so could you just tell me if you expect this to be part of what comes out of his suggested revisions to the funding formula?
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Olsen.
MS. OLSEN: I'm going to ask Mr. Morris to respond more explicitly. Two things that we recommended to Mr. Hogg was one that the funding to school boards be on an academic year basis, rather than the fiscal year basis of the province, so that all of our planning can be from September to August and other jurisdictions in Canada have been able to accomplish that. In addition, we have been recommending that the extent to which we can get long-term funding or long-term commitment to funding, would be very beneficial to multi-year funding.
MR. EPSTEIN: Was that in your submission? I didn't see it in your submission to Mr. Hogg. The situation seems to be that the province has suggested that it would like to put in place multi-year funding commitments for the MUSH sector, that would include the schools, and it hasn't really proceeded, except perhaps with health and even then, it's a little trimmed. I'm wondering where things stand. Are you going to hear from Mr. Hogg about multi-year funding, do you know?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morris.
MR. MORRIS: Again, I would have to check to see whether or not we've included it in our submission. We certainly have had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Hogg on a couple of other occasions during the course of his review, aside from the official board presentation and we have certainly impressed upon him at those times, the importance of having multi-year funding commitments, and the importance of receiving our funding well in advance of the beginning of our fiscal year, so that we do have the opportunity to properly plan.
MR. EPSTEIN: So you're asking for it. Is there any indication from the province that this is likely to come forward very soon?
MR. MORRIS: We haven't heard any response.
MR. EPSTEIN: That's fine, thank you, I was just looking for an update. Okay, second point was that the Auditor General suggested that your school board would likely have a full system for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles in place by the 2005-06 financial year. Is that, in fact, still the timetable that you contemplate? Have you been able to take steps towards that? Where are we with respect to that, if you can tell me quickly?
MR. MORRIS: The responsibility for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles for school boards really is within the domain of the Department of Education. As individual school boards, we are mandated by the financial handbook that is prescribed by the minister. We certainly have every intention of being fully compliant with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, as soon as we know exactly what they are. We do know what they
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are for the most part but school boards, collectively, the directors of finance have been working with the senior executive director of finance for the Department of Education and we do have a small working group put together to look at the final couple of issues that still remain to be worked through before we can become fully compliant. My understanding is, of sitting on that committee with the rest of the members around the table, that we do intend to put together a time frame and an implementation plan to be fully compliant within that time frame.
MR. EPSTEIN: I have to say I didn't think there was a lot of doubt as to how GAAP actually applied in the school's context, but I'm glad to hear there has been some progress.
Let me ask about the reserves. I see you have $3 million in reserves. I find it interesting that there's a reserve item in a publicly-funded entity like the public school boards. Now, of course, it's only 1 per cent of your total budget that you've put aside in reserves, but I see in the footnotes to the financial statements as audited, that this money is apparently spoken for, it's allocated in some way, but there's no indication of exactly how it's allocated. It seems to be promised to particular schools or programs. Are there any details that you can give us quickly, or could you provide them, in writing, later?
MR. MORRIS: We can provide them in writing later. In June of this year, when the audited financial statements were presented to the school board for approval and acceptance, there was also a report brought forward for the board to consider how it wanted to manage and allocate the surplus. There was a fairly lengthy list of projects and initiatives, mainly at the school level, various programs and services, as well as some allocations for capital. The board did make a formal approval of how it wished to spend those monies, again, in this current year.
MR. EPSTEIN: Ms. McFarlane, has it been the habit of the HR School Board to always have a surplus? Has that always been the case?
MS. MCFARLANE: No, it always hasn't been the case but in the last couple of years, due to very good fiscal management, we have had a surplus. It's rather nice at the end of the day not to be concerned about being taken over by the province, but to have a surplus that we can put forward to projects for the upcoming year.
MR. EPSTEIN: This is interesting. Let me move to another aspect of my concerns. It has to do first with the funding formula, if I can just look at it. One of the implications, of course, of having an extremely detailed funding formula is that there is an implied commitment on the part of the board to spend the money according to the categories of the formula. I think I heard you, Ms. Olsen, say that nonetheless you reserved the right or opportunity to reallocate funds if you were able to make economies in certain categories. You gave the example of being able to deliver your transportation at less than the estimated costs and therefore reallocate that money into school libraries - a very commendable kind of
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example. On the other hand it could work the other way around, and I think this is a concern of parents.
To touch on a topic that I think has been extremely prickly for parents dealing with your board say, French immersion. If you have a certain allocation for French immersion, is there not an inducement for you to make economies by cutting back on your offerings there and then reallocate that money somewhere else? Can you explain why it is that that funding formula wouldn't operate that way?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Olsen.
MS. OLSEN: Well, for one thing, French immersion, at this point, other than the funds for the startup of a new class, is not funded explicitly under the funding formula. We fund French immersion classes and English classes out of the same general fund. But if we are starting up a new class, for the lead class - as they call it - we do get money, we are accountable for that and we can't have savings in that area to reallocate.
[10:30 a.m.]
One of the interesting provinces that we looked at in terms of how they allocate funding, was Ontario. They would have blocks of funding and classroom would be an expenditure and classroom would include teachers, it could include EPAs, textbooks; a whole range of factors would go into the block classroom. In Ontario, classroom money goes to the school board, it's labelled as such, and you can't spend it on anything else other than classroom - you can't spend it on transportation, you can't spend it on administration, you can't spend it on repairing driveways. So they have several categories where they're saying that funding as a block is dedicated to that purpose, but there are other categories, such as regional administration, where if you do create savings, you can allocate the savings from regional administration up into classroom, but you can't allocate classroom down into regional administration. So I think that kind of formula would work.
MR. EPSTEIN: Well, we'll see what Mr. Hogg has to say about it but it, of course, raises the question of what discretion is residually left for the school board in terms of allocating its budget.
Let me turn to another point. I heard a comment about one of the implications of new school construction with better facilities is that there is the opportunity for some money savings. That reminds me of an interesting point about our new high school, which doesn't have what I think many of us would consider better facilities than the existing two high schools that are going to be merged.
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What I would like to know is the financial position of the school board, if it has any, with respect to the closure of the two existing high schools on the peninsula. Am I right that the school board will not profit in any way from the closures of those schools, that is the capital assets, the land, the buildings, are not the property and won't be the property of the school board after closure, so you're not in a position to have any net windfall gains there, is that right?
MS. MCFARLANE: Unless you'd like to give them to us.
MR. EPSTEIN: But it's going to be, essentially, a question for HRM and the province, is that correct?
MS. OLSEN: That's correct.
MR. EPSTEIN: So, there's no expected expenditure coming from the school board with respect to the new high school until you actually get custody of it or possession of it and have to then be responsible for its ongoing maintenance and operation, is that right?
MS. OLSEN: That's correct.
MR. EPSTEIN: Okay, good, that's fine, I just wanted to check that. How are we doing for time, Mr. Chairman?
MR. CHAIRMAN: You have about five minutes left. I just wanted to remind the witnesses to wait for your microphone light to come on so that we have a transcript of what's being said.
MR. EPSTEIN: In that case, we can then move to what I think is really my main interest which is the quality of education that's offered to students. Although implied, it wasn't, I think, the word that was used in the submission to us this morning but I do see it in the centre of your diagram on the opening pages of your submission to Mr. Hogg and that is that the word "quality" is used. I have to say that many parents I deal with have expressed to me serious reservations about the quality of the education that's offered to their students.
I want to give you some examples of points that are seen by them as difficulties. One of them, of course, I've already referred to, it's the French Immersion Program. I know you're immersed in the details of this, all of you, you will know that there is a very difficult history here. The parents are very resentful with respect to how French immersion has been treated, and you will also know that for many parents, of all classes, French Immersion is seen as an enhancement of the programs that are normally offered. So it seems a very valuable thing and they're very concerned about how French immersion has been treated. That means moving it around, splitting it into the three schools right now, with the resultant dilution of the programs that are available and so on. I'm sure you know all of the points that
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have been made because they've been made to you on a regular basis. This is seen and widely commented upon negatively by parents in my constituency as a failing of the school board.
I want to give you a second example. The second example is the absence of the International Baccalaureate at the high school level, this is seen as a missed opportunity. It's seen and interpreted as indifference to high quality on the part of the school board, and a comparison adverse to the Halifax Regional School Board is often made with the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board, which offers this, and I believe it's offered in Bridgewater down the South Shore. Although both of those programs, I think, that do exist in the public school system are quite small, there's a general feeling that the HR School Board and all public school boards in Nova Scotia should have at least one high school in their districts that offers the International Baccalaureate. It's not there, it doesn't seem to be on the agenda, it's not moving ahead.
Let me give you a third example. A third example is the growth of private schools here. In my constituency just recently the Halifax Independent Elementary School opened. That's a very nice facility, I was happy to be there at the opening, I'm familiar with the people who are the teachers at the school. My own son went to it for one year, preschool, before he actually went into the public school system, and I'm familiar with the quality that is offered there. But parents are continually sending their kids, at great expense to themselves, to the private school system when they are already paying their taxes and aren't getting what they feel is the high quality in the public school system.
Now, I have a couple of other things but I know I'm running out of time in terms of this but I just want to emphasize to you that parents aren't just looking for education, they're looking for high-quality education because they see for their families, for their children, that the economic way forward is through as much education as their children can absorb. As provincial level politicians I have to say that the only way forward for Nova Scotia, as a whole, economically, is for every child in Nova Scotia to get as much high-quality education as they can possibly get - and we see problems. Whether they are purely attributable to money and the absence of money, because I see the funding formula and concern with funding formula purely in the context of a concern over inadequacy of the pie. How you divvy up the pie is of vital concern only if the pie is too small. If the pie is big enough, people are less anxious about how it gets divvied up.
So it may be that it's a money question, if may be that it's something else. But I have to tell you that parents are very concerned. Your comments please.
MR. CHAIRMAN: As a technique for extending the time available, it's a very good one, but I would just suggest the witnesses not to feel the need to respond to every single thing that Mr. Epstein has just said but if you have any comments you wish to make, please feel free now.
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MS. OLSEN: First, I'm pleased to report that four of our high schools applied to offer the International Baccalaureate program and we are looking forward to addressing that other end or that other spectrum.
With respect to the French Immersion Program, we've heard the concerns that you've heard and I can assure you that the Halifax Regional School Board probably offers more French immersion than almost most of the boards in the country, in terms of just the numbers of students being involved in the French Immersion Program. We also think that the program needs to be strongly rooted in language acquisition, language development, and it needs to be inequitable programs so that all students have the opportunity to get all the credits they need both in the English language component of the program to go on to where they want to go in terms of post-secondary education and be able to get their French immersion certificates. I will turn it over to Mr. Buck to talk to you about how we've structured that aspect of the program to create the equity across our system.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Buck.
MR. BUCK: French immersion is a very complicated and deeply-rooted program in people's hearts. As a former principal of a French immersion high school, we high school principals got together and looked at the problems association with French immersion programming. I'm not going to talk about French immersion for awhile because it's really rooted in the non-French immersion where the issues come with regard to the offering of courses.
In Nova Scotia students are required to have 18 credits to graduate from high school; 13 of those credits are what we call compulsory courses. Some of them are category compulsory courses but there are 13 of the 18 that are compulsory. Most of our high school students are able to take 21 courses, so in actual fact they have eight courses that are not prescribed by the Department of Education as required for graduation.
If you are in a French Immersion Program, you add an additional set of compulsory courses, the three French language arts and you have the requirement of nine total credits, so you add another six credits that you have to hit into that. So what we have tried to do is to structure the program so that as many of those six as possible are in the compulsory category, so they're in the 13 category rather than outside of the 13 category. So in actual fact, it's going to take a couple of years of transition, but when the courses are stabilized students will actually have more options, within the 21, to take a variety of courses, because more of their French immersion courses will count as two credits, in terms of it's a French immersion credit but it's also a compulsory credit. So that's the route that we're trying to proceed with that.
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As Carole mentioned, we're also trying to go more with language-based courses, rather than pure science courses as such, in terms of trying to get more of the language development. So that's kind of the direction we're taking.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I would now like to turn it back over to the Liberal caucus.
The honourable member for Halifax Citadel.
MR. DANIEL GRAHAM: Mr. Chairman, just as a matter of clarification, can I have a signal on when my time is likely to be up and whether it will be 16 minutes?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure, in light of the technique Mr. Epstein just used, I'll certainly be very easy on you when we get to the 16-minutes-mark, which by the clock on that wall will be at about 10:58 a.m.
MR. GRAHAM: Thank you for appearing on this very important subject. I want to not only thank you but applaud you for a number of the efforts that you've undertaken over the last short while and the longer while, since Ms. Olsen sort of dropped the gauntlet and said that we will become the most improved school board in Canada over the next five years. I look forward to that result, I would welcome it quite enthusiastically and I think we should declare a civic holiday if she achieves that over the next while because that, from my perspective, reflects the level of importance for this particular issue. I also want to applaud you for focusing on the issue of funding, both generally and specifically, for you school board.
In the limited time that's available to me, I'd like to focus principally on funding questions. My questions will break down into three general categories: one, adequacy of funding; two, consequences of low funding; and three, the funding formula issues. Before I do, let me just touch on two other things.
I would like to associate myself with the comments of the member for Halifax Chebucto with respect to the issue of academic excellence. This is a matter I hear more chronically than any other single issue when I knock on the doors of the constituents in my community. There appears to be an exodus from the public education system, some of it may not be warranted, to private schools and in some respects, that relates to the geographic availability in the constituency that I represent, of those other options I appreciate.
I would make one other comment and that relates to the consolidated elementary school. We have known for a year and a half that that has been on the books and we recognize the need to enhance the facilities that have been there in some cases for many generations, not just many decades. At the same time there is an anxiety in that community
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about taking the intimacy away from average-sized elementary schools and chunking kids who are in Primary into something bigger.
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Because we have a limited time here I'm going to make some assertions and if you disagree with those then please feel free to go back, retrace my steps and take exception with some of those, but I think there's a lot to get on the table here at the outset. I would like to begin with the funding for Nova Scotia.
In the Halifax Regional School Board the funding per student is the lowest in the province. Secondly, funding per student in Nova Scotia is the lowest in Canada. Thirdly, funding per student in Nova Scotia is the lowest of any single place in North America. Fourthly, I came across statistics just last week that suggested that four years ago the States of New Jersey and New York, for example, were funding on a per student basis at twice the level that we currently fund our students in Nova Scotia. I think it's revealing, the questions, and, frankly, the narrow orientation of the question that came from the caucus members representing the Progressive Conservative Party.
[10:45 a.m.]
In the funding that has happened over the last five years, we've barely kept up with inflation on a province-wide basis, and this is in a province that is struggling with the lowest scholastic scores in all of Canada. The pot of money is one that people talk about from time to time, but I would frankly assert that the pot is really a bowl. It's often been said that when it comes to education, excellence costs but over the long term, mediocrity costs even more. I would suggest that negligence costs the most. I would assert that funding for students in Nova Scotia generally and particularly in the Halifax Regional School Board is approaching - if not there - a negligent level.
My question for Ms. McFarlane is whether or not you agree that the funding on a per student basis in this school board is at a negligent level?
MS. MCFARLANE: That's a tough one to answer. Knowing what we used to do, I would say 13 years ago, to help kids who are falling through the cracks and just needed that nudge to get back up, and what we are doing today for those same kids, our level has moved up to a higher need. We are letting those kids fall through the cracks, quite frankly. There aren't the dollars. When you look at the number of high needs kids, special needs kids who are in our system today compared to 13 years ago or 10 years ago, there are more of them, and some of them are much higher needs.
That's one of the things we'd like addressed in the funding formula, because we feel that you can break down, into three different groups, the number of special needs kids, the level. Some children may have a stutter, some children may be almost on life-support systems and they're in our school systems. We feel that there should be some breakdown on funding.
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Whether it's negligent, I can't tell you, Mr. Graham. I think we're trying to do the very best with the dollars we have. We're trying to challenge all our children to fulfill their full potential. I'm not sure we're accomplishing that, but we're really trying to do that. Does that answer what you wanted to hear?
MR. GRAHAM: It's really up to you and your interpretation of where we are. I heard you in the earlier question-and-answer period express what I interpreted to be extreme frustration with the circumstances on adequacy. I share that frustration. I don't know whether it's at the same level of concern overall. Surely in the jurisdiction that gives less to our students than any other jurisdiction in North America, we've got to be approaching negligence.
MS. MCFARLANE: The unfortunate part is with supplementary funding, when you throw that into the mix, former Halifax kids do better than the former Bedford/county kids. That's not right either. I do think that there's inadequacy in funding. I'm not sure where the money would come from, if you look at the province, but I would like to see education have a higher priority on the funding scale. I realize health is way up there, and it's like a sponge, you can keep adding water to it. I would like to see more per student funding, and I agree, when we are the very lowest, in HRM, across North America, that doesn't say a lot, does it?
We're still producing good students, with good marks, but we're losing some of our students, too. We really feel that there are programs out there that we would like to put in place to help kids, and we're not getting them in.
MR. GRAHAM: I appreciate that we are producing good students, and we have terrific teachers in the system, and we have great administrators.
MS. MCFARLANE: No question.
MR. GRAHAM: At the same time, the cold facts are that the scholastic scores of the students in Nova Scotia are the lowest in Canada. It's a complicated issue, direct cause and effect, but to ignore the fact that there is some relationship between these two issues is to continue to stick our head in the sand. Some of the consequences of this, I would suggest,
and I would like to talk about these, is that in your school board, for example, just on the funding question alone, when we complain about whether we are going to have a universal public health system, there is a question about whether or not we have a universally-accessible public education system when we think about the user fees, which I understand total somewhere between $16 million and $20 million per student for a variety of things that I'm familiar with in my own home, and that includes things that are as straightforward as Kleenex. Students are being asked for pay for Kleenex in the schools. Replacement of mats, refrigerators, all of those other things that you would expect to be part of the public education system is something that is being expected to be provided on a private basis.
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I would like to turn to some of the consequences specifically in this year's budget. I would like to bring you to some line items where funding has been reduced. I want to get to the question of whether or not this is the result of the failure to provide an overall increase that meets the demands that you need.
Lunch and bus monitors are down $50,000 this year; school technology is down $77,000; gym and safety inspections is down $46,800; classroom supplies and equipment is down $960,000, almost $1 million; custodial services down $633,000; maintenance services down $1.5 million according to the figures that we were provided in advance of today's meeting.
I am just wondering, what are the consequences of this? I appreciate that we increased in some areas and cut in others, but there is a sense - and I got this at a parent-teacher meeting just the other day at one of the local junior highs - that some of the curriculum programming is, in fact, being cut and there are fewer resources going into the classroom. All of this creates a disturbing picture of inadequate funding here, specifically. Could you comment on that?
MS. MCFARLANE: Could I turn that over to Richard, or would you prefer me to comment on that?
MR. GRAHAM: Either one, or Ms. Olsen, who may be responsible for the overall budget.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morris.
MR. MORRIS: Certainly, that is a long list of changes within certain components of our budget and I can provide detailed explanations for each of those line items at a later date, if the list is provided. But, certainly, on an overall basis there have been certain line items that have been reduced that are tied directly to provincial funding. So, for example, in our capital, the grant was reduced for our capital so, therefore, our expenditures are reduced. There was a reduction in funding for the Information Economy Initiative extension, which is computers in schools. So, again, we only spend what we are provided with in terms of a grant so you would see a reduction in the expenditure.
There have also been some reallocations within the budget so certain line items - you know, the board is looking at how the budget is constructed and some expenditures are moved to another area so you would see a reduction in one line but then you would have to look at the other part of the budget to see where it was moved.
In certain cases, there actually have been some cost savings. So, for example, we are a party to a provincial agreement with respect to communication services with Aliant. There was a new contract negotiated last year which resulted in cost savings in our telephone costs
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So, again, you would see a reduction in costs of telephones, both within our schools and within our offices, that may look like it's a reduction in expenditures but, really, it's a result of cost savings. There have been, again, some line items within our budget where there have been cost savings or efficiencies, not a reduction in service but, again, just efficiencies and cost savings.
Going through the budget process, you know, there are explanations for expenditure reductions. Some are a result of funding reductions, some are reallocations, some are cost savings, some are based on historical expenditures on a particular line item. If those lines haven't always been spent to that level, again, they have been reduced to provide funds to reallocate to the board's priorities that have been identified in the business planning process. Certainly, that is one area where we went through the process last Winter of trying to find funds to redirect to the board's priorities.
MR. GRAHAM: You commented earlier on the challenges with respect to capital maintenance. This is a common theme that we hear from the universities, as well, for example, and the community college suffered this for a long period of time. We just didn't keep up our buildings, they were practically falling down around our students.
I notice that maintenance services are down $1.5 million, but I would like to focus principally on the classroom. Classroom supplies and equipment are down almost $1 million. That's one issue. I have heard that there have been some cutbacks, not at the core of the curriculum but cutbacks in curriculum, and I continue to have concerns raised about the watering down of the curriculum offered to high school students at St. Patrick's High School in the French Immersion Program.
May I assume that if you had more money, the students in French immersion would likely be offered the array of courses that they were offered before, that the cutbacks in classroom supplies and equipment wouldn't be at $960,000, and we'd be taking care of the maintenance of our schools better than we are right now?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morris, Ms. Olsen. I'm not sure who is going to take that one.
MR. MORRIS: Certainly, if we had the opportunity within the budgeting process and within the funding that we receive, if we had the opportunity to reallocate to areas of high priority, that obviously is our objective. Within our business planning process that we do undertake on an annual basis, the board does identify its goals and then its priorities for the fiscal year upcoming. Through a detailed review process, we do try to assess where every dollar is spent and redirect it to those areas of the highest priorities.
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MS. OLSEN: I think it's a short answer to your question. Certainly if we had more money, there absolutely would be more money allocated to the maintenance of our schools. That's one area that we would like to see a major improvement in. In terms of supplies and equipment, if there was more money I would like to see more support directly going to schools. One of the major areas that I think is going to be critical for all Nova Scotia to look at is libraries. We just do not support libraries, in terms of books or staff. Our libraries are closed. If we didn't have volunteers or parent volunteers in our libraries, in many instances the libraries would never be open to our students. To me, that's very critical.
The other question that you asked was about French immersion and whether we would be able to offer more course selection to high schools, like St. Pat's. That will be a major philosophical and educational debate, as to the range of courses that we need to be able to offer. Clearly, having more resources for the classrooms and more support for the classrooms gives us more options, but I can't say that advanced chemistry and French would necessarily be offered at St. Pat's.
MR. GRAHAM: Could I just ask, you asserted earlier in questions from the member for Halifax Chebucto that we may provide more French immersion than any school board in the country. Would you be able to provide the committee with support for that assertion?
MS. OLSEN: Absolutely.
MR. GRAHAM: My final is that we rank ninth out of 10 in provinces for support for things like music and physical education, and I would like your comments on the board's position with respect to the auditorium and the gymnasium for the new high school on the peninsula.
[11:00 a.m.]
MS. OLSEN: You may know my background. I was a music teacher, at one point in my career and life, so I have a very strong belief that the enrichment in physical education and the arts is very critical to the well-being and the well-roundedness of our program that we're able to offer to our students. I believe that being able to have the additional gym and an auditorium in the new high school will absolutely enhance the quality of education that we can provide for our students. I was pleased to learn, last night, that the HRM has decided to fund the second gymnasium, and I'm very appreciative that that in fact is the case. We're having ongoing dialogue with HRM, the Department of Education and our school community to see what options are available, to see whether or not there's any way that we can provide the auditorium in the new high school.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I would now like to invite Ms. McFarlane, your last hurrah, your last chance to speak to this committee as chairman of the Halifax Regional School Board, if you wish to make any closing comments.
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MS. MCFARLANE: I would like to thank you all for inviting us here this morning. It's been an interesting morning, with good debate taking place. It's always a pleasure to see so many faces that I know. I guess over my years I've gotten to know a lot of MLAs through different things in different ways. Education has always been near and dear to my heart. Growing up through PTAs, et cetera, and working in the schools and knowing what the needs are, that's what started me on this.
Our children are our future, and if we look after them we will have a good future, but if we're constantly cutting them off at the knees and not providing what we should be providing for our kids to develop to their full potential, our society isn't going in the right direction. Another issue that we've talked about on different occasions is silos; we're working a little bit together with Health and the teen health centres or the youth health centres, but Community Services, all of those things all interact with families, as we do. It's not just a widget that comes to our building, it's a child with a background. I think that we need to look more at working more co-operatively. With so few dollars, everybody is protecting their own little silo.
I think we need to be constantly looking in that direction, but I think we need to look at what is the best thing for the students and to try to educate them as best we can. It takes a whole village to educate a child. It's an old proverb, but I think it stands in good stead around this table and around any level of government. On that I will close, and I would like to thank you all for having us. I've enjoyed it, thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to remind our guests that if any information is forthcoming from the board in response to questions that have been raised here today that it be given to the clerk of committees in order that it can be distributed to all members rather than giving information directly to any particular member.
On that note I would like to ask the committee if there's any item requiring the attention of the full committee before we adjourn? If not, a motion to adjourn?
MR. GRAHAM: I so move.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
This meeting of the Public Accounts Committee is adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 11:03 a.m.]
