No more boogie man

We may be on a break, but we're still keeping our eyes on the education debate.  Expect things to heat up again in 2011.

In the meantime, I thought I would share an opinion piece by Charles Cirtwell, President & CEO of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies.  This piece appeared recently on allnovascotia.com and is reprinted here with the permission of Mr. Cirtwell.

Rhonda

Can we have something besides the boogie man please?


Here we go again. A “planning exercise” is underway where the province has asked the school boards to tell them what a 22% reduction in funding would look like “on the ground”. The School Boards have dutifully trotted out the fear factor. Closed schools, grown over sports fields, unemployed teachers, abandoned children, tattered books, forty kids jammed into a tiny room with a wet behind the ears graduate six months out of teachers college.

How disappointing. This government was supposed to be different. They were not supposed to resort to tried and true tactics of scare the hell out of taxpayers then just go ahead and keep taxing, then spending.

Here is an alternative suggestion. Let’s actually talk about what a 22% cut could look like. Sure, if you want to put the classroom focused horror movie cuts on the table, fine – but let’s have some other scenarios too. How much do we save with two or three boards instead of nine? What about the option of closing half empty schools? What about reducing or eliminating other non-classroom expenditures at the Board or Department level. I am sure those working inside the system see waste every day, we all do, no matter where we work, let’s give them a platform to make those observations known publicly.

And, instead of talking just cuts, let’s talk about ways to raise 22% in new revenues. How much of our excess school space could be rented to government agencies or third parties delivering services that our kids and communities need? The Edmonton city centre project had social services, police community office, big brothers big sisters and daycares of all types renting space in schools. How much could we “save” by renting space from ourselves instead of developers? How much could we “earn” by competing in the marketplace for the right kinds of tenants?

Renting excess space isn’t the only way to increase revenues for education by the way. School vouchers also demonstrably increase total education spending while increasing total employment and reducing average class sizes. If we leverage our limited tax dollars with the limited means of average Nova Scotians, we actually have more money to spend. And vouchers are a better means to access that money than simply raising taxes. In return for voluntarily increasing their share of the cost of education, the taxpayer gets more and more immediate value in return. They get more and more accountable education options and we get a more cost conscious, more high performance, and more affordable education system. And vouchers, like taxes, can be tied to income, so those needing more, can get more.

Of course, with vouchers comes two “four letter” words, choice and profit.

So let’s talk about profit. We regulate profit everyday in other industries, so why not regulate “acceptable profit” in education. For that matter, it isn’t as if the unearned profit in education is retained by taxpayers. We deliver that profit, in the form of higher average wages and generous pensions, to teachers and other public servants every day. Education profit also go to the teacher’s union in the form of mandatory union dues, not all of which is used for the purposes of professional development or collective bargaining. Perhaps cutting that profit is an area of potential saving we need to explore?

As for choice, here is a question I would like us to explore. Nova Scotia is a global leader in distance education. Why isn’t urban choice a good thing for rural schools? If we had choice, urban students could be enrolled in world beating distance classes delivered from almost empty rural schools, giving them and their neighbouring communities, a fighting chance.