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The high cost of non-transparency
On Thursday, People for Education released a report documenting the fees that Ontario high schools are charging their students for a wide variety of things, including course fees and charges for extra-curricular activities and optional programming. On Friday, the Ministry of Education released guidelines on school fees. This is a remarkably speedy response from the education bureaucracy! However, that’s not what I want to focus on.
First, a personal tale. Back in the 1990’s, one of my children attended a public school that was rolling in money. In addition to extorting money from the parents for the usual stuff like school photos, pop machines, mandatory $1.00 dances (in school time), fund-raisers, yearbook fees - it seemed as if there was a new request at least once a week - the school also bussed the kids to Toronto twice a year to see a musical (at approximately $75 a pop), plus there was an annual ski trip to Quebec (at approximately $350 a pop) for the approximately 200 grade 8 students. I’m guessing that the school took in between $150,000 and $200,000 from these money-making activities every year. That’s a lot of money.
It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that the school should have been accountable for this money. Along with a member of the school council, I asked to see a record of income and expenses, but the principal refused to provide this information. My friend and I did not pursue it, because of course we were powerless, but I believe that the principal was in the wrong. Even if no one was stealing from the school’s money pot, and of course I have no indication that anyone was, the principal should have prvoided a scrupulous accounting of the fund-raised money in order to ensure that no one was exposed to temptation. With huge amounts of unaccountable money sloshing around in some 4,800 schools in Ontario, the chances are very high that someone somewhere has his or her hand in the cookie jar.
So, for what it’s worth, that’s my take on the People for Education report. Yes, certainly make fund-raising fair - but go further: require every school to publish financial statements scrupulously documenting how much money was received and what it was spent on.
Not much has change, taking into consideration the latest guidelines on fees from the ministry’s office. Today I bumped into something in news article regarding surpluses in the Nova Scotia school boards.
“Department of Education released a tally of the accumulated surpluses at the province’s eight school boards. The total, as of last March, was $45 million.
“It goes to show that the budgets that certain school boards are getting are more than adequate,” education minister Ramona Jennex was quoted in the Halifax paper.
The Strait board had the second lowest surplus in the province.
Beaton said the board’s accumulated surplus is currently $6.457 million.
“That number includes all of the money that’s sitting in school-based accounts – school bank accounts for student council or whatever student activities are going on out there,” he said.
“The money that’s in school accounts we have to account for, but it’s not at the board’s discretion to spend.”
He added money in the school accounts is about $1 million of the $6 million surplus.”
http://www.thecasket.ca/top-news/srsb-budget-surplus-not-free-to-spend/
Could it be, that the education ministry has not power to change things, since the fees raised by schools, are technically considered cash in the board’s financial statements. Producing a guideline on fees, is not the same thing as introducing legislation to regulate school fees. The first, is just that a guideline, and the second, is legally binding for the boards to follow.
So would it not follow, that the school board and schools are not legally obligated to published detailed financial statements, under the present governing and structure of public education? There only responsibility and duty, is to the ministry, and not the general public. I find it rather curious that NS school boards are carrying surpluses, and it is not small potatoes either. Six million dollar surplus for a rural board is an oddity, when this particular board is always demanding more money, and cutting educational services at the same time.
My question is, does the school own the money, or is it the school board? If own by the school board, this could account for the differences in fees being charge in one school, and the much lower fees being charge in another school. Could it be, that boards are robbing Paul to pay Peter, to address the equity problems of the school, that have large population of students who cannot pay the fees? Could it be, this is the reason why principals refuse to divulge the accounting statements, because it may show that part of the fund raising monies and fees collections, are being given to other schools?