Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus,
The University of British Columbia
[permission to reproduce granted if
authorship is acknowledged]
The
roll-out of emergency funding in response to the pandemic was accomplished more
quickly in Canada than in the US because of our Westminster-stye of government.
But provincial governments are beginning to issue warnings that the COVID
emergency funding will not continue indefinitely. Ontario’s Deputy Minister of
Education wrote a cautionary letter to Directors of Education (Superintendents
in other jurisdictions) in school boards throughout the province with the
subject line “2021-2022 School Year.” She wrote about “the extraordinary steps
that school boards and their staff have taken to safely support the learning
journey for Ontario students in what continues to be unprecedented times.”
She points
out that the actions of boards and their staff were made possible in part
because the Government of Ontario disbursed more that $CDN 1.6 billion dollars
to support the safe reopening of schools. The letter enumerates the hiring of
7,000 “one-time additional staff” in every group of personnel from principals
to custodians, the latter indispensable to ensuring the health and safety in
schools.
Having
recounted the Provincial Government’s assistance, the letter turns to its main
purpose. She reminds Directors that the boards they lead reported to the
Ministry that there had been an enrollment decline of approximately 40,000
students attributed to COVID. The letter recaps that the Ontario Government
helped to mitigate the impact of the decline by providing $400 million in “one-time
stabilization funding” that enabled boards “to maintain teaching and education
worker positions and a high standard of programming.”
The fourth
paragraph advises that in planning for the coming school years “school boards
should take a cautious approach in their planning given the uncertainty in
enrolment and adjust accordingly for the probable loss of one-time funding that
was provided for 2020-2021” The letter
was prompted because labour agreements require staffing decisions to be made
this Spring for the Fall. That school boards will layoff “more than the typical
number” of staff is understandable.
I recount
this announcement because similar letters will likely be issued across the
country regardless of the political stripe of the governments. Provinces and
territories do not have the revenue to maintain emergency and stabilization
funding. And, although low interest rates make borrowing less expensive, such
borrowing would be politically risky.
The good
news is school boards that have strategic educational plans and regularly
evaluate their program will be better able to adjust to the withdrawal of
emergency and stabilization funding. Having a plan allows boards to prioritize
the allocation of scarce dollars. Regular evaluation enables them to know which
programs are effective, efficient, and economical. That knowledge enables them
to know which programs might be eliminated in times when funds are limited.
The bad
news is that most schools boards do not have strategic educational plans that provide
a reference point and help boards to prioritize spending. Most school boards do
not evaluate programs, leaving decisions about program reductions subject to anecdotal
information about their effectiveness and efficiency.
Boards
facing immediate decisions about the allocation of scarce resources do not have
the time to develop strategic education plans and evaluation frameworks to help
them make the difficult decisions they are facing. But it is not too late for boards
to develop plans and evaluation frameworks that will guide their long-term
planning and their responses to exigencies like the ones they are currently facing.
Resources are always scarce. Even when they increase, there is never enough
funding for everything one would like to do for students. It is better to have
a strategic educational plan and evaluation framework than to take the
“journey” without a road map.