School board funding formula the problem

EDITOR'S NOTE: Community Matters is a weekly Op/Ed column which invites local residents intimately connected to issues of local/regional import to share their insight and ideas.

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School Advisory Councils and a Stakeholder Group in the Bridgetown school catchment area have been working hard to meet an April 1 deadline for their reaction and recommendations in response to the Annapolis Valley Regional School Board’s (AVRSB) Facilities Review Report. Essentially, we have been told enrolments in Annapolis County schools will decline by 25 per cent over the next six years, as compared to a decline of only nine per cent for the board as a whole -- and this situation must be addressed.

Specific to Bridgetown, the board contends in its “preliminary” school capital prioritization list that Bridgetown Elementary School is rapidly approaching the end of its life cycle and is thus “neither feasible nor practical to renovate”. Further, the board suggests that rather than build a new elementary school in Bridgetown, it might be more practical and feasible to relocate elementary students to an appropriately renovated Bridgetown Regional High School in a Primary to Grade 12 or Primary to Grade 8 configuration. In regards to what happens to the Grade 9 to 12 students in the latter arrangement, the board offers no suggestions although it is not difficult to read between the lines. Details of the BRHS, BRES and LCES School Advisory Council responses and a draft of the Stakeholders Group response to these issues will be shared at a public information meeting 7 p.m. March 11 at the Royal Canadian Legion in Bridgetown.

As the SACs and Stakeholder Group poured over the school board data, pondered program delivery issues and analyzed the information provided about the condition of buildings, one common realization has emerged. The AVRSB does not receive its fair share of provincial education dollars, a condition that further exacerbates the situation that we find ourselves in, here in Annapolis County.

Provincial and municipal funding to school boards in Nova Scotia is distributed by formula. To a large extent, the formula generates revenues for school boards in various categories driven by student enrolments. The core funding components of the formula provide money for programs, special education, support services, property services, transportation, board governance and administration, school administration, and textbooks. These core components allocate most of the available dollars and appear to be consistently applied to all boards in relation to their respective enrolments. However, two of the eight school boards in Nova Scotia, the AVRSB and the Halifax Regional School Board, do not qualify for funding from two components of the formula, the Enrolment Supplement and a Class Size Supplement, valued together at more than 20 million dollars.

The Enrolment Supplement is provided to offset the effects of enrolment decline in a school board that exceeds an average of two per cent per year over a five-year running average. This provision does not recognize the extreme disparity in school enrolment within a school board such as AVRSB where the Annapolis County schools enrolment is declining at more than twice (4.2 per cent) the eligible rate for supplementary funding. In effect, the AVRSB is denied supplementary funding and is expected to use money from the core funding components to sustain schools with declining enrolments when other boards in Nova Scotia with declining enrolments are not.

The Class Size Supplement provides an additional $10.6 million to school boards who have average class sizes below the provincial average. AVRSB does not qualify for this funding. When the baseline was established for Class Size Supplementary funding, the Annapolis Valley and Halifax Regional School boards had the highest average class sizes in Nova Scotia. For AVRSB, efforts to maximize the benefit of education dollars in the past have created an uneven playing field in relation to current eligibility for additional funding from this pool money.

A third pool of money, a type of top up fund to help school boards bridge year-to-year budget shortfalls, amounts to more than $53 million annually. Although these dollars are not included in the formula funding, they are allocated proportionally according to the formula. This extra funding further increases or compounds money for boards who qualify for the two categories of supplementary funding.

A fair share of Enrolment and Class Size supplementary funding alone would provide several million additional dollars to the AVRSB annual budget. This amount of money would have a significant impact on the board’s ability to maintain schools with declining enrolments for years to come. If the Province of Nova Scotia is truly committed to achieving its sustainable prosperity goals for all Nova Scotians, it will re-examine the mechanisms by which resources are distributed and ensure that all parts of the province are able to participate fully.



ART MARSHALL is the Mayor of Bridgetown and a retired high school principal.