Governance costs are justifiable

Re: $93 million spent to govern, administer schools (SP, March 20)

The SP has drawn a line in the sand: when we pay administrators and board members, we are spending money on our students; when we pay teachers and principals, we are investing in our students. One can be tampered with; the other is sacred.

The inspiration for this rationale is Education Minister Don Morgan’s statement that teachers are “the ones that are doing the front-line work and are the ones that should get our support.”

Morgan is spot-on when he says students and teachers should get our support. But his inference is that trustees and administrators, who are tasked with governance — such as setting policy to ensure we know what we are doing with our students and their teachers — are costly.

Reporters Ashley Martin and Morgan Modjeski imply that tens of millions of dollars could be saved if there were amalgamation and removal of boards and administrators. They take pains to enunciate the actual salaries of the highest paid officers to make them look like money gobblers, while teachers are cast as front-line heroes.

Education requires good governance. To deny volunteer board members stipend and mileage costs, is hardly what we ought to argue. And to think of them as gravy, is not where our paying society ought to be going.

We pay our cabinet ministers well, and they are our governance layer. We pay our administrators well, and they are our educational governance layer. Do we want to reduce the salaries of either one of these governance layers? Jake Buhler, Saskatoon