Dirks accused of taking ‘ heavy- handed’ approach with CBE on budget
Education Minister Gordon Dirks should look in the mirror before ordering Calgary’s public school board to get its own fiscal house in order, opposition parties said Wednesday.
The Calgary Board of Education recently released a budget forecast that suggests the district faces a $ 29.3- million shortfall and that every student in the city’s public school system would be affected.
Dirks, a former CBE trustee and chair, fired back Tuesday, saying he needs to be convinced the board has “turned over every stone” — including cutting to spending to “everything not directly related to front- line classroom work” — to address its deficit before he would approve its $ 1.2- billion budget. “I would not approve a CBE budget unless I was absolutely convinced that they had taken every step that they need to take,” he added.
His remarks drew rebuke Wednesday from political opponents. “That’s a heavy- handed approach by a government that really doesn’t give, although it says it gives, authority to the elected boards,” Liberal Leader David Swann said in an interview. “It’s all about control at that level. Albertans are tired of that kind of heavyhanded, top- down approach.”
Dirks, who is running again in Calgary- Elbow, was not available to comment Wednesday.
His press secretary David Heyman said Wednesday that with the province facing lower oil revenues, all organizations that depend on government funding must sharpen their pencils and find efficiencies.
“The CBE had a large accumulated surplus last year, which it acquired by not spending all its government grants,” Heyman said in a statement. “The CBE has the flexibility to make judicious use of its accumulated surplus and contingency funds in order to ensure front- line needs are met first.”
Speaking at a rally in Calgary, NDP Leader Rachel Notley said school boards across Alberta are already “stretched to their limits” and would be strained further this fall when an additional 12,000 kids enter the system, but won’t receive any new teachers.
The provincial budget released in March sees full- time equivalent teacher numbers remain flat at 33,500, and it requires school boards to cut non- teaching costs by three per cent, or roughly 244 full- time jobs.
“They say our strained education system will just have to make due,” Notley said. “But here’s what the PCs can find more money for: fancy golf courses, corporate tax giveaways and public relations.”
Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark, who is running against Dirks in Calgary- Elbow, said it is disingenuous for the education minister to demand the board cut spending when he is partly responsible for CBE’s current fiscal predicament.
“It was Gordon Dirks who hamstrung
Albertans are tired of that kind of heavy- handed topdown approach.
the CBE by signing the lease on the new headquarters downtown,” Clark said. “He needs to take personal accountability for putting the CBE in the position they’re in with high overhead administrative costs.”
The Herald obtained leaked documents last fall that showed Dirks pushed for approval of a new headquarters for the CBE when he was a trustee. The board unanimously approved his motion at a 2008 meeting to approve a two- decade lease for the new central office. That $ 285- million agreement saw the CBE pay $ 12.5 million last year to lease the 10- storey building.