Sports Shows Way to Increase Local School Funding

Politics is the art of going beyond disagreements to solve problems by compromise and innovation. With respect to school funding in B.C., we could use some creativity in our politics.

Although November's Supreme Court of Canada decision on B.C. school funding that reinstated class sizes and other services has bought us some time, it has not resolved the issue of local autonomy over the schools our various communities will have. We can anticipate that — for good reasons — voters in some districts wish to invest in their schools beyond the B.C. average. Let’s work to resolve this area of conflict.

If local voters want to tax themselves to pay for better streets or parks or schools, why shouldn’t they have that choice? As a matter of fact, that method has been tried in B.C. and elsewhere and has its own set of problems. We are told it's a dangerous choice with respect to schools, because such variation leads to inequality of opportunity for children and advantages for those who live where the tax base is large.

There is an analogy worth studying in major league sports. How do you keep wealthy market teams from buying all the talent and titles? The National Football League and the National Hockey League impose hard salary caps. A team can spend up to a firm ceiling. This is parallel to the status quo in provincial school funding. A district should spend its allocation, but cannot raise other public money. It's a hard cap.

But is the cost of delivering public schools the same everywhere in the province? And what about choice on the part of voters? Is a hard cap really the best answer, or is it a "one size fits all" loss of local control?

The National Basketball Association, the Canadian Football League and Major League Baseball employ a flexible method of creating equal opportunity. By employing a soft cap and a luxury tax, their teams may exceed the cap but must pay substantial penalties if they do. The luxury tax ranges from about 20 per cent to 350 per cent and, sometimes, a loss of draft choices.

Applying this thinking to B.C., if Vancouver wished to raise a supplement of $25 million for its schools, the Vancouver School Board could be required to pay an additional amount to a provincial school fund. These luxury tax millions could then be distributed to school districts that do not exceed the provincial cap. In this way, the field would be made more level while increasing voter choice.

Activist school trustees like those recently serving on the Vancouver School Board may be reflecting a financial reality. That is, the price for quality may be higher for public schools in urban settings. Cities are cultural centres, but simple experiences children thrive on may be hard to come by. Cities compensate for loss of natural settings with museums and parks and outdoor education.

A small town is a comfortable, personal world for a child, with a comprehensible scale and a network of familiar, friendly faces. Cities depend on neighbourhood schools and community centres to scale down their anonymity. Cities may favour the developmental needs of adults much better than children.

Furthermore, a disproportionate share of children in need cluster in urban districts. Their special challenges include language, poverty and homelessness. Cities are a first stop for newcomers and a last stop for many on the fringes of society. Twenty-five per cent of kindergarten to Grade 12 students in Vancouver public schools are designated as English-as-a-second-language students. Sixty per cent do not speak English at home, seven per cent are special-education learners and 16 per cent participate in school meal programs.

Whether their motives are economic or communitarian or both, if the citizens of a school district wish to levy taxes to give their children a better start and to encourage healthy families, there is a way to support this choice equitably. If we need to protect against unfairness, there are safeguards we can implement. Such a creative compromise is in place in professional sports, so why shouldn’t we look for one in school funding?

The alternative is frustration with our democracy as well as lost services for children. This is an opportunity for political leadership.

Paul Shaker is a professor emeritus of education at Simon Fraser University.