BRITISH COLUMBIA

More firings,
Outcry mark
Schools fight

_ Rallies, court challenges, and “comprom-
lses” between the Socred government and
two of the province’s initially five defiant
School boards and the firing of another
school board marked the continuing fight-
back against province-wide education cut-
backs and outrage over the firing of the
Vancouver school board last week.

Demonstrations by parents, students,
teachers and trade unionists continued the
demand that the Vancouver trustees, fired
May 6 by Education Minister Jack Hein-
Tich, be reinstated.

On May 9, some 200 students from most
of Vancouver’s secondary schools rallied
Outside school board offices after leafletting
by the Student Alliance for Vancouver’s
Education (SAVE).

SAVE spokesman Jamie Fleming told
the rally that, come the next election, “‘Let’s
hope that we and our parents don’t forget
what happened in the spring of 1985.”

_ Student Adele Perry questioned the legi-
umacy of Heinrich’s action, noting that the
elected Vancouver board was “not cor-
Tupt,” but “a group of democratically
elected officials who stood up for our educa- -
tion and the future of our society.”

The Vancouver board, a majority of
whom are members of the Committee of
Progressive Electors,_are considering a
court challenge to their dismissal.

‘The challenge would question the appro-
Priateness of the firing, which in B.C.’s his-
tory has only been used against trustees
found to be corrupt.

Meanwhile, the Cowichan district board,
which launched a court challenge to Hein-
Tich’s refusal to accept their budget bylaw,
was dismissed by the minister late Monday.
Few details were available at press time.

The Cowichan board had voted 6-3
against a budget complying with the minis-
try’s directives, but the chairman declared
the bylaw valid and forwarded it to Victo-
ria.

The board chairman remarked sardoni-
cally that since the recent transfer of funds
from capital to operating budgets allowed
Allan Stables, Heinrich’s appointed trustee
for Vancouver, to balance the budget while
keeping teachers’ jobs and the district’s
classes intact, firing of elected trustees
seemed to be the preferable route for cash-
Starved school districts.

On Sunday the Coquitlam district board
followed the Burnaby board in reversing its
stance against ministry directives and voted
5-2 to accept a budget slightly higher than
the initial limit.

Burnaby trustees voted unanimously for
the new budget May 9 after Heinrich
allowed the board to use funds from
investments and other sources to partially
offset a shortfall of close to $1 million. In
Coquitlam’s case, a similar proposal would
allow the board an extra $600,000 to meet
its $5.5-million shortfall.

Those developments, coupled with the
announcement by appointed Vancouver
trustee Allan Stables May 10, further con-
vinced those in the education community
that the fired trustees’ defiance and the pub-
lic support for the board brought about
Heinrich’s small compromises.

A Prince George trustee, Lois Boone,
Said Friday that use of capital funds for
Operating purposes had been forbidden the

ard by Heinrich only one week earlier.

Meanwhile, a poll conducted by the Van-
couver Sun showed the public was 2-1
against Heinrich’s dismissal of the elected

ancouver trustees.

Federal Liberal leader John Turner in
amloops Friday termed the firing, “the
Tape of democracy.”

The Socred axe symbolizes the firing of the Vancouver school trustees and their replacement by Socred-appointed administra-
tor Allan Stables, at support rally for the board outside Expo 86 Friday.

&

socred recognition of parents’
wrath seen behind VSB budget

__ Continued from page 1
tendent Dante Lupini, will accrue enough
interest to be worth about $7 million in
about six months time.

Board business administrator Alick Pat-
terson said the fund has been previously
used to pay termination settlements to laid
off VSB employees. Each time was used, the
trustees had to receive permission from the
education minister.

(Stables had already lopped $7 million
off the $14-million shortfall by arbitrarily
cutting teachers’ salary increases for the
coming year. The move was in line with
Socred Finance Minister Hugh Curtis’
promised edicts virtually forbidding any
salary hikes for B.C. teachers, but the B.C.
Teachers Federation is launching a court
challenge to the move.)

Additionally, said Stables, the board’s
senior staff have been instructed to take an
“inventory” of school board holdings and
strike a plan for the sale and/or lease of
school properties, to create an “endowment
fund” to finance board operations in the
future.

The barrage of questions from reporters
following the announcement boiled down
to the following: why, if the fund existed,
did Heinrich not discuss the option with the
elected trustees?

“You'll have to ask other people that
question,” Stables replied.

Stables also refused to commit himself on
the question of school closures, although
that outcome seems certain if the board
pursues the sale and lease of school proper-
ties.

Reporters also noted the irony in the
creation and use of an endowment fund for
operating purposes, observing that Van-
couver city council’s use of some of the
yearly interest from its property endowment

‘fund helps maintain city jobs and services

—a move by city council’s progressive
majority that has drawn the fire of the pro-
vincial government and its sympathizers on
council.

In making his announcement at a press
conference that was billed as an expose on
the elected trustees’ alleged mismanage-
ment, with the supposed discovery of
further “fat” to trim from the system, Sta-
bles threw out the window the report of the
education minister’s ‘BRAT’ — the
Budget Review Advisory Team. That three-
person team, which Stables himself headed,
claimed to have found between $9 million
and $20 million cutting options.

In fact, the cuts proposed in the budget
would have decimated not only teachers
salary hikes — which Stables felt confident
enough to axe — but the entire range of
special services of children.

When the report was released — timed
to coincide with the firing of Vancouver’s
trustees, despite their requests that the
report be released earlier — it immediately
raised a storm of outcry from parents’
groups.

That outcry was clearly the motive
behind Stables about-face and the resulting
decision to raid reserves and keep jobs and
services intact.

“T think we can say the government has
seen the reality of its restraint program,”
Rankin told the rally.

Rankin said the $5.5-million fund Stables
is using to balance the budget stood at more
than $12 million when COPE trustees first
took office in 1980. It has been whittled
away since then paying for termination set-
tlements, arising from the Socreds’ cuts but
each time the board has had to ask the
minister’s permission, he noted.

“Now he (Stables) has the gall to say he’s

just found out about it,” Rankin, who
chaired the board’s finance committee,
remarked.

Rankin said the elimination of the fund
was “good” in a sense that its use preserves
jobs and classes, but “‘bad” in the sense that
it’s like someone who says, “ ‘I am going to
stop paying for heating and begin to heat
my house by burning the walls and the
furniture.’ ”

On the trustees’ firing, Rankin said Hein-
rich had that in mind “ever since we were
elected in November (1984).”

Although Heinrich had given the board
the preceding weekend to reconsider its
budget and comply with the ministry’s
directive, the provincial cabinet had
approved the order-in-council firing the
board on Friday, May 3 — three days
before the firing, he said.

Rankin noted the recent deal Heinrich
had struck with the Burnaby trustees, one of
the original five “defiant” boards, allowing
the board to transfer interest money from
other items to partially make up its close to
$1-million shortfall. Meanwhile, the minis-
try forgave the Delta district a $300,000 fine
lieved by Heinrich for deficit financing, he
observed.

“Why then was no deal offered to the
Vancouver school board? Obviously, we
were consdiered too intransigent,” he said.

Several other speakers, including the
heads of Vancouver’s teachers and adminis-
trators associations, staff unions, NDP
MLA Alex MacDonald, and parent and
student representatives vowed to continue
actions in support of the elected trustees.

Board chairman Pauline Weinstein told
the rally, organized by the newly-formed
Coalition for Education and Democracy,
““We’re going to need all your help in the
next period.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 15, 1985 e 3