Tax debate heats up school board elections

By SEAN GRIFFIN

._ From having been considered
little more than an adjunct to
council elections a few years ago,
School board elections in several
Lower Mainland districts have
suddenly been pushed on to centre
Stage for this month’s municipal
vote.

Public controversy over the
central, dominating issue — taxes
— has been mainly responsible for
bringing the spotlight onto the
School board race but such things
aS declining enrolment and con-

- cern for the quality of education

have also sparked debate in this
year’s campaign.
_“Everybody’s thining about
finances and about their taxes,”
said Elsie Dean, incumbent trustee
for the Burnaby Citizens’
Association in an interview this
week, “But we've found
everywhere that people are keen
about the quality of education that.
their children are getting.
_ “And the quality of education is
really at stake in this election.”
For the progressive municipal
organizations — the Burnaby
Citizens’ Association, the Com-
mittee of Progressive Electors in
Vancouver — as well as for in-
dividual candidates like incumbent
Dorothy Lynas in the district of
North Vancouver, the quality of
education really is at stake in the
November vote. And maintaining
that quality in the face of a strident
demand from a host of right wing
candidates for drastic cost-cutting
and ‘‘back-to-the-basics’’
education has become a main
theme in the campaign.

For inevitably, this year’s
election, staged.as it is against the
backdrop’ ofa ‘‘tax~revolt”’;has
seen the emergence of various
right wing groups and candidates
whose program is largely defined
In opposition to current policies —
and is primarily aimed at slashing
costs by\ reducing educational
programs.

In North Vancouver it has taken
the form of the Concerned Citizen’s
Association, closely linked to right
wing business interests. And the
Burnaby* Voters’ Association,
although always considered the
voice of business in that
municipality, has moved to the far
right, maintaining a constant
drumfire of attacks on the current
board and on teacher trustees.

The loss of its school board
majority to the BCA in elections
two years ago, together with the
fact that the size of the board is
being increased this year from five
to seven members has given added
intensity to an already noisy
Burnaby campaign.

In Vancouver, although the tax
revolt has not been manipulated to
the same extent, the old Non-

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COPE school board candidates discuss campaign iss :
meeting at election headquarters. Clockwise from left, David Lane,
Dr. Pauline Weinstein, Wes Knapp, Helen O’Shaughnessy, Betty

Partisan Association is hoping to
exploit the issue and has continued
its 1976 backing of the right-wing
Genuine Education Movement
under whose auspices five NPA
candidates are seeking election.
Formed about three years ago,
on a platform of cost-cutting,
abolition of alternate programs
and rigid, back-to-the-basics
schooling and subsequently en-
dorsed by the NPA, the GEM has
three trustees on the current board
and hopes to expand its base.

“The GEM group has generated

a lot of noise in the media,” said
COPE school board candidate Wes
Knapp, “but they have only one
concern — to cut back — and that is
a very narrow concern.”

Certainly homeowners can
rightly be indignant about the
increases in school taxes in recent
years. :
example of mayoralty candidate
Bruce Yorke’s house on which
school taxes increased by 16.5
percent over last year and by 60
percent over 1973.

But in the background is the
Social Credit government which
has hiked the mill rate to 39.75
mills this year—an increase of 50
percent over the rate when the
government took office in
December, 1975. And at the same
time as his government has shifted
the school financing burden to the
local taxpayer, education minister
Pat McGeer has fuelled the right
wing campaign by chiding local
boards for not making budget cuts
in line with declining enrolment.

COPE has cited the ~

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BCA SCHOOL BOARD CANDIDATES . .

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. clockwise from left, Beth Chobotuck, Hans Holst, in-

Education's future at issue in vote

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cumbents Barry Jones and June Williams. Not shown is incumbent trustee Elsie Dean.

Dorothy Lynas told the Tribune.
“That would:mean real savings for
taxpayers who now bear 62 percent
of the cost.”

Commissioned by the former
NDP government, the McMath
Commission on municipal taxation
recommended, among other
points, that the provincial
government share of education
costs be increased to 75 percent,
phased in over five years.

COPE in Vancouver and the BCA
in Burnaby have also called for the
immediate implementation of the
McMath recommendation. COPE
is campaigning for an increase in
the homeowner grant to $325 for

In the background is the Social Credit government which
has shifted the burden of education costs on‘to local tax-
payers — and then calls on boards to cut their budgets.

“Tt is the provincial government
which has created the high cost of
education for local taxpayers,
COPE’s Knapp commented.
“School boards have for the most
part kept spending down to basic
levels but the provincial govern-
ment has hiked up the mill rate.

“The Socreds have consistently
and deliberately shifted education
costs on to the local taxpayers and
the brunt of it has been borne by
residents and small businesses,
he added. ,

The only answer to escalating
school taxes according to reform
candidates, lies in compelling the
provincial government to assume
the major role in financing
education. : :

“J have pressed for the im-
meidate implementation of the
McMath Report which would
reduce the municipal share of
school taxes to 25 percent,” North
Vancouver District candidate

=>

those under 65 and $520 for pen-
sioners and for increased
provincial grants for the education
of handicapped children.

Implementation of the McMath
Report would bring substantial tax
relief—in the same example of
Yorke’s house, COPE has cited
savings of $313 on 1978 taxes of $923
— and would enable boards to
maintain present educational
standards.

But, according to COPE’ can-
didate Pauline Weinstein, the
current board in Vancouver has
“acquiesced”’ before the provincial
government’s financial onslaught
and a number of trustees have
joined in the right wing clamor for
budget and program cuts.

Moreover, she noted, the Van-
couver School Board declined to
take any public action on such
issues as school taxes and racism
in the schools and it remained for

COPE to take the initiative and call |

ea
:

Connie Fogal and Irene Foulks.

public meetings and mount a
campaign.

Further accommodation to the
demand for cuts will pose serious
threats to even the educational
programs that now exist. “English
as a Second Language classes are

already too large,’’ Weinstein
emphasized.
“We’re constantly being

reminded of declining enrolment
and the fact that Vancouver has a
pupil-teacher ratio of 18.85 to 1,”
she added. ‘‘But that figure in-
cludes administrators and
everyone else in the school. And
moreover, if 60 percent of the
-students are not English speaking,
then that ratio is too high.’

Weinstein, a professor of
mathematical education at UBC,
stressed, ‘“‘We need very close co-
operation between school board,
parks board and council in Van-
couver to get the thing we need out
of the provincial government.

“We can get impraved
educational services and reduced
costs to local taxpayers but only if
a board is elected which is
prepared to involve the public and
compel the provincial ‘government
to increase its financial Com-
mitment to education.”’

In Burnaby, the incumbent
Burnaby Citizens’ Association has
been just such a board — and it is
for that reason that it has been
target for attack from the right
wing BVA which has pounded
away not only at the board’s

policies and budget but at the

democratic right of teachers to sit
as trustees.

Don Brown, a former RCMP
officer and the only BVA _in-
cumbent, has been the most
vociferous in demanding that
teachers not be allowed to run for
school boards, but several BVA
candidates have caught the ear of

ues during a Greenwell. With them on the slate are Mike Chrunik, Fred Lowther,

—Sean Griffin Photos _

the media in their charge of
“conflict of interest.’’

(Changes in legislation ten years
ago allowed any teacher to stand
for election to a school board, but
not in the same district in which he
or she was teaching.)

“Tf they’re so concerned about
so-called conflict of interest, what
about developers on municipal
councils — théy’re making zoning
and planning decisions of which
they are often the direct
beneficiaries,’’ BCA candidate
Beth Chobotuck said, in response
to the BVA charge.

Chobotuck, a strong contender in
two previous election tries, said
that the BVA campaign consists
largely of a ‘‘personal and political
attack” on the three BCA in-
cumbents, chairman Barry Jones
and trustees Elsie Dean and June
Williams.

“They (the BVA- candidates)
have talked a lot about trimming
the waste in the budget but you
can’t tie any of them down to a
specific proposal. They’ve also
said that they would be prepared to
‘look at larger class sizes’ but
again they won’t be tied to a
specific figure.

She pointed out that the BVA has
also chosen as a target of attack
the learning and working con-
ditions contract between the board
and the Burnaby Teachers’
Association.

But as BCA incumbent Elsie
Dean explained, the agreement
was signed some ten years ago —
long before the BCA majority
came into office.

In fact it works very well, she
noted, and has enabled wide
cooperation among teachers,
trustees and administrators in
working out and implementing
educational programs in_ the
district.

For its part, the BCA board has
succeeded in two years in winning
considerable public involvement in
the two years since it won a
majority on the board and can-
didates are striving to increase
that in the election canrpaign.

“‘We’ve emphasized our demand
for the implementation of the
McMath Report, for increased
public involvement on _ the
problems of declining enrolment
and improvements in local
curriculum development and
programs for special needs — and
we’ve found a_ good public
response,’’ Chobotuck said.

For Burnaby,
Vancouver, Vancouver’ and
elsewhere, the key now will be the
public response when the polls
open in Vancouver November 15
and in other municipalities
November 18.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—November 3, 1978—Page 3

as for North