Is education spending in Flin Flon out of control?
Some residents certainly think so. Consider the not-entirely-positive public reaction to the transformation of Queen’s Park, near Hapnot Collegiate, into a running track a few years ago.
Numerous comments about the track being unnecessary, or a distraction from more worthy projects, illustrate that many taxpayers believe the education-spending scales have tipped too far in one direction.
So is the system bloated? Are we overspending on our schools? It depends on how you interpret the numbers.
In 2004-05, Flin Flon School Division budgeted $10.78 million in spending. In 2016-17, FFSD will dole out a projected $14.62 million – an increase of $3.84 million, or 36 per cent, in a dozen years.
There’s no doubt that $3.84 million is a lot of cash. But over a dozen years, that only works out to a three per cent increase each year. On its own, that number is in line with what we’ve come to expect from government-funded services, even if it’s not entirely sustainable in the long term.
The other side of the coin is that during those same dozen years, FFSD lost about 222 pupils, or 19 per cent of its student body.
People understand that a 19 per cent enrollment drop will not yield an automatic 19 per cent spending reduction. Things just aren’t that simple in a system as complex as education.
But a 19 per cent drop in students and a 36 per cent increase in spending? That means spending per student was $9,167 in 2004-05 and is now $15,325. That’s a per-student increase of 67 per cent.
Why haven’t more people taken notice of this? One reason is that Manitoba school divisions only receive about one-third of revenues from local property taxes. The rest comes mostly from the provincial government.
This means that if FFSD ups spending by $200,000 here or $400,000 there, the impact on local taxpayers, while always worthy of serious consideration, is actually pretty minimal. Much of it gets added to a provincial debt, that ever-lengthening string of numbers on a balance sheet in the Manitoba legislature that no one really cares about.
It is also important to note that politicians have successfully turned education into a sacred cow. To question education spending is to open one’s self up to charges of wishing to destroy our children’s future, leaving them doomed to a life of joblessness and illiteracy. And so people refrain from speaking out.
Yet we can all agree that, eventually, a straw will break the camel’s back. At some point, at some time, you can no longer boost spending by 36 per cent when your “clientele” has fallen by 19 per cent, right?
But here’s my question: How do we know when we’ve arrived at that point? How is that reality discernable when politicians pretend you can spend more and more, now and forever? When grievances from people who struggle to pay their taxes are regularly dismissed by the powers that be? When education spending is a sacred cow?
This isn’t so much a criticism of FFSD as it is of the entire education system. It’s a system where politicians view money as the solution to all problems, and those who believe otherwise are demonized.
It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out over time.
Local Angle is published on Fridays.
