B.C. school trustees to superintendents: We need more information
More than a third of B.C. school trustees who participated in a survey last year said they weren't getting sufficient information from superintendents and other senior staff to make effective decisions at the board table.
That concern is highlighted in a report by Auditor-General John Doyle, released at a time when trustees around the province are discussing possible service cuts and school closures to balance their 2010-11 budgets and raising fears among parents from North Vancouver to Prince George, Kamloops and the Kootenays.
Trustees' responses to the survey, conducted between April and June 2009, suggest the K-12 sector is at greater risk of making incorrect decisions than health boards, where members are appointed, not elected, the report says.
"One of the largest problems uncovered was that information presented for board meetings did not explain all important options and trade-offs," it adds.
The report, titled Making the Right Decisions: Information Use by the Boards of Public- Sector Organizations, is based on voluntary responses to a survey of board members responsible for K-12 schools, advanced education, health and Crown corporations. While responses from the Crown corporations and health boards were generally in line with what was expected, the education sector is in need of improvement, the report says.
"The surveys indicate that communication problems between management and the board are a common theme."
Connie Denesiuk, president of the B.C. School Trustees' Association, said her organization is sufficiently concerned with the survey results that it's invited Doyle to a provincial council meeting this weekend to discuss his findings.
But she said the results may be partly explained by the fact many trustees were relatively new to the job when they completed the survey, having been elected for the first time in November 2008.
"We certainly see that there are areas that we want to continue to work on, but we also need to recognize that over 30 per cent of trustees were within a couple of months of being elected," she said in an interview Monday.
Keven Elder, president of the B.C. School Superintendents' Association, said he was surprised by the findings. "It's caused us to do some thinking," he said, adding he intends to discuss the survey with Denesiuk.
"It's very important to us that the reality and the perception be that there is a constant, ongoing flow of information in both directions, but particularly from senior administrators who assist the board in making good, informed decisions," he said.
Doug Player, a former superintendent in West Vancouver, said the auditor-general's report suggests senior staff have exceptional influence because many trustees don't understand the issues. A quarter of them said they don't have enough time to comprehend the information provided before board meetings.
"The system needs a significant shock -- it needs refreshing," said Player, adding that the report helps explain, for example, how a district like Langley could accumulate an $8.2-million deficit without trustees noticing.
The auditor-general sent the survey to more than 1,000 individuals and received 718 replies for a response rate of 70 per cent.
In the education sector, one-third of respondents said the information they receive does not compare performance to plans and does not adequately discuss the consequences of decisions.
The report cautions that the survey captured perceptions about the use of information "which could differ, either positively or negatively, from what actually happens."
By Janet Steffenhagen Vancouver Sun, February 16, 2010