Monthly Archive for May, 2010

A good budget for the school board ought to balance in the boardroom and in the classroom. Yet again, the classroom received short shrift when trustees approved the 2010-2011 operating budget last night.

The Board’s budget process began with a $42 million deficit. But unlike the provincial or federal governments, the TDSB is not permitted to run a deficit. To plug the funding gap, the Board decided to delay $30 million of much-needed school repairs*.

Though I agree that deferring maintenance costs is a less bad choice than cutting the programs and services that students and their families rely on, framing this decision in a positive light, as some have done, does a disservice to those same students and families.

While revenues and expenditures may balance on the TDSB’s bottom line, continuing to let children attend class in crumbling school buildings is indicative of a severe infrastructure deficit. And, of course, there’s still the ESL  funding deficit, special needs funding deficit, the deficit of new textbooks, library materials, arts and athletic equipment, and others. To me, this shows that the budget was only balanced in the TDSB’s boardroom and fails to meet so many of our students’ needs in the classroom.

Having been in a leadership role on the Toronto Public Library Board’s budget committee for the past three years, I know as well as anyone that there are few easy answers when funds are limited. But taking the easy way out by simply deferring maintenance isn’t the answer. For example, this year I had Library staff provide the most detailed budget documents seen by the Library Board since at least amalgamation. In seeing finer details of each department’s budget, we were able to identify areas where more efficiencies could be achieved, like solid waste collection (happy to expand on what that means but more efficient solid waste collection is not a euphemism for privatization, though some branches do rely on private collection). Our other success was in demonstrating to the City of Toronto, TPL’s main funder, that our libraries are extraordinarily efficient and provide important, popular services. That advocacy ensured that TPL received more money than areas of the City’s operations that are known to be less efficient.

So instead of heaping praise, today is the day I am vowing to do better at finding efficiencies within budgets, do better by fostering partnerships with other orders of government and sectors of society, and do better by more effectively making the case to the provincial government for adequate funding.

*Technically the TDSB moved the maintenance funding from its operating budget to its capital budget. The hope is that the provincial government might decide to fund repairs through a new stream of money. Though I truly hope the province answer’s the Board’s prayers, this seems unlikely as there is already a $2.8 billion school repair backlog and no strategy to fill this void.

As reported in the Globe and Mail today, the City of Toronto is poised to be Ontario’s leader in healthy cold drink vending contracts if the recently released criteria proposed by City staff is adopted. I’m proud of the role I played in this issue so I’ve recapped how we got to this point below. You can see the staff report in PDF here.

In 2005, when the City of Toronto was about to make a decision on who would provide cold beverages, including soft drinks, in its vending machines, I wrote an op-ed with the lede, “City Council is considering one of the Western world’s deepest philosophical questions: Coke or Pepsi?” That sarcastic opening was the product of my frustration that so little consideration was being given at that time to the merits of exhibiting leadership in healthy choices.

Though I was unsuccessful in campaigning to have the City re-tender the the 2005-2010 contract that ended up going to Pepsi, I did work with a variety of city councillors to ensure that the next contract, to be approved this summer and implemented in the fall, would position the City to be the model for healthy cold drink vending.

Through a motion that I helped craft, the clause allowing for almost automatic renewal of the 2005-2010 deal was removed from the contract and City staff were instructed to bring forward an RFP in 2010 that would include entirely healthy beverage options in serving sizes recommended by dietitians (this last part is not included in the proposed vending contract criteria, though it does limit portion size to 355ml).

To me, this issue isn’t about telling people how to live their lives. There’s no proposal here to ban soft drinks from private vendors in Toronto, just at City-run facilities. But what you learn in any elementary marketing course is that the most successful brands are the ones that are seamlessly integrated into our lives. A child doesn’t ask mom or dad for a cola-flavoured carbonated soft drink, she asks for a Pepsi or Coke. Changing what’s on offer when this girl is done her swim class means that her first instinct in another setting might not be a Pepsi, it might be an orange juice or soy milk. Given the obesity epidemic and dramatic increase in diabetes cases among young people, I think we owe our children at least this much. And for those who really want that soft drink, no one says you can’t bring one into a community centre.

My commitment to this issue goes back to when I was a high school student and found it offensive that the school board was profiting off of the unhealthy choices of me and my classmates. My efforts led to the TDSB reducing the amount of branding on vending machines and elementary schools were banned from selling soft drinks. There is still more work to be done as the serving sizes for all beverages provided to students range from 30-60% larger than recommended by dietitians and the school board continues to earn money based on the number of units sold, which means that it is quite literally in the business of making students less healthy. Possibly the saddest commentary on the school board’s commitment to healthy schools, however, is that Pepsi has beaten the board to the healthy punch: that company has made a commitment to remove all of their soft drinks from schools by 2012.