Calgary Board of Education demands a tax hike. Tell them to take a hike.

The Calgary Board of Education isn't very good at it's job.

That's the only conclusion you can draw from the news that they're predicting a $29 million dollar budget shortfall this coming year and are expected to pull money out of a [funded by others] reserve fund despite current funding being "new normal".

After all, the job of the elected school board is to determine how to spend the money provided by the provincial budget. Their job isn't to determine how to spend the money provided by the provincial budget plus another $18 or $29 million.

The public school board released its preliminary budget estimates on Monday.

Board Chair Joy Bowen-Eyre says the province has failed to take into account the number of new students entering the school system when it came out with its budget last month.

Who says that? Okay, I know Bowen-Eyre says that, but what is she basing it on? Public school boards are given money based on the number of students. In fact, the majority of the funding provided to students is on a per-student basis.

There is additional funding sources that isn't necessarily per-student based, but that's again where it's the job of the Board of Education to decide, based on the funding that the provincial government makes available, which services to provide in order to properly allocate the resources available. From the sounds of it, the CBE is completely abandoning this responsibility.

And it doesn't look poised to get better: on April 20th far-left "social advocate" Julie Hrdlicka will be sworn into a position where she has decided not to do the job she was assigned to be rail against the provincial budget.

“No one is happy about this budget at all. When we’ve been door-knocking, parents and principals and vice-principals have told us that they don’t know how many more cuts they can take,” she said.

“We need to starting standing up to this province when it continues to say 'more cuts, more cuts, more cuts.'”

Hrdlicka is completely wrong here. It's not her job to oppose cuts. She wants to administer the Calgary School Board, right? Well, that's what the administration of a subdivision of a larger corporate entity entails. Administer it. Work with the budget you're given, the goals you want to achieve, and prioritize accordingly.

Once Hrdlicka tries her hand at that (hint: as an extremist liberal she'll fail at it) maybe she'll find that the province actually gives out plenty of money, and that there's no need to rail against a budget set by her betters who actually hold moral and legal responsibility for all the tax revenue raised by the province. You see, Calgary Board of Education has a history of wasting money that is given to them. They aren't good managers. Giving bad managers more money isn't a bright idea under any circumstances.

For example, despite Alberta teachers being overpaid, in 2013 the Calgary Board of Education agreed to salary hikes for later this year, two years before knowing what this year's budget was supposed to look like. Were they hoping for an increase? You don't budget based on "hope". I'm sure they looked at the future under Red Redford and thought that provincial dollars were a gift that kept on giving. Hrdlicka wasn't responsible for that, but she should be taking her colleagues who were to task.

At the same time the CBE approved annual 2% wage hikes for their plumbers/carpenters/etc. What's the kicker from this CTV News article from the time of the agreement?

The CBE says funds for both agreements were set aside in the budget.

Apparently not!

Meanwhile the CBE has to pay millions in sick leave (it's sunny out, I'm not feeling well cough cough"). The average teacher is sick for 10.2 days a year...and remember that teachers only work a 10-month year. That's the equivalent of Joe Lunchbox taking a whopping twelve-and-a-half sick days on average a year. Meanwhile the Alberta average for full-time workers -- and please remember that also includes due to injury or disability, which you probably should know is far more likely to impact a warehouse worker or a machine shop operator than a goddamned lazy unionized teacher^† -- is a mere 6.1. When you consider that the Calgary teachers are included in this average and are probably the reason it's even higher than six, Calgary Board of Education is paying for twice as much sick time as they should be.

^† If you object to the "greedy" or "lazy" tags applied to union teachers, than I'm sorry, you're a moron.

The Alberta School Act grants teachers up to 20 paid sick days per year in their first year of employment. That increases to 90 paid sick days a year for teachers in their second and subsequent years, according to the ATA’s collective agreement with the CBE. A doctor’s note is required if more than three consecutive sick days are required.

On the bright side, even the slimy ATA agrees that sick notes are a good idea.

The Calgary Board of Education has been smarter (not smart, but smarter) in the past, cutting administration and operation costs in 2013. Of course, they've also been wasting time/energy resources on foolish "educator" nonsense like eliminating letter grades or embracing Faggot-Familiar Alliances (featuring Third Edge of the Sword favourite Sam Dyck who pretends she isn't a girl). Hey idiots, how much money would be around if you didn't waste the cash on stupid shit like that?

Ultimately Calgary gets the third-rate teachers and Board of Education they deserve. Julie Hrdlicka^‡, the far-left activist who probably isn't talented enough to run a hand sanitizer stand in a whorehouse, won with a meagre 5% voter turnout. As long as Calgary voters continue to let their school board be retarded idiots and misspend money, the conditions that they constantly object to will continue.

^‡ I was resisting the urge to call her Julia Hard-Licka, but if you can believe it she's going to be on that board with a woman named "Trina Hurdman". Having both Hard-Licka and Hard-Man together on one board is priceless.

The Calgary Board of Education isn't good at their job. Because the people of Calgary let them continue to have these jobs that they aren't capable of, the public school system in Calgary will be a pathetic mess. No amount of government money can fix stupid. We've tried that.