An Open Letter to Trustees and Advocates in the BC Public School System in Advance of the Upcoming Budget Season

NOTE: This guest blog is written by a fellow parent, advocate and member of BCEdAccess. THANK YOU!!

Dear Trustees and Fellow Advocates,

We’ve all been told that participation in the district’s budget process is a great way to advocate for more support for students with disabilities, but what exactly does that mean and how can we do that in a meaningful way? As we approach the upcoming budget season, I want to share with you some things I have learned and observed over the past few years while I’ve been following the BC Education system budget process. These observations are related to districts underspending inclusion and educational assistant budgets, and the requirements of each district for submitting their annual budgets to the provincial government. I also share some specific questions you can consider asking your district to help to improve transparency and accountability in the annual budget process and to support inclusive education.

BC’s Education Minister Lisa Beare recently declared that the provincial government has “provided record levels of funding for districts”, implying that the concerns around underfunding were occurring because of budgeting choices made by individual school districts (e.g. Surrey DPAC launches Room Clear Tracker to monitor classroom disruptions, clearings).

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B.C’s Education Minsiter Lisa Beare said the goals is to make sure every child is safe and can learn.

“We all wanna keep kids safe in classrooms, this is why we at the Ministry have provided record levels of finding for districts, including Surrey. Year over year, they get over a billion dollars in funding this year, along, we wexpect districts to saff their classrooms accordingly,” she said. Bear said the School District ended up with a surplus last year and the district has to make those choices accordingly. “We want to make sure everyone is staffed at the appropriate leavel to provide those supports,: she added.

Source:  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/surrey-school-board-surplus-2025-1.7637996

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In making the above statement, the minister deflected provincial government accountability for challenges reported in the article that are also commonly reported in other school districts across the province. So why can she make this claim? Well, from the ministry’s perspective, financial reports from the Surrey School District at the end of the 2024/2025 school year showed that:

• a) The District of Surrey had a budget surplus of 33 million dollars remaining at year end (Surrey School Board sees $33M surplus, earmarked for new computer systems, rainy day fund); and
• b) The District of Surrey underspent their Inclusive Education budget by 6.3 million dollars (as will be discussed below and presented in  Table 1).

This is not to say that the ministry is not also part of the problem. Her statement about “record levels of funding” also requires more scrutiny since funding increases in 2025/2026 were simply related to student headcounts and inflation rather than substantial grant amount increases, but that’s a topic for another day.

While Surrey is used in the specific example above, the fact is that many BC public school districts are underspending the Inclusive Education budgets that are approved by trustees and submitted to the provincial government during annual budget cycles. To show this, I have prepared Table 1 , which shows a comparison of the planned, amended, and spent budget amounts for the 2024/2025 school year for Inclusive Education for each school district and for the province as a whole. The table also includes a calculation to show the difference between the finalized (‘Amended’) Inclusive Education budgets compared to the Actual (spent) Inclusive Education budgets. The calculations indicate that some districts spent more than their Amended Inclusive Education budgets, while others spent less.

The top row of the table summarizes the total values in each category from across all districts in BC, indicating that a remainder of 25.4 million dollars of money planned to go towards Inclusive Education remained unused at the end of the 2024/2025 school year. This money may have instead either been spent on alternative district uses, or ended up as a budget surplus at year end rather than being put towards inclusive education.

The concern this raises is that when districts significantly underspend their budgets (e.g. by more than ~2%) this does not support a message to the provincial government that districts do not have enough money to better support inclusive education practices. This in turn makes it hard for trustees to advocate to the provincial government for more money towards inclusive education, when year after year the Inclusive Education budgets of many school districts typically remain underused in their own accounting records, while other budget line items are often shown to be over budget.

Within the Inclusive Education budget, the specific item that districts appear to be falling short on spending typically relates to how many educational assistants, or ‘EAs’, they are hiring. Staffing has been a significant challenge across the province in recent years, and in many districts it may simply not even be possible to hire and/or retain as many EAs as was planned in the budget and approved by the trustees. Hiring enough EAs may be partly a district-level choice, but it’s also shaped by supply-and-demand challenges, issues that often extend beyond what school districts can solve on their own.

To show this, I have prepared  Table 2 , which shows a comparison of the planned, amended, and spent amounts of the 2024/2025 school year budgets for educational assistant salaries for each district and for the province as a whole, along with a calculation to show the difference between the finalized (‘Amended’) EA salary budget compared to the Actual (spent) EA salaries budget. Again, the table shows that some districts spent more than their finalized EA salary budgets, while others spent less. In the top row of Table 2 the total values from all districts across BC show that a remainder of 19.5 million dollars of the 2024/2045 EA salary budget was unspent.

Note that much of the EA budget overlaps with money set aside for Inclusive Education. In preparing  Table 2, I used the EA salaries values for all students because it gives a more reliable picture of overall spending. This is important because EAs do not work only with students who have inclusive education designations. They also support students in other areas like Regular Instruction, English Language Learners, Indigenous Education, and Summer School. In addition, many districts don’t track exactly which students an EA works with each day, making it difficult to separate EA spending by specific program categories.

Something new I learned last year while following the budget process in my local school district more closely, is that the way some district staff plan and discuss budgets with trustees doesn’t directly align directly with the format/template for budgets that are reported back to and reviewed by the provincial government. As such, the reported Inclusive Education budget line item of the budget for some districts may lack significant transparency and accountability. When submitting the budget to the provincial government, there is a legal requirement for the budget to be presented under the specific directions on their website (School District Budget Reporting) and through the use of specific Word and Excel Template documents, with specific rows and columns (also found on their website). This process allows the provincial government to review similar looking budget submissions from all districts and compare and evaluate how that money is being spent as I have done in preparing Table 1 and 2 presented above.

However, what I observed last year, was that the Financial Plan summary document prepared for and reviewed at length by the district with trustees was notably different than the format that was later submitted to the provincial government (e.g. with no attached detailed spreadsheets in the format that the province requires; some dissimilar in-text tables and figures).

A great deal of debate focused on how to spend small amounts of the operating budget money that district staff determined trustees could potentially reallocate through motions. In reality, this discretionary amount was less than 1% of the overall operating budget that trustees were required to approve in the final Excel template submission. After watching the process, I was disappointed to see how little real control the trustees in my district seemed to have over the broader budget decisions, which were largely determined by the district administration staff.

Below are a couple other things I learned in following the process last year that may be helpful to others who are interested in following district budgets and just learning about this process:

1) ‘Schedule 2C’ of budget bylaw template format provides a 2-page summary of budget allocations. This can be useful from the perspective of budget advocacy and for tracking changes made to the budget over time. This page of the budget can easily be found on all school districts financial reporting pages and compared year to year and as the budget is amended over the school year. Look for the pdf document of the Audited Annual Financial Statement – then find the two pages labelled Schedule 2C in the top righthand corner; example here: link. – pg 34.

2) In completing the required spring budget submission format, the districts’ accounting teams need to follow specific requirements from a document referred to as the Operating Fund Account Descriptions, which was last updated in 2006 ( https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/administration/resource- management/school-district-financial-reporting/operating-fund-account- descriptions2.pdf). This was interesting information for me to learn and perhaps is something that could use some more provincial advocacy around. For example, why are districts being asked to report on Inclusive Education budgets based on descriptions and a format that has not been significantly updated since 2006 and still uses the terminology ‘Special Education’?

Overall, many of us can agree that the current provincial school system’s funding levels and model are not meeting the needs of many students with diverse needs and disabilities and in general are long overdue for an update/overhaul. In the meantime, however, it’s hard to put sufficient pressure on the provincial government to make changes when individual districts continue presenting budgets with limited transparency and then leave budget allotments for Inclusive Education and educational assistant salaries unspent at year end. I can’t help but think that year after year, school districts are simply updating the same internal spreadsheets with a handful of new variables related to student headcounts and the updated provincial government grant amounts with little to no actual thought about the support needs of today’s students, all with limited oversight and input from trustees. This repeated pattern annually leaves the provincial government with the wiggle room to deny their overall responsibility to increase funding in a meaningful way that creates change and meets the needs of all students.

So what can you do about it? As the upcoming budget season approaches, below is a list of some key points and questions that can be raised with your school district during the upcoming budget season to support improvements on transparency and responsibility in budget development and tracking moving forwards.

Also below are some links to references to keep an eye on the budgets as they are reported directly to the provincial government annually. If you happen to be a trustee reading this, please use your voice and make sure that: a) your district is transparent in the decisions being made and that proposed budgets are based on current student needs; b) the proposed budget details you review and approval align with the submission format that is submitted to and monitored by the provincial government; and c) over the course of each school year, your school district is actually using the budget allocations you fought hard for and that the funding is intended to go to Inclusive Education and educational assistant salaries is in fact going towards these. Every dollar unused in these areas of the budget at the end of the school year is fuel for the provincial government to deflect responsibility back to the districts and removes your ability as a trustee to advocate for more provincial government support.

Sincerely, Anonymous member of BCED Access

Suggested Questions to ask During Upcoming Budgets Cycles

• How do the budget documents presented align with the BC Bylaw Submission Format that trustees will ultimately be approving? This question is applicable if the district’s budget information is not shown in the same format as the BC Bylaw Template submission.
• What assumptions were used in the development of the annual budget for Inclusive Education?
• What assumptions were used in the development of the annual budget for other diverse student populations (e.g. English Language Learners, Indigenous Learners, and Children and Youth in Care)?
• What assumptions were used in the development of the annual budget for Educational Assistants?
• What are the staffing levels of the current school year and what changes are proposed for the upcoming year? What assumptions were used to account for any proposed changes?
• What plans does the district have to make sure they can hire and retain sufficient staffing levels in the upcoming school year to support all students?
• In this year’s budget how do actual educational assistant and resource staffing levels compare to planned/budgeted staffing levels?
• How does the 2026/2027 proposed budget for Inclusive Education and educational assistant salaries compare to the 2025/2026 budget for these items?
• What budget tracking and reporting tools are used by the school district over the course of the school year and how often does the school plan to share this information with trustees so they can confirm that allotted budgets for Inclusive Education and educational assistant salaries are being fully utilized (e.g. Do trustees see quarterly budget/staff tracking reports?). Where applicable reference information in Tables 1 and 2 presented above if it will strengthen your point (e.g. if your district underspent significantly on these items last year).
• In the event of staffing limitations on the district’s ability to use all of the planned Inclusive Education budget, how will any potential funds remaining at year end be spent to ensure that they still go towards supporting inclusive education?
• Does the annual Inclusive Education budget include administration time, and if so, why?
• What is the anticipated budget for legal fees in the 2026/2027 school year budget and where in the budget is that cost accounted for? (This question has been included as some districts have been observed to have very high legal fees in the past two years.)
• Advocate to the provincial government to update their outdated funding model, including budget templates and documents, to better meet the needs of a more inclusive model for education in BC.

Additional information on BC Provincial Budgets

• Annual Revenue and Expenditure Tables by School Year (used to make Tables 1 and 2):  https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/administration/financial- management/school-district-financial-reporting/revenue-expenditure-tables 
• Annual Budget Instruction and Excel Template for the BC Bylaw Submission:  https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/administration/financial- management/school-district-financial-reporting/budget-reporting 
• Operating Fund Account Descriptions (outdated 2006 document discussed above):  https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/administration/resource-management/school- district-financial-reporting/operating-fund-account-descriptions2.pdf