Tagged: Denis Falvey
Education funding — how to kill reform
Many assume the Dexter Government made a mistake when it asked school boards to consider—and report back on—the consequences of a hypothetical 22 percent cut in their budgets. They say this gave the boards and the NSTU a license to frighten voters, and thus rally support for their comfortable status quo. Contrarian reader (and retired Education Dept. bureaucrat) Wayne Fiander puts the case vividly:
Having served two premiers in this province, I can say with some confidence that a real education “right sizing exercise” is necessary to preserve public education. No government has yet tackled this issue correctly. They start with the end, and the current mess, a 22% cut—and the school boards and teachers union rub their hands together: They know this play for one more year of funding in their sleep.
Party functionaries and government flaks are in high gear trying to undo the perceived damage. Some assume the plan was a crude bait-and-switch strategy: threaten a huge cut and hope for a sigh of relief when you “only” cut 10 or 12 percent.
Maybe. But I’m not convinced there has been that much damage. In most communities, teachers are regarded as having generous terms of employment, and many Nova Scotians will recognize the union/board caterwaul of the last month as self-serving. In this, as in so many areas requiring tough choices by government, the public is more ready to be treated like grownups than politicians, flaks, and media suppose.
A decade of annual five and six percent budget increases in the face of a 30,000-student drop in enrolment is not sustainable. That’s not a hard concept for taxpayers to grasp. Fiander thinks government should have started, not with a prescriptive cut, but with a vision of a changed education system. (I have done some light editing here for clarity.)
Government strategy should have been to lay out the vision of what the education system would look like, and then asked the school boards to respond. Part of the vision should have been to reduce school boards or downsize the Department of Education, as taxpayers can’t afford both. If that vision were laid out first, the sacred cows would not be put up for sacrifice, as parents would know they were not being touched. The sacred cows that would be on the table would be classroom sizes of 15 going to 20 (with correspondingly fewer teachers), closing small schools so students could get better access to other needs, and putting more operations in private hands.
Reader Denis Falvy likewise urges taxpayers to follow the money:
About 80 to 85 percent of the $1.1 billion spent by the Department of Education goes to the line item, “Formula Grants to School Boards.” Using the Halifax District School Board as an example, approximately 75 percent of its $400-million budget goes to school administration, 59 percent of which is spent on the line item, “Salaries – Teachers.”
No doubt cuts can and should be made to the 25 percent of the education budget not allocated to school boards, and no doubt cuts can be made to the 40 percent of the school board budget not allocated to teachers—after all, teaching is what the department should be all about, not 60 or 75 percent about. But a successful long term approach toward education expenses logically has to come from the line item, “Salaries – Teachers.”
Bounties – reader dissent
Contrarian reader Denis Falvey writes:
A decision that flies in the face of one fact of science does not necessarily constitute ignorance. A bounty may not eradicate coyotes, it may not even lower their numbers appreciably, but it will change their habits. Coyotes live in an ecological niche; like any other animal, they will multiply to fill that niche. I would prefer that the limits on their ecological niche not include my doorstep, and the only way to achieve that is for the animals to be wary of coming near
my doorstep. That’s not going to happen with my singing Kumbayah’. It’s going to happen when animals get used to the idea that my doorstep is not their hunting ground, it’s where they are in danger.
My grandfather would have laughed in dismissal at the thought that vegetables could not be grown in the fields because the deer eat them, or that children can’t play in the woods for fear of coyotes. He was a quiet and peaceful man, but any deer eating the food off his family’s fields would have quickly joined the food on the table, and threats to his children were controlled when necessary. He had a better grasp of living with animals than do a lot of the voices raised against controlling the coyotes. Facts and experience are both important for knowledge, but doing nothing is usually a mistake.
Perhaps we should shift the focus by asking those opposed to support for the trapping industry in this instance what their solution might be. Ignoring the problem, or minimizing it is not an option. Live and let live works about as well with coyotes in the country as it does with gang activity in the city.
I do not advocate doing nothing. Minister MacDonell is a politician. He has to contend with the possibility that a coyote might maul some child, and he cannot be seen to have “done nothing.”
But the action he takes should be based on evidence, and the evidence in Nova Scotia and elsewhere is unequivocal that a bounty will neither reduce coyote numbers, nor change the behavior of the small minority of problem coyotes. Mr. MacDonell’s planned bounty does not target problem animals, or Mr. Falvey’s doorstep. It will not condition coyotes to be wary. You could argue that a general bounty might drive coyotes toward doorsteps, since regulations restrict hunting and trapping near dwellings. Doorsteps will be relatively safe places.
As retired DNR wildlife biologist Bob Bancroft has pointed out, a general bounty targets all coyotes, the vast majority of whom exhibit no problem behavior. This makes the bounty particularly reckless: it uses public funds to target innocent animals with measures that will not impact the few who cause problems.
What might work? MacDonell’s program to train elite trappers to go after problem coyotes is an idea worth trying. The province should consider complementing this with an program to haze animals near populated areas. A dead animal can’t teach pack mates anything, but a coyote that has been frightened or hit by a rubber bullet could increase wariness in a whole pack—particularly if the program were begun now, while coyotes are rearing pups, not delayed until next fall like the useless bounty. The public education program to encourage sensible precautions when interacting with wildlife is also a good idea. We share this planet with other creatures, and that’s a good thing.
But the senseless bounty at the centre of the government’s response represents a flight from evidence-based decisions in favor of pandering to ignorant prejudice.
I suspect the unusually bold behavior we have seen in recent months reflects some change in the food cycle. A surge in coyote numbers may have overtaxed food supplies, so coyotes are hungry, and in a few cases, emboldened. If that’s the case, litter sizes will decrease this spring, the population will fall, food will be less scarce, and problem behavior may ease with or without human intervention.
Last word to Mr. Falvey:
On a lighter note, one solution might be to hand control of the coyotes and deer over to the DFO. They don’t have much to do anymore, and they did rid the oceans of cod in a generation.
