No sympathy for districts from ed minister on carbon costs
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Updated: October 30, 2009 11:07 AM
Diane Strandberg
Katie Bartel
The Progress
She stopped short of telling them to suck it up but B.C.'s education minister said school districts complaining about lack of facilities funding should have prepared for rules requiring them to become carbon-neutral.
In an email to Black Press, Margaret MacDiarmid said districts have known for two years they would have to start calculating carbon emissions by 2010 and could have used carbon tax refunds to pay for efficiencies that will save money in the long run.
"All 60 B.C. school districts signed on to the Climate Action Charter," MacDiarmid wrote. "In return for meeting our carbon reduction targets, boards are being refunded the cost of the carbon tax.
"About $800,000 has already been distributed to school districts and, by the spring of 2011, about $7 million in carbon tax revenues will be returned to boards — revenues that will help pay for energy upgrades and help pay for carbon offsets if they are needed."
MacDiarmid said no extra money will be provided to help districts pay for costs associated with using a new carbon emission calculator called SMARTTool but board officials will be shown how to use the tool, which measures carbon emissions from electrical, natural gas and fuel, and will get support from the Ministry of Citizen Services
Trustees and school board officials have raised the alarm about the costs associated with the provincially developed SMARTTool, including an 82-cent-per-student fee to cover development costs, and the extra labour required, especially at first, at a time when administrative costs are supposed to be curtailed.
For the Chilliwack school district, the SMARTTool is expected to cost approximately $10,000.
That's in addition to the requirement of school districts to purchase carbon offsets, at approximately $11 per student. For Chilliwack, that means approximately $100,000 will be taken out of the operating budget to purchase carbon offsets.
"It's absurd and completely irresponsible on the ministry's part," said Chilliwack school board chair John-Henry Harter, who is in favour of the district becoming as carbon neutral as possible, but thinks the ministry has set an unrealistic goal.
"Forcing us to buy carbon offsets is not going to help our students, our community, or our environment," said Harter. "The government needs to allow us to continue towards becoming carbon neutral, but not financially punish us for not meeting their unrealistic goal."
So far, Chilliwack school district has spent approximately $45,000 on carbon neutral initiatives including lighting retrofits, computer shutdown hardware, time clocks to shut down exterior lighting and heating when not needed, etc.. But because the B.C. government cut facilities funding this year, several other initiatives have been put on hold.
The Chilliwack board of education is writing to the Ministry of Education requesting additional funding to cover the climate action costs.
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