After last week's revelation that the Langley School District faces a budget shortfall of $8.3 million this year, the Langley Teachers' Association executive committee is calling for the resignation of Superintendent Cheryle Beaumont. The motion was passed at an executive committee meeting earlier this week, and will be brought before an emergency general meeting of the association at 4 p.m. on Monday for consideration by the general membership. The motion reads: "That the LTA advise the Board of Education that the teachers of Langley have no confidence in the ability of Langley's Superintendent of Schools to manage the district and call upon the Board to request the resignation of the Superintendent of Schools."

In a blog post on the LTA web site, LTA president Susan Fonseca said the district's auditor Grant Thornton had advised the board in each of the past five years to strengthen spending controls.

"Therefore, for senior management to state that they did not know what was going on in regard to a lack of internal controls demonstrates either incompetence or dishonesty," Fonseca wrote.

"In August, the LTA wrote to request the minutes of the audit committee to determine what changes, if any, had been made to improve internal controls. We have yet to receive a specific response to this request from the Superintendent."

Fonseca said these calls from the auditor should have been investigated by Beaumont and her management staff long ago.

"The LTA finds it very difficult to accept that the problem has just been discovered," she wrote. "It appears that Cheryle Beaumont and her senior management team did not bother to implement the recommendations of the auditor. We find the fact that the district underestimated the average cost of a teacher by $950 a year an admission of serious incompetence. We are in the middle of a five-year collective agreement with a relatively stable complement of teachers in the district, so the cost assumptions should be easily calculated. Of the 27 accounting errors, this one alone accounted for an underestimation of $1 million of expenditures. This cannot be blamed on teachers, as other districts were apparently able to do the math."

Fonseca said the deficit will hurt Langley students.

"Classrooms are already being impacted by this huge district deficit," she wrote. "Regrettably, Langley students, their families and teachers will be paying the price for this lack of internal controls and administrative oversight for years to come."

On Monday, the executive committee will also ask the membership to consider a motion calling for the board to release their complete deficit management plan to the LTA by Sept. 30 and engage in full public discussion on the plan, a motion asking for the district to provide teacher salary information to the B.C. Teachers' Federation and a motion calling upon the board to request a meeting with both Langley MLAs to discuss "the provincial underfunding of public education."

The association is also planning to hold a rally in the school board office parking lot at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday before the 7:30 p.m. school board meeting. They are planning to give demonstrations and investigative presentations on how the school district went from a projected surplus of $264,145 to a deficit of $8.3 million within months.