Trustees are divided on whether the New Westminster school district should spend money to bring in a consultant to help implement a plan to define the district’s direction and goals.
Board of education chair Michael Ewen said spending upwards of $2,500 on a consultant to help implement the district strategic directions plan isn’t a prudent idea given the district’s dire finances.
“We’ve given our schools 10 per cent of last year’s supply budget in the hope that we will find the money somewhere. … We made the decision to give service to kids over things. I can’t support it,” Ewen said, when the topic was discussed at the board of education’s meeting on Tuesday.
“I actually think the best strategic plan comes from the people who have to implement it. Senior staff should be the ones to carry it out," Ewen said.
“I think staff is imminently qualified,” he told the board.
But Voice New Westminster trustee Casey Cook said hiring a consultant is a small investment that will lead to significant savings down the road.
“We are going into critical periods, in terms of budget setting, it is critical that we get a strategic plan in place … a strategic plans speaks to how you spend your money, how you designate your money, what your goals are,” Cook said.
Fellow Voice trustee Lisa Graham agreed, saying devising a plan with outside help is a “no-brainer.”
It was Voice trustee MaryAnn Mortensen who made the motion calling for the district to engage a consultant to conclude the strategic directions plan with the goal of expediting its implementation.
Mortensen noted that the district is down a senior administrator and management staff is already stretched thin.
“It’s an enormous undertaking and, when you have a small senior administration, you need to supply that extra support, and it’s really not that much money,” Mortensen told The Record.
An outside consultant has already come in twice previously to work with the board on the first and second phase of the process to develop the strategic plan, said Mortensen, who noted that having a plan delineates for people what you are all about as a school district.
Cook told the board the district needs to get going on the process of implementing the plan, which he said has taken about a decade to implement.
“I can’t think of a more graphic illustration of drip, drip, drip, drip turning into 10 years,” he said.
In the end, the final motion related to the strategic plan was to table until the next committee meeting.
Currently, the district’s unions are reviewing a draft of the district’s strategic plan, which can be viewed on the district's website on the lower right side under Current Information.
