The Nov. 15 elections in the Tri-Cities will feature a large number of candidates - 25 in all - vying for spots on the School District 43 board of education.
And the nine people elected school trustee will be the highest paid in Metro Vancouver, even though the district they manage isn't the largest.
With indemnities of $36,675 for trustees and $40,343 for the board chair, SD43 trustees' pay beats out even that in Vancouver and Surrey, whose districts have more schools and more students (see chart).
The reason?
Several years ago, SD43 trustees voted to make their pay an average of the stipends given city councillors in Port Moody, Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam, not to trustee pay in other school districts.
To bring trustees' salaries in line with councillors' pay, adjustments were made in 2012 and 2013, boosting base trustee pay to from $27,530 to $32,105 in 2011/'12 and to $36,675 in 2012/'13, which is their current pay. (Local politicians' pay is one third tax-free.)
Currently, Coquitlam councillors earn $56,443 a year while their counterparts in PoCo earn $34,213 and in PoMo $33,000.
In June 2012, trustees voted to have the salary adjusted automatically every Jan. 1 to the average of councillors' pay in the three cities.
REASONABLE APPROACH
Hyndes said it's a reasonable approach given trustees' workloads and responsibilities, because they are responsible for a $300-million budget and because the district is the largest employer in the Tri-Cities.
"So we align ourselves with the cities we represent," Hyndes said, although the much lower salaries of village councillors in Anmore and Belcarra are not in the mix even though SD43 also covers those communities. (Councillors in the village of Anmore earn $18,860 while Belcarra village councillors earn $9,690.)
The decision was made at a public meeting, she said, and nobody complained at the time. Even trustee candidates in the current election aren't making an issue out of it, she said, questioning why The Tri-City News is doing a story on the issue now, during the election campaign, but didn't cover the original vote.
"Nothing has been hidden, it's been transparent," said Hyndes, who is running for re-election in Port Moody.
Other school districts have different policies, she acknowledged, but the province has set no rules on how trustee salaries should be paid, and Hyndes said the decision to make the salary adjustment automatic each January was made by the board based on recommendations by then secretary-treasurer Rick Humphreys, who studied the issue at trustees' request.
(Humphreys left the district later that year, about a month before SD43 announced it had a deficit of $7.5 million, a number that was later increased to more than $10 million.)
Surrey's approach to school board pay is different. For example, in June, Surrey trustees voted themselves a 1.9% wage increase reflecting a rise in the Consumer Price Index. The year prior, however, their rate dropped 0.8% because inflation had dropped. And in Maple Ridge school district, trustees recently gave themselves a 1.5% wage increase and approved an annual adjustment of trustee remuneration for the period 2014-'19 effective on July 1 each year, based on the Metro Vancouver Consumer Price Index differential for the prior year.
