Michael Hooper: The VSB’s failure to plan is a violation of public trust

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I was troubled to recently learn about a living history museum allowing Vancouverites to experience first-hand the worst planning practices of the 1950s. This window on the past is the Vancouver School Board.

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As a professor of planning at UBC, I encountered the VSB’s archaic planning approach due to its efforts to dispose of school lands, starting with Queen Elizabeth Annex, a French immersion school on Vancouver’s West Side, where I have one child in Grade 2 and another entering kindergarten.

The VSB’s outmoded planning approach is highlighted by its failure to plan for the future. While most public agencies plan over 25 to 30 years, the VSB’s Long-Term Facilities Plan looks only seven years out from today. In addition, by focusing only on approved development that is moving to construction, the plan excludes most future urban growth. Among excluded projects are virtually all First Nations developments, such as the Jericho Lands and Sen̓áḵw.

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Most future development at UBC, where a population doubling is expected by 2041, is excluded. Also excluded are densification plans for Broadway and other arterial streets.

As a result, the VSB’s Vancouver bears little resemblance to the real city. Problematically, these plans, which minimize future enrolment, rationalize the plunder of tens of millions of dollars in public assets in the case of Queen Elizabeth Annex alone. Contrary to the VSB’s plan, the census shows that UBC and surrounds, near the annex, are among the city’s fastest-growing areas. Conveniently for the VSB, that growth doesn’t appear in its alternative Vancouver.

The VSB’s discounting of the future is not all that reeks of yesteryear. The board’s announcement of a vote to move to a brief consultation phase on Queen Elizabeth Annex’s disposal, through sale or lease, was made in January, at the pandemic’s height. The announcement was made just before close of business on a Friday for a meeting the following Monday. Giving no advance notice of meetings is an example of planning tactics out of place in 2022, but essential to any re-enactor of 1950s public policy.

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VSB staff and trustees have said Queen Elizabeth Annex’s disposal is motivated by provincial pressure around a new school at Olympic Village, which they say the NDP — which has not funded schools promised in the last election — refuse to fund without this disposal. They claim it is also driven by a lawsuit by the Conseil Scolaire Francophone, a legally distinct, provincial body that educates French first-language speakers.

But, in the VSB’s throwback planning style, no information is available on these “confidential” matters. The Queen Elizabeth Annex Parent Advisory Committee has used Freedom of Information requests to dig for information on VSB decision-making. But, the cost of such requests is exorbitant, in the thousands of dollars. This is another anti-democratic tool of retro-planning, using processes intended to increase accountability to create procedural hurdles.

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The threat extends far beyond Queen Elizabeth Annex. In 2015, the VSB hired a consultant to assess its properties’ revenue potential. They concluded: “The project team has identified Short-Term Disposition Sites that offer VSB the potential to realize substantial revenues through either lease or sale.” The VSB is turning existing schools into piggy banks. But only in the VSB’s short-term mindset, with plans discounting the future, is it financially prudent to turn rapidly appreciating land into cash at peak inflation.

As with BC Rail, when officials rapidly disposed of a poorly understood Crown corporation, disposal of VSB schools involves gross violations of public trust. School board assets are vulnerable because public awareness is low. While Queen Elizabeth Annex is first on the chopping block, without better planning, all schools are at risk. The stakes are high. Just nine years after the VSB’s 2010 proposed school closures, six of 12 schools slated for closure were in high-utilization catchments. The VSB’s failure to plan left them unable to respond to urban change.

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Queen Elizabeth Annex’s proposed disposal, the final decision on which will be made in May, is a window onto the worst planning practices of the past. It is in all Vancouverites’ interest to halt the liquidation of schools until the VSB commits to plan as a modern, publicly accountable agency that takes the future of the city’s children seriously.

Michael Hooper is an associate professor of community and regional planning at the University of BC

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