For British Columbia: The "Environment" is More Important than Education

Despite the financial crisis facing Vancouver's school board, under legislation passed under the previous Premier Gordon Campbell, the board has been forced to divert nearly half a million dollars to carbon offsets (Vancouver Sun).

The budget approved by the Vancouver school board includes $405,725 to pay for such offsets, money that board chair Patti Bacchus said Friday could have been put to better use.

"I could pay for about five teachers," she says.

Adding insult to injury, the board is required to pay the province about $45,000 for a "smart tool" to assess its carbon footprint and to supply staff to make it work. Bacchus said the payments are particularly galling because many of the schools operated by the VSB are old, poorly insulated and inefficient, so they have high energy costs.

"These are schools that are cold in the winter because we've turned down the heat to save money and we have parents and children and staff shivering and complaining about that," she said.

More unintended (?) consequences (SF Chronicle via Instapundit)