“I can’t believe anybody would be that stupid,” said Education Minister Jeff Johnson, upon hearing that the CBE has approved a big pile of cash for executive raises.

Obviously, he doesn’t know our Calgary Board of Education all that well.

The board was foolish enough to reject the pay-freezing teachers deal, and make a big noise about it, while also approving more than $1 million in raises for officials, and not bothering to announce that.

Shortly after the Herald’s Richard Cuthbertson broke the story Friday morning, steam blew out the legislature doors.

By Friday afternoon, Johnson’s news secretary, Kim Capstick, said education officials will be in Calgary next Monday to talk to the CBE about the teachers deal — and now they want a word about the pay thing as well.

“We would encourage them very strongly to ensure that no one gets it (the money),” Capstick adds.

The province, already angry about the board’s stand on the teachers agreement, make the obvious point; what public agency would be oblivious enough to approve raises while everybody else is taking freezes or cuts?

“I’m speechless ... speechless,” said MLA Sandra Jansen, chair of the Calgary PC caucus.

She really was. Unlike most people who say they’re speechless and immediately keep talking, Jansen was stone silent for a good 20 seconds.

Then she said: “There’s a desperate need for schools all over this province, and when there’s a deferred maintenance bill ... climbing toward $1 billion, using resources in a budget toward administration salaries, it sets a bad tone.”

After the storm broke, CBE chair Pat Cochrane submitted a defence you’ll find on today’s editorial pages.

She says the money was approved in last May’s budget, and employees are only “eligible” for the extra money.

But trustee Sheila Taylor, often the only one who stands up to the mute majority, has a very different version.

“Never once before this were details around compensation for exempt staff discussed by the board — never once,” she says.

“There is only one time per year when we approve those exempt staff raises and it is now.

“It came before us this week in this fiscal environment — and we made the choice to increase pay ... We made the wrong choice.”

Taylor also said she’d never heard a word about Cochrane’s promise of a “freeze” on executive pay — to start in September — until Friday.

When the vote on raises came, Taylor and Carol Bazinet were the only trustees who said no. The other five approved.

The way this happened is almost as bad as the result.

No details are supposed to escape these secret meetings, but I hear that trustees were given a report with no notice and had only a short time to consider it.

They did, and then they voted — with several officials eligible for raises still in the room, watching and listening. That practice is universally condemned by governance experts.

The seal on that meeting room door seems to work two ways; nothing is supposed to get out, and no hint of the larger provincial environment ever seeps in.

Out here in the real world, teachers will take no raises for three years. Doctors are facing $275 million in fee cuts.

Alberta Health Services will trim $35 million from management pay.

Executive pay is being frozen at the University of Calgary, and within the government, too.

Yet the CBE secretly approves money for raises, while issuing this opinion of the teachers agreement: “We are concerned that the proposed agreement includes significant hidden costs.”

Really, minister, stupid is too mild a word.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Heralddbraid@calgaryherald.com