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VICTORIA — When the B.C. Liberals pre-emptively fired the Vancouver School Board two weeks ago, they held back a government-ordered audit of the troubled district because of an outstanding concern about privacy.

That audit was finally released Friday, after being cleared for publication with two minor alterations in the contents.

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The evidence indicates the Liberals drew up the order to fire the board before reading the three-part report from former deputy minister of finance Peter Milburn and a team of auditors from Ernst and Young.

Still, the more than 300 pages of findings go a long way to show how the VSB has been an outlier — an outcast even — among the province’s 60 school districts.

For starters, the VSB funds and maintains 30 per cent more school space per student than comparable districts like Surrey, Burnaby and Coquitlam. Yet the best evidence indicates Vancouver “enrolment will be almost flat for the next 15 years.”