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Local school divisions forced to cope with cuts
Susan Thompson
for Smoky River Express
Local school divisions are trying to reduce the impact of cuts to education funding for the current school year.
Minister of Education Dave Hancock announced $80 million in cuts to provincial education on Aug. 27, with additional cuts to come next year. Hancock asked the province’s 62 school boards to cut one per cent from their 2009-10 budgets, saying $56 million would be cut from school boards and the rest from reductions in the provincial department. The province also cancelled a fuel subsidy introduced four years ago to help cover high gas prices.
“We know they’re going to claw back a lot of the funding,” says High Prairie School Division (HPSD) Superintendent Laura Poloz. “We do know we’ll have to make some significant decisions in the future.”
However, HPSD students won’t be affected by provincial education cuts this year.
“At this point we’re going to be taking the money out of our reserves to maintain the three year plan agreed to by the board. It’s not affecting students in any way because we do have those reserves.”
Poloz says the division is dipping into its reserves to the tune of about $800,000, but that will depend on what happens with teacher’s salaries.
Minister Hancock announced teachers will be getting a raise of 4.82 per cent, not the 5.99 per cent the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) believes teachers are entitled to under their contract. The ATA has launched legal proceedings against the province over the issue.
“If it ends up being 5.99 rather than 4.82 per cent, that has to come from somewhere,” Poloz says.
The Superintendent adds that schools will also be negatively impacted if natural gas prices stay low, since provincial revenues are dependent in large part on energy.
The division is still waiting for future announcements about specific cuts.
“On Nov. 10 our board chair will be notified by the government as far as what programs and what projects they’ve been funding that they’ve decided not to fund anymore. We’ll go into a planning session then based on what they say.”
The Francophone school division is in the same position.
“We have certainly taken quite a hit in our surpluses because of the ratio between our surpluses and expenses and the way the cuts have been calculated and the percentage rate,” says Dolorese Nolette, Superintendent of Conseil scolaire du Nord-Ouest No. 1.
“It will affect us in the long-term. In the short-term we are revisiting the budget process.”
However, the division is also trying to limit the impact on students.
“There are not many changes to this year’s operating budget. We are tightening our belt but there will not be any drastic changes.”
Nolette says the Francophone division will be working in collaboration with staff, students, and parents to make budget changes. One of the cuts with the biggest impact has been the cut to school bus gas subsidies.
“In transportation, the fact that our fuel contingency funding has been discontinued will affect our ability to cover fuel prices, so there will be some effect there, but we’re not cutting bus routes or personnel.”
Nolette adds the division will have a better idea of the effects on their budget once they are more certain about their funding base, since they have a fluctuating student population.
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