REGINA - A letter to parents from Regina Public School Division, raising the spectre of potential service cuts, became a political hot potato at the Legislature this week.
The letter was sent April 27 by Darren Boldt, Director of Education. In the letter it was pointed out that for Regina Public Schools the actual increase in operating funding is $2.5 million, or one per cent. Boldt stated they needed $7.5 million or three per cent to cover base budget increases.
Boldt also said the potential measures they are looking at in their budget includes examining fees for noon supervision; reducing spending on such items as technology, learning resources and facility projects; striving to minimize transportation costs; reducing positions in division office that support delivery of education programs and services; and reducing noon hour staff obligations and reducing instructional positions in schools that will increase staff to student ratios.
When asked about the letter following Question Period Thursday, Education Minister Dustin Duncan said he would be communicating with members of the board, likely their Director, later that day while on a high school tour.
“First and foremost, my message to them, as well as to parents here in Regina, is that the Premier's committed to be working with school divisions to provide in-year money for enrolment again. So we are going to be working very hard over the coming weeks to determine what that amount will be and when, and so there are additional dollars coming.”
Duncan also pointed to the changes coming to online learning, with a new Saskatchewan Distance Learning Corporation getting up and running this fall. He indicated to reporters that the way it will be set up and funded, the estimate is that school divisions will end up saving $13 million.
“There will be real savings to school divisions, achieved by school divisions based on that. We’re working closely with boards and trustees to make sure they kind of understand what that funding formula will look like and how this will be a positive impact. We already are hearing from trustees that are saying this is actually going to free up money for them, so we’re going to walk through that with the school divisions, including Regina Public.”
Aside from enrolment growth, Duncan said he is expecting recommendations from a class size and composition committee by the end of May. “We’ll look to see what that means in terms of does that requires an additional ask for money from Treasury Board.”
He also noted Regina Public will have a 2.6 per cent increase year over year in the budget, but that will be for “the non-teacher part of their operational expenses because we won’t have a contract once this one expires in August.”
“We will obviously be bargaining in good faith to come up with a contract, and what the government has said is that when we do have that contract we will be funding it. So that 2.6 per cent isn’t really to cover all the operational expenses of the school division, or whatever the school division increase is... The teacher part of this is to the side, because we’ll have to negotiate a new contract and I don’t know what that number will be.”
Duncan also said it was "too early to speculate what changes might be coming in terms of servicing levels." But he added "$2.04 billion is the budget for the school divisions in this upcoming fiscal year for the province of Saskatchewan. And that is really the floor in terms of what the funding levels will be, not the ceiling.”
In speaking to reporters Opposition Leader Carla Beck called the letter “unfortunate and it’s exactly what we expected given the inadequate levels of funding that was presented in this year‘s budget. I trust the numbers, I trust the numbers that the school boards and the teachers are bringing forward. This was an inadequate budget for education, that is going to inflict more cuts on our kids’ classrooms. And this has been a pattern for over a decade with his government.”
As for Duncan indicating there will be some measure of topup by the end of June, Beck noted that school boards had been calling for “predictability, adequacy, sustainability in their funding.”
“What we’ve seen is increasing not only underfunding, but the government bringing measures in later and later, some years, not other years — this is a government sitting on $1 billion of windfall revenue. They have the money, they know that these kids are in our classrooms. Regina Public alone, 600 additional students since September of last year that have not been provided any additional funding for. It’s frustrating.”
