Board approves calendar changes and $6 million in budget cuts

At the May 25th Board meeting the Trustees voted to approve both the budget for the 2010/2011 school year and the proposed local calendar changes.

At the meeting the board approved a final budget for next school year. Having been forced to respond to the Ministry funding limits and to a surprise $540,000 special needs audit fine the Trustees were forced to essentially approve all $6 million in cuts proposed in the Districts 21 Budget Directions document.

Relative to the anticipated cuts, savings from the school closures were able to support 0.5 FTE's of aboriginal support, 0.5 FTE's for counselling, a casual budget to provide some flexibility with special needs support, one library technician and smaller increases in class sizes.

Schools will be closed an additional 6 days next year, November 12th and a two week Spring vacation March 14 - 25, 2011. More info on the calendar changes can be found on the district website. The expected  $180,000 in savings from this measure are to be put into a contingency fund to help the district respond to issues that arise from the restructuring needed to adjust to the $6 million in cuts also approved on Tuesday.

Schools, teachers, services, staff have all been cut for next year. We will see a $1 million restructuring of student services delivery along with many other cuts across the district next year.  Despite the cuts the district must reinvent both its student services model and the alternate school programs and must do so with limited teacher support and training resources. The hard decisions may have been made but the hard implementation is still to come. As parents we will need to be supportive and understanding of the difficulties faced by teachers, staff and administration but also demand creativity and quality as these changes are made. We may be called upon to help create, enable and support new models for our children's education and I hope we can all respond positively to help.