The School District 27 (SD27) amended annual budget bylaw for fiscal year 2010/11 was adopted at the Feb. 22 board meeting.
The budget was finalized at about $56.6 million and overall iit was down from last year's $57.6 million. While numerous smaller increases and decreases affected this drop, total salaries were also down about $1 million.
Noting the reduction was because of reduced staff and not salary cuts, Trustee Pete Penner says the board tried to spread those reductions around the district.
With fewer teachers and cutbacks made at the board office level, he adds this is unlike past years where budget shortfalls typically resulted in cuts to support staff, such as janitors and library aids.
"This time we tried to keep a very broad spectrum and to keep programs going the board feels are worthwhile in the district."
It is fortunate the school board was able to balance the budget this year, Penner says, adding some of the drop in total salary costs was related to programs the board tried to keep.
"Reading Recovery wasn't kept because the copyright requires a certain staff level, so it was replaced with a smaller reading support program.”
Penner explains the Professional Learning Community program is another the board really didn't want to lose, but because it requires non-instructional teacher time to observe other teachers who are expert in certain areas, only part of that program could be salvaged.
The district is still running the teacher partnering program, but despite the board's preference to put more resources into it, currently the full-time hours have been reduced to half time, he notes.
"This year, we had the full-day kindergarten and that costs us extra, more than it does in districts in large population areas."
He explains that for a very small Grade K-3 class, a teacher’s aid is needed for the kindergarten students, whose hours are then doubled for full-day kindergarten.
The province expanded funding for teacher and capital expenses for the new program, but not for aids in mixed classes at rural schools, Penner explains.
"That kind of thing the ministry doesn't look at and recognize. I guess it's not in their Victoria-Vancouver-Surrey area and they don't realize that's going to be an extra cost."
The implications of the budget will continue to come out as the district is still doing reviews and checking facts, he says, adding there is potential for further issues if the budget continues to drop the way it has been doing in recent years.
"We're still looking at ways of being more efficient with the busing, and with the other things that are not impacting the classroom."
