SD20 Board of Education draft difficult budget
By Andrew Zwicker
How do you cut $1.2 million out of a School District’s annual budget while having as little effect on the students’ learning experience as possible? The board of SD20 grappled with that question Monday evening as they continued their budgeting process.
In mid-March the school board received its funding notice from the provincial government. While $36,552,139 granted was an increase over last year, the increase in revenues will not allow the School Board to keep pace with the increasing costs of running the district. Of particular note this year is the addition of full day kindergarten which adds significant cost to the district. With other revenue sources added in, the Board sits with roughly $38.8 million in expenses and $37.5 million in revenues. Bylaws dictate that school boards may not run a deficit; therefore, how and what they cut was the bulk of Monday evening’s marathon 3.5 hour meeting at Trail Middle School. Prior to Monday’s meeting, the budget committee had already gone through the budget line by line and established $750,000 in cost reductions. Those initial cost reductions were endorsed by the board. However, an additional $450,000 in cuts still needed to be found. Timing is tight on the issue as the School Board must submit a balanced budget to the Province by the end of May. Complicating that picture still furhter is the fact that new SD20 superintendent Greg Luterbach needs to make hiring decisions in May. Therefore the goal of the district is to have the draft budget completed and passed by the end of April. SD20 senior staff submitted a series of recommendations built around the following goals: not directly impact students/classrooms, preserving current initiatives that are making a positive difference to students in the district, and attempting to address inequities or practices that have existed for some time and need to be changed. The board went through senior staff’s recommendations one by one offering a yea or nea on each recommendation. The biggest single savings of $125,000 would come in the form of reducing management staff at the board office. With the current superintendant’s retirement, the rationale was made that there is an opportunity to reduce staffing levels as long as there is a reduction in the level of expectation from the board. Those savings will likely come in the form of not filling the vacant assistant superintendent position now that Greg Luterbach has been promoted to superintendent following Jean Borsa’s retirement. Affecting Rossland Secondary School would be the recommendation to increase the student/teacher ratio in the district from 23.5:1 to 24:1. That would mean the loss of 25 course sections across the district, with just one of those coming from Rossland. The course sections to be reduced would be from those currently running with less than 15 students. Also having a direct impact on RSS would be the recommendation to increase the secondary school administration ratio to 340:1. RSS currently operates on a ration of administration to student of 253:1. This will translate into principals and vice principals teaching more and spending less time on administrative duties. One win in the budget for RSS was the recommendation to support the coordination of the secondary school apprenticeship programs at a cost of $45,700. Currently SD20 receives $15,000 in funding from the Career Education Society, which pays for a portion of the FTE for Rossland’s Trades Coordinator teacher. Senior Management at the district has been advised that it is unlikely that this funding will continue into the 2011/12 school year. This addition to the budget will ensure that trades coordination continues in future years to service the growing number of students that do not choose to go to college or university. Trustee Vince Morelli suggested looking in the mirror for part of the cuts. His recommendation of reducing trustees by two positions would save $29,000. Trustee Mark Wilson’s piggy back amendment of also reducing trustee’s stipends by 50% was not endorsed. However, the Morelli’s recommendation was carried. If ultimately endorsed and adopted, this cut will still have to go back to the trustee electoral committee for endorsement before coming into action. Also cutting into their own pot, albeit not that deeply, the recommendation to cut Trustees professional development budgets by $500 was carried after the amendment to double that to a $1,000 reduction was defeated. Other efficiency-building recommendations included a move to re-centralize the teacher-on-call system back to the head office. This would result in an average of a half hour reduction in clerical staff in the schools. Not all senior staff recommendations were endorsed by the board. In particular, the suggested transferring out of the Blueberry Creek School and selling it back to the community was deferred back to the Planning for the Future process to ensure community involvement in the closure of a building. That move would have allowed an annual savings of $78,000 as clerical and custodial staff would have been reduced. The notion of how the Planning For The Future(PFTF) process plays into budget cuts was also duly noted several times in the evening as trustee Mark Wilson noted that if the PFTF plan was initiated (which would likely see the closure of RSS and Castlegar Primary) than the need to make these current cuts could be eliminated. Overall, the basic realization during the meeting was that the School Board’s present operating model is not sustainable. To keep the district flying next year the board has already decided to dip into its reserves to balance the operating budget. Reserves for the last two years under treasurer Kim Morris have been held at a healthy level of 1% of total budget. If adopted, the reserve would drop from $386,000 to $200,000. The budget will come back before the board for third reading on April 22nd.
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