School District 57 Balances Budget Without Job or Program Cuts
Prince George, B.C.- There is good news and bad news in the School District 57 Board of Education’s budget.
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The Board was facing another budget challenge, one brought on by declining enrollment, staff wage hikes from provincially negotiated contracts, boosted benefits, MSP increases, higher costs for utilities and services, and the Board was facing a shortfall of $5.36 million.
The Board worked to develop a budget that would neither reduce or remove services for students. It is also expected the draft budget will not result in any job losses. That’s the good news.
The solution to balance the books for the 2014/15 school year came in four moves:
1. Identify revenues not previously recognized in the annual budget (eg: higher than anticipated rent revenue)
2. Align the budget expenditures with the actual experience of the previous year
3. Call on all schools to trim another 0.5% from their budgets. As an example, PGSS has the largest budget of all the schools under the SD57 umbrella, a 0.5% cut from that school would mean a trimming of $35 thousand dollars.
4. Cover the balance of the shortfall ($3.252 million) by dipping into the surplus funds.
Board Chair Sharel Warrington says while School District 57 is fortunate to have the surplus funds, “Using that magnitude of surplus in a single year is a significant concern as the use of surplus is not a sustainable budget practice”. That’s the bad news.
Warrington says the next Board of Education will face a similar challenge if the Province fails to boost funding “The government is flat lining funding, expenses are going up and needs at our schools are increasing. This District does an incredible job of meeting the needs in our schools in spite of the fact that we have a decrease in revenue every year to support those needs.”
The budget development, and the measures outlined to balance the books, will mean there will be no job losses and no program cuts, but there is no guarantee that will be the case in the years to come.
She says if the Province fails to come across with more funding, there is a very real (possibility the District will, once again, have to go through the sustainability assessment process like the one in 2010 which resulted in the closure of a number of schools. “We’ve been there before, we’ve had to do the exercise (close schools) and we are hoping not to have to do that again.”
In a presentation to the Board, Karen Wong, President of CUPE 3742, called on the Board to speak out loud and clear to the Provincial Government to increase funding to School Districts throughout the Province.
Tina Cousins, President of the Prince George District Teachers Association advised the Board that when it comes to budget talks, "We are dancing as fast as we can, but the dance is over." She said classroom composition remains a complex issue which is one of concern to the PGDTA.
Trustee Tim Bennett presented two resolutions that call on the Provincial Government for action on funding.
1.That the Board of School District 57, call on the Ministry of Education and the Provincial Government, to provide adequate and sustainable funding to the School District to meet the educational needs of students and the community including the costs of necessary seismic and infrastructure upgrades, provincially bargained collective agreements, settlements and inflationary and provincially/federally mandated increases to non discretionary spending such as utilities.
2. Be it further resolved that the Board of School District 57 requests that other community partners in education, such as Parent Advisory councils and Local Governments support the School District's call for an adequate and sustainably funded public education system that meets the needs of students and the community.
Bennett says once the motion is passed, it will open up the door for further discussion on how the message gets to the Provincial Government and how partners will be engaged to add their voice to the resolutions.
The resolutions were approved unanimously, as was a motion to have the motions put to paper in a letter to the Government and that partner groups be invited to sign the letter.
Trustee Trish Bella called for a town hall style meeting so School District 57 and its partners can share with the community the challenges as well as the good work that is being done. "It's not just another letter to the provincial government" says Bella, "Our community needs to know what we're facing". Details of that meeting have yet to be released.
Comments
Yes! Let’s have more funding; classroom size and composition is out of hand. Start hiring more teachers and teachers assistants.
They forgot to mention drastically cut the CTC program where kids take their first year trades training at CNC!
They left out paying carbon tax. That wastefull scam is taking money away from education.
Yea and raise taxes to everyone to pay for it instead of making people accountable for the money. Everyone always wants the government to give and give and give, yet they don’t want to pay.
Move the benefits more in line with other public service sectors would reduce costs even if they moved to a reduced employer pension contribution rate from 14% to 10% would be a ridiculous savings and may save some programs next year or result in new teachers being hired.
Teachers Pensions have employer contributions at 14% which is over 4% higher than the next public service employee pension plan.
Even at a salary of $47,500 that would equal a savings of $1,900 per employee per year. 30,000 Full Time teachers in BC (2012 numbers) is a savings of $57,000,000.00 in a year. Seems pretty selfish.
Then consider that for every dollar spent on a teachers salary there is an additional 0.25 to 0.30 spent in benefits. A $47,500 salary cost the tax payers approximately $59,375. I think that is pretty fair remuneration.
The BCTF is demanding a 13.5% increase over 5 years that’s unacceptable and unsustainable. People are expected to swallow that?
I am a right winger in the world of politics. I also believe that the teachers should get a reasonable level of numeration.
Is a 13.5% increase over 5 years outrageous. Sure it would be nice to get 10%, but if the BCTF see that signing a 5 year for 13.5% doesn’t keep up with inflation. Well. than sign it.
Now, now Siabiz, according to the BCTF raising teacher’s salaries, increasing teacher’s benefits and giving the teachers even more time off is going to solve all the problems in our education system. I’m not sure how but I figure it must be some newfangled math that I don’t understand.
http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/#!/content/1.2636861
Wow! If they have to lay that many off they obviously have too many!
Sorry Siabiz I’m not going to baby sit 30+ snot nosed brats for 47k a year!
Posted by: NoWay on May 14 2014 8:31 AM
Wow! If they have to lay that many off they obviously have too many!
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That’s an old and very short on any details story. They say this is an annual, contractual requirement. Sounds like a way for the teachers to collect EI for part of their summer vacation.
Are they not part of the (old) province-wide contract?
Axman
Any teacher that has accrued 10 months of work is no longer eligible to collect EI. Most of those teachers will not be getting EI.
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Here is a solution to the problem, that I have not seen any Liberal able to explain. Tax the corporations properly.
An open letter to Kamloops MLAs Todd Stone and Terry Lake:
As British Columbians, we are some of the most fortunate people in the world. We share the riches of abundant natural resources and public services, which derive from the taxes we pay. We also expect private corporations that extract these public resources should pay a fair share of the value of those resources in the taxes they pay. However, a comparison of the value of the resources extracted in 2001 with those extracted in 2012 â and the related tax revenues â exposes an alarming trend about which we should be very concerned.
First, letâs take a look at the increases in just three resource-based production values in this province:
⢠In 2001, the value of coal production was $959 million. By 2012, it had grown to $5.06 billion, an increase of 527 per cent.
⢠The value of metals production in 2001 was $1.39 billion. In 2012, it was $2.45 billion, an increase of 76 per cent.
⢠The value of industrial minerals in 2001 was $296 million. That had increased to $472 million in 2012, an increase of 60 per cent.
This represents a huge increase in corporate revenue over the last 10 years or so. In comparison, if we look at the total B.C. natural-resource tax revenue in 2001, we see it was about $4.2 billion. In 2013, that figure had declined to about $2.5 billion.Looking at natural resources produced in B.C., we find the provincial share of market value has declined from a steady 35 per cent some years ago to about 15 per cent in the last two years, a stark contrast to the huge gains made by private, resource-based corporate interests.
Can Stone and Lake help the folks in Kamloops understand this apparent anomaly?
Can they also advise voters as to whether or not private resource-based corporations have made tax-deductible contributions to political parties in B.C.?
Ray Blessin
Kamloops
Generally the current budget issues happening at board meetings across the Province have nothing to do with teachers. Teachers are on their 3rd year of zero and have little to no effect on the budget issues that have manifested this past year. I am surprised (not really) that is what keeps coming up though.
These are the reasons for the recent budget issues:
CUPE received 3.5% over 2 years (not funded by the government)
Hydro increases (not funded by the government)
MSP increases (not funded by the government)
For some reason if you take away recess or music programs parents put up a fight. Cut other areas such as special education, library, or putting more kids in each class and there is no fight. I find it odd.
I’m not sure about the benefits in this district, but in another district, the teachers get 10 days off per year over and above their sick days. One teacher acquaintance of mine that lives in this works in this district has referred to these as “stress” days but I’m not sure if that is in fact what they are called. What I do know is that every month, this teacher and many of her teacher friends call in once a month, just to take a stress day. My teacher acquaintance conveniently takes these on Fridays, in order to make or extend a long weekend. These weekends usually end up being shopping trips to a major centre.
So, this teacher takes 10 days off per year, 1 per month, with pay! Over and above her salary, sick days, pension and other more than generous benefits, we the taxpayer give her and her co-workers an additional 10 days off per year! Just because!!
I’ve explained my displeasure to her about this abuse of taxpayer dollars. Not only are we required to pay her salary, even though she’s not at work, we are now required to pay a substitute teacher’s salary for the day. If a substitute teacher is paid $300.00 per day, that’s $3,000.00 per year being paid to cover substitute teachers for just one teacher. Imagine the cost to taxpayers if every teacher in the district took all 10 days off per years. This could result in many millions of dollars in costs per year!!
The teachers that I know that use these days, do so with the attitude of “hey, it’s in our contract, we are entitled to it!”
Time to change the contract and direct the savings to students, instead of paying the substitute teachers that are required to cover for the regular teachers who are enjoying their “stress” days!!
For most of us, “stress” days are called weekends, and they are without pay!!
Hart Guy
I call B.S. Assuming this friend is real, you must know where they live. Please tell me which city or district this is in. I will find the collective agreement and prove you wrong.
Smooth, Peace River North
Perfect.
I am a teacher in Peace River North so this is win-win for me. If you are right, then I get an extra day off per month. If I am right, well, then I am right.
I can easily get a copy of this contract. Should I make it an attachment so you can read for yourself or just copy and paste the section on teacher leaves/absences?
Hmm, maybe I’ll pass along my friend’s name and you can ask them how they are taking a day off every month, with pay!!
and I believe that they refer to these days off as personal days, if that helps you!!
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