School Closures, Staff Layoffs Possible as School District Wrestles with Lost Facility Grants

Friday, September 04, 2009 04:19 AM

Prince George, B.C. - School District 57 will be holding a special meeting on September 22^nd to deal with an unexpected plunge in funding.

Budget cuts announced this week by the province will leave School District 57, $2.3 million short of the expected facility grants.

School District 57 had already made plans to deal with a shortfall of $2.4 million for 2010-11, but when combined with the cancelled facility grants, the shortfall has nearly doubled. “What we’re looking at is a shortfall of $4.7 million” says Board Chair Lyn Hall, “This is huge.”

“We started our budget process last February” says Hall, “And adopted a plan to deal with that initial shortfall, but there aren’t many options for us and we will have to start the process all over again.”

School District Staff are crunching numbers and will present to the Board a full picture of the shortfall, and possible options. “We don’t have a lot of discretionary dollars” says Board Chair Lyn Hall who says there may still be financial implications for the District in dealing with H1N1 and the impact of the HST. “We will examine the entire organization, but this (cut in facility grants) may have an impact on staffing and facilities.” That means, there is a possibility of layoffs and school closures.

So which schools are on the bubble?

Chair Hall says certainly the District will be taking a close look at all schools, “In the past, the Hart has been the hardest hit when it comes to declining enrolment but not so much anymore. College Heights Elementary French emersion is blossoming, the Bowl, Southridge, VanWay and Beaverly are all doing well” He says the plans for an Aboriginal School at Carney Elementary are expected to go ahead for the fall of 2010.

The School District had already signed $1.7 million in contracts for capital maintenance projects. Those contracts were signed based on the School District’s expectation of receiving facility grants for the last quarter of the fiscal year which ended March 31^st. The funding never came. Those contracts will be honoured, however, the balance of the planned maintenance projects will be cancelled. The cancelled projects include an HVAC system, parking lot maintenance and upgrades to the exterior of some facilities .

So it’s back to the drawing board, as the School District starts all over again in trying to deal with budget shortfalls. “We were not expecting the facility grants to be cut,” says Chair Hall, “We were very surprised by it.”

School District 57 won’t know until Thursday of next week just what the enrolment numbers will be for this year, but it is expected there will be a decline of about 400 students.

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Posted on Friday, September 04, 2009 04:19 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: Vdesign on September 4 2009 7:48 AM

Loss of 400 students would seem to indicate that the city could close one of the smaller schools, and shift students around to fill the vacancies in other schools.

It is a real shame that they did not hear about the cuts until after so many students have already signed up, and certainly any decision will not be made until after children have started classes.

With an expected drop of enrollment of 400 students, I would have thought that they would have been making some plans anyways.

I understand that the government cannot continue to fund at the same level if enrollment in an area is decreasing, particularly in this rough economic time.

I just wonder where my son is going to have to be shuttled to every morning, and return from every afternoon.

Posted by: Yoshi on September 4 2009 9:17 AM

Remember that there is no decrease of 400 students in one area-it os spread throughout the city. Therefore, it can get a little difficult to determine a particular school to close.

As well, its important to realize that the district did balance its budget last year based on promised funding from the government. The shortfall is not based on poor planning-its based on the fact that the district spent monies that they were told that they were getting, and then had that money yanked away. Its kinda hard to meet a budget when this happens.

Posted by: metalman on September 4 2009 9:32 AM

Is "emersion" french for "immersion"?
The provincial government really dropped a major bombshell on the school districts by suddenly slashing their facility grants. In many cases, that money was already spent, so to speak. In anticipation of the annual facilities grant, a lot of maintenance, capital spending, and repairs are undertaken every summer. The school boards will now have to pay the contractors and vendors from other budget money, which of course means that other areas of operation will not be funded.
It is too bad the Liberals would not come clean a lot sooner, they had to know how tough things were going to get at least three or four months ago.
metalman.

Posted by: Palopu on September 4 2009 11:09 AM

School District 57 Covers a lot more area than Prince George, and therefore a drop in students of 400 is spread over a large area.

Enrolments have been dropping in District 57 for the past ten years, and are forecast to continue to drop for at least another 5 years.

The drop in enrolments, decrease in the general population, and now higher unemployment, along with no significant plans for creating any jobs in the area, does not bode well for Prince George.

Posted by: Harbinger on September 4 2009 4:30 PM

Creating jobs? How about those lefty dreamers and their "green jobs" that will employ many and make the world all rainbows again? Or is that if the Feds will invest billions of taxpayers dollars to create those jobs?

Posted by: lost it all on September 4 2009 8:04 PM

Harbinger, you are an idiot!