Kootenay Lake School District No. 8 passes 2012-13 budget that includes cuts to teachers
By Bruce Fuhr
The Kootenay Lake School District Board passed its annual budget Tuesday for the 2012-13 year and it’s not good news for teachers.
Topping the list is the reduction of 19 full-time-equivalent teaching positions and closing of both District Resource Centre in Creston and Nelson.
“Part of the reason (for the cuts) is the changing of the structure of how grants are given out from the ministry,” Kootenay Lake School District No. 8 Superintendent Jeff Jones explained.
“We’ve had funding protection in place that gives districts 100 per cent of funding the year before even though the student population has declined.
“For 2012-13 year we’re going to see a reduction of 1.5 per cent in funding.”
In larger, growing districts, boards are given funds to run the day-to-day operation depending on the number of students enrolled.
However, in rural districts the province has supplemented budgets even though school enrolment has declined.
Jones said Kootenay Lake is not the only district in the province seeing a reduction in money received from the Ministry of Education.
He said there are at least 60 other districts that will face the same shortfall come September.
But now the province is moving in the direction to funds districts depending on the number of students enrolled.
“It should take three years,” Jones said when asked the time frame to get Kootenay Lake School District No. 8 out from under the funding protection umbrella.
“So next year we expect another reduction in funding protection.”
Kootenay Lake had 5300 students enrolled in the 2006-07 school year.
The district estimates that number will decline to 4700 in 2014-15.
Layoff notices should go out in May to the teachers affected.
However, Jones hopes most of the cuts will be done through attrition.
As for the Resource Centres, both will close and the district is busy working on new ways to get the information out to the teachers.
Staff in those two facilities will be reassigned in the district due to seniority.
“The board is committed to student learning and giving students the support system they’re entitled to,” Jones said. “I think we have implemented a number of strategies to achieve that.”
Kootenay Lake has 22 schools in the district and two Resource Centres and stretches from Meadow Creek in the north to Yahk in the east and Slocan’s W.E. Graham in the south.
