Fort Simpson DEA chair fed up with funding formula
Derek Neary
Northern News Services
Fort Simpson (Apr 27/01) - The Fort Simpson District Education Authority feels Bompas Elementary school has too few teachers and the Department of Education is refusing to recognize it.
| 'Corners cut' According to a letter from Allan Landry, chair of the Dehcho Education Council, to the Fort Simpson DEA, the Department of Education has cut corners in a few areas of funding: |
Nolan Swartzentruber, director of the Dehcho Divisional Board of Education said the department has already committed to reducing teacher/pupil ratios in the NWT and will continue to lower the rates over the next few years.
"The debate comes as to how that is calculated. They (the department) just take the total number of teaching positions and the total number of students, it has nothing to do with class size," Swartzentruber said.
According to Thompson, even after the principal and the program support teacher moved into part-time teaching positions, the pupil/teacher ratio at Bompas is still 21.2:1.
The department set a territorial objective of 17.5:1 for this school year. It cites statistics from the Deh Cho region and Fort Simpson as a whole to indicate that the ratio is on target.
Thompson argues that those numbers are misleading because they involve some smaller communities with seven or eight students. Further, secondary schools, like Thomas Simpson school, follow a different formula.
Not only is the pupil:teacher ratio at Bompas too high, the principal and program support teacher can no longer execute their other duties to the same level they could before, Thompson argued. With close to 40 per cent of students on modified education programs, the program support teacher is needed full-time in that capacity, he contended.
"They're more than maxed out. We have very large class sizes. We've tried everything possible, but as soon as you try to fix one thing, you end up affecting another thing... when you're putting 22 or 23 kids in a class, you're putting a pretty big burden on a teacher," he said.
"They (the department) do all these great studies. Well, put some money into what we're trying to do," he said.
Swartzentruber said he doesn't feel education is being compromised at Bompas Elementary.
"The resources are limited so we have to make sure that we make wise choices on how that's allocated," he said.
"The answer to everything isn't always more money. Maybe we need to look at different ways of how we do business."
The DEA has compiled a package of all correspondence between itself and the department since 1998. Many of those letters identify concerns over the funding formula.
That package will be sent, along with a letter outlining concerns, to other DEAs and to cabinet ministers, in an effort to create greater understanding of the challenges, Thompson said.
DEC has allotted more funds
Thompson credited the DEC for helping Fort Simpson with more than $200,000 over budget. At the DEC meeting earlier this month, the regional education council also designated two special needs assistant positions to Bompas until the end of the school year.
However, the DEC is drawing from the region's surplus to address Fort Simpson's needs. What will happen when that surplus is exhausted, Thompson asked.
That's a question that Swartzentruber admitted nobody really wants to answer.
"I guess it's pretty obvious, when there's no surplus there we're going to have to go closer to what the funded levels are," he said, acknowledging that staffing cuts are a possibility.
The DEC's surplus is nearly $1 million. As of January, the council was $257,000 over budget for this year.
"As we keep eating into it, yes that is a concern," Swartzentruber said.
