School pension funding denied
Deputy minister says YK school boards are
independent employers, responsible for own plans
Candace Thomson
Northern News Services
Published Friday, May 30, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Yellowknife's two school boards have been denied their requests to the territorial government to help fund their newly defined benefit pension plans.
"If you're an independent employer and you want flexibility, with it comes the responsibility to financially honour your commitments," Gabriela Eggenhoffer, deputy minister of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, told Yellowknifer May 21.
Both boards negotiated their plans with the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association last year. Yellowknife Education District No. 1 (Yk1) pension plan was approved in November, and comes with a price tag of $400,000 per year.
Teachers for Yellowknife Catholic Schools (YCS) had their plan come into effect in May of last year, with support staff coming soon after in July - that plan will cost the district nearly $550,000 per year for teachers and $260,000 per year for support staff.
The GNWT sent out a press release May 20 explaining its decision to deny the funding requests after sending letters notifying the school boards.
"In November, we received a letter from both (Yellowknife) school boards asking us to offset costs from the collective agreement (with the NWTTA), so now we're responding," Eggenhoffer said.
"Yellowknife is different in that the teachers are not members of the GNWT's public service and therefore (we are) not the employer.
"The Yellowknife school boards have flexibility
that the other school boards don't.
"They're the only ones that can levy taxes to offset their costs."
The news came as a disappointment to school board officials, who applied for money they felt the districts were owed to offset inequality in the percentage of funding they get toward teacher pensions compared to school boards located outside the capital.
"I think money's probably short (for the GNWT) and that's been the news. That's why that's their response," said Metro Huculak, superintendent for Yk1.
"There was a discrepancy in what Yellowknife (schools) got versus what the others got and so we applied for that to be corrected," said Simon Taylor, chair of YCS.
The GNWT funding formula for school boards in the territory includes factors based on the number of students a district has and the average level of pay for that district's teachers, according to Mike Huvenaars, the superintendent of business of YCS.
The formula adds an amount to the teacher salary funding based on the cost of benefits for those teachers.
All school boards in the Northwest Territories receive the same percentage for employment insurance and Canada Pension Plan at 2.9 per cent each.
With pensions, however, boards outside of Yellowknife get 10.5 per cent of their salary for the their benefit plans, which is the same for all territorial government employees.
Meanwhile, the Yellowknife boards get 4.75 per cent of teacher salary in funding from the government.
"This six per cent difference in historical funding for pensions was due, in part, to the fact that teachers outside of Yellowknife participated in the (GNWT) plan, which was a much more expensive pension plan than the (past) plans at Yk1 and YCS," Huvenaars stated in an e-mail.
"Now that YCS and Yk1 are providing defined benefit pension plans for our staff, we requested to be funded equitably compared to the ... (other) boards."
Taylor said YCS was trying to arrange a meeting with the minister of ECE in the coming weeks to discuss the response.
"The fact of the matter is that we do have to offer competitive pension and benefit schemes so that we can retain staff," he said.
