Lynn Lau
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Jun 08/01) - The public school system will lose eight teachers and teaching assistants if the latest draft budget is approved. The board votes on the budget Tuesday, June 11.
Yellowknife Education District No. 1 released its third draft budget at a ratepayers meeting Tuesday night.
The board has been attempting to find a way to pay off its accumulated deficit of $840,000. The areas that will likely bear the brunt of the cuts are capital projects and staffing.
Initially, it was thought that the deficit would be $1.2 million and that 17 teaching positions would have to be cut to balance the budget, but lower than expected territorial enrolments allowed the ministry to distribute additional money to all school boards. For the public board, it meant an extra $309,000.
The draft budget released Tuesday calls for two and a half more teaching positions to be cut than was proposed in the second draft released last week. The additional cuts are required to bring the school board's teacher-pupil ratio closer to the territorial funding level, said Dan Schofield, chair of the board of trustees.
Although Education, Culture and Employment only funds the school system for 121.5 teachers, or one teacher for every 17.47 students, currently the there are 131.18 teachers, or one teacher for every 16.18 students. With the teacher cuts currently being proposed, the ratio will be 17.1 students for every teacher.
"We have staffed to better than we can afford," Schofield said.
"That's a $600,000 difference that we incur annually ... we haven't cured the problem, but we've fixed it to a degree. We've done a number of things that are against the wisdom of our administration and we've done that to protect the teacher pupil ratios. We may pay for that down the road."
The additional staffing cuts will help the school board put $182,022 towards the accumulated deficit by the end of the 2002 fiscal year, with a three-year debt repayment plan. The last draft allotted just $45,269 towards the deficit in 2002.
Public opposition
The proposed staff cuts did not go over well with most of those in attendance Tuesday night. Only 15 people showed up for the meeting, far fewer than the 250 that attended the first meeting April 24.
"I can't help but wonder when I see that major cuts are being made by teachers, and from my experience they're the ones who are the most needed," parent Jane Curren told the board.
Another parent, Donna Nash, agreed.
"I'd rather have the staff in the schools. I'm feeling like its top heavy and if we want to make cuts we need to make them at the district office."
Chris Tricoteux, president of the NWT Teachers' Association for Yellowknife Education District No. 1, urged the board to reject the additional staffing cuts.
"We need the teachers in the classrooms," Tricoteux said later. "I think all it takes is a little creativity on their part to see what they can cut besides teachers."
Finance committee chair Terry Brookes said he was also opposed to the additional staff cuts.
"I don't want to see any other teachers cut. I believe we should go with the grassroots. I think we have to take this slow I want to minimize the impact."
Several trustees expressed concern about the proposed reduction in capital projects spending. The most recent draft calls for all capital projects to be deferred. But a recent oil spill from an oil storage building on the site of the aging Mildred Hall school, served as an example of the necessity for reserve money to cover unexpected capital costs.
"Speaking from an engineers point of view, some of these capital projects, you have to either pay me now or pay me later, there has to be some level of maintenance," Brookes said.
