Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Dec 03/01) - A promised wind of change through Nunavut schools has been blowing rather foul of late.

Education authorities across the territory are unhappy that recent changes made to the way schools are run have cost more than anticipated.

A year and a half ago, the Department of Education disbanded the three regional District Education Councils, which had been overseeing the budgets and administration of the different District Education Authorities.

The merging of the three bureaucracies came with the promise of $1 million in savings. But the move was not widely heralded at the time, and has lost support since.

"There's a big disillusionment with what's going on here," said Dan Harvey, the chair of Qurluqtuq's Education Authority. "It's gone backwards."

Instead of a single board speaking to government on behalf of a number of regions, each authority must now do its own negotiating. And that's not as easy as it sounds, said Harvey.

"When you want a decision made, you may as well go out and talk to a swing set in the yard because (the government) does it as it wants," he said. "They said (the change) was going to let us take control of what we want here. That's not so. Now every school can be treated differently at the whim of the minister."

"We lost a good few things," said Iqaluit DEA chair Kathy Smith. "We lost a method of communication between DEAs."

Money is a big issue. Each authority is saddled with deficit responsibilities, but they have no control over the actual funds.

In addition, the councils' third-party status meant they could apply for government grants. Now that the government holds the purse strings, "they can't apply for grants, so we lost out on quite a bit of funding," said Smith.

Another unforeseen casualty was experienced staff.

"The people who were our directors and supervisors of schools weren't encouraged to stay with the Department of Education," said Smith. "We thought that there would be a role for them."

As for the $1 million, Brian Zawadski, who chairs Rankin Inlet's DEA, has questions, but no answers.

"Where are these savings? Who have they been directed to? Can anyone even identify them in the accounting system?" he asked.

The government doesn't have a lot of answers, either, although it points to recent spending increases.

Tom Rich, the deputy minister of education, said total funding for school operations has increased by $2 million in the past year, including an $800,000 increase to DEAs.

Rich said the government is trying to improve communications, and asked for patience.

"I sense that some of this is frustration because things are taking longer than people had hoped they take," he said.

Some, like Harvey, want an immediate return to the old system. But others are preaching the need to reserve judgment for now.

"It's a little premature to call it a mistake," said Zawadski. "We're only at a year and a half and there's got to be a little bit of time for some transition."