Yk1 to cut 12 jobs
Junior kindergarten, falling enrolment spells need for staff reduction, district says
Candace Thomson
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, May 7, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Staff will bear the brunt of funding cuts brought on by falling enrolment numbers and government clawbacks to pay for junior kindergarten, according to officials with the city's largest school district.
Former trustee Duff Spence, one of five parents who attended Yellowknife Education District No. 1's ratepayers' meeting Thursday night, speaks out against funding cuts being forced on Yellowknife schools to pay for the territorial government's junior kindergarten program. - Candace Thomson/NNSL photos |
An emotional Tram Do, director of corporate services for Yellowknife Education District No. 1, informed parents Thursday night that 12.75 staff positions need to be cut to make up for a $2-million shortfall in funding, including $1.4 million in cuts from the GNWT.
"We did our best to shelter the schools from staff reductions," Do told the five parents in attendance.
Five teaching positions are included in the cuts, along with four special needs jobs - including educational assistants and kindergarten support - and three central office positions.
While the loss of $588,399 from the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to fund a territory-wide junior kindergarten was a blow, the staff reductions were mostly attributed to the $911,399 in reduced GNWT core funding due to a decrease in enrolment.
The district lost an equivalent of 86.5 full-time students over the past year - most of them from Sir John Franklin High School.
According to superintendent Metro Huculak, many of the staff cuts will be completed through attrition, with teachers moving away or one-year teaching contracts not being renewed.
"There are some people resigning and we do have some term teachers (whose contracts will not be renewed), so there will not be any layoffs," said Huculak.
The finance committee made it clear that the cuts should have a minimal affect on teacher-to-student ratios, said Huculak.
He added that because Sir John Franklin High School has the smallest class sizes, most of the cuts will come from there.
Teachers had to inform their principals of their plans to stay or leave by April 30, and Huculak said he will be meeting with principals this week to discuss staffing needs and sort out where reductions need to take place, but could not say by press time how many contracts will not be renewed.
The staff reductions will save the district $1.5 million in salaries, benefits and professional development.
Alongside the GNWT funding cuts, the district is projecting a $74,780 decrease in property tax funding and a reduction in estimated interest on investments because of lower interest rates.
Yk1 will also dole out $350,000 to implement the new employer pension plan and $70,000 in additional costs for sidewalk repairs to address a safety issue at Sir John Franklin High School during the school year.
To manage its financial losses, Yk1 is reducing its $1.3 million accumulated surplus by $594,922 to counter the cuts due to junior kindergarten, and is cutting maintenance and operations costs by $100,000 in areas including board professional development, maintenance, special needs and central office costs.
Despite the cuts, district officials say they did their best to save school programming from being reduced and still boast that 85 per cent of their funding goes directly to the schools.
"We're very cautious when we do our budgets that we line up our expenditures with the funding that we get," said Do.
"We didn't want the funding reductions from junior kindergarten to affect our operations," said Do as she explained the cuts from the education department to parents.
As junior kindergarten is rolled out in the NWT over the next three years - with smaller communities slated to get the programming first - Yk1 will experience $62,000 in funding cuts.
"So my kids are paying for (other children's) junior kindergarten," said Duff Spence, a parent and former trustee.
"All of our kids are," a parent who wished to remain unnamed pitched in.
The board is maintaining a projected accumulated surplus of $1.3 million by June 2015, which is four per cent of its total expenditures.
However, the use of a surplus to fund junior kindergarten is not a viable long-term solution, according to John Stephenson, chair of Yk1.
"The use of the accumulated surplus is not sustainable to fund ongoing costs such as the reduction in funding related to (junior kindergarten)," Stephenson stated in an e-mail to Yellowknifer.
The final budget will be voted on by trustees May 13, and then submitted to Jackson Lafferty, the minister of Education, Culture and Employment by June 27.
