North Vancouver School District trustees are going down to the wire on adopting a budget for the next school year, after voicing concerns this week that money guaranteed by the provincial government so far falls about $5 million short of what’s needed to pay for restored contract language with teachers.
Trustees opted this week to put off adopting a $182-million annual budget until June 27, with hopes that more information will be available about funding from the ministry of education.
Boards of education are required to pass a balanced budget by June 30 each year.
Georgia Allison, secretary-treasurer for the North Vancouver School District, told trustees Tuesday that the school district remains in a good financial position.
But school officials acknowledged this year’s budgeting process has been complicated by the need to provide for class size and composition rules contained in teachers’ contracts restored by the Supreme Court of Canada win in November.
Allison told trustees the budget contains about $6.8 million from the province to pay for new teachers and other costs associated with those contracts. But when school district staff analyzed the numbers “we did not believe that was enough funding to cover the costs,” said schools superintendent Mark Pearmain.
Pearmain said school administrators believe North Vancouver needs about $5 million more to cover costs like hiring of extra classroom help.
The school district advised the ministry in May about the need for extra funding.
But as of this week, the school district had no confirmation that they would receive that money from the province, he said.
That was concerning to trustees who grappled with the budget bylaw Tuesday evening.
“It’s still hard to make sense of it,” said trustee Barry Forward, who asked why the board should support a budget “when we have so many unknowns that are out there.”
“We need to have a budget,” said Pearmain, adding it’s possible confirmation of more provincial money will come in the middle of the summer.
Several specialist teachers also appealed to the school board Tuesday not to cut funding for dedicated school counsellors, speech pathologists and psychologists.
Teacher Judi Israeli voiced concern that the budget as presented contains a 30 per cent reduction in dedicated school counsellors as well as reductions for other specialists.
“I believe we provide an essential service,” school counsellor Mary Sparks told trustees. “We support the most vulnerable students and complex families in our district.”
Sparks said under the proposed budget, dedicated counselling time in some schools is down by 50 per cent.
Pearmain said some of the changes are being driven by the restored teachers’ contract language. In the recent past, specialist teachers were paid for through dedicated funds from the ministry of education. But those funds have now been directed to hiring classroom teachers. So some specialist teachers are being “redeployed” as regular classroom teachers, said Pearmain.
Pearmain added school staffing hasn’t been finalized, and he expects most of those specialist positions will be funded by the time final decisions are made.
Concerns were also voiced about the appearance of a $1.5-million cut to special education funding in the budget. But Pearmain said that has been caused by a reclassification of teachers at Mountainside alternate school, rather than changes to actual programs.
Trustees are expected to discuss the budget again at a public meeting June 27 at 6 p.m.
