LAST month's three-day walkout by B.C's public school teachers has led to an unexpected windfall for the North Shore's special education programs.
The job action, which saw the province's public schools effectively shut down March 5-7, saved the Ministry of Education some $37 million, according to the province.
Last week, the ministry announced it would be steering most of those savings - about $30 million - into its Learning Improvement Fund, a program designed to help students with special needs, effectively doubling the fund's size.
That boost translates into $675,844 for the West Vancouver school district - well above the $300,000 it was expecting for the program in the coming school year - and more than $1.5 million for the district's larger counterpart in North Vancouver.
The money was welcome news to West Vancouver school board chairwoman Cindy Dekker.
"We can hire more teachers; we can help them with professional development . . . it can go to counselling," she said. "This is what's been called for for years and years."
The board will meet with teachers, principals, support staff, and parents to determine the best use of the money, said Dekker.
"We'll be working with our entire school community to make the best use of these funds."
North Vancouver school district superintendent John Lewis was similarly upbeat.
"I think that we have the benefit this year of also being in a position where we have a $1 million surplus in our operating fund for next year," he said.
The money will help the district deal with class size pressures and "complex classroom situations," according to Lewis.
The money was doled out based on each school district's slice of the ministry's annual operating grant, Lewis explained.
Because North Vancouver receives 2.6 per cent of the grant each year, it will also receive 2.6 per cent of the Learning Improvement Fund. The formula was kept simple out of necessity, he said.
"It's the first year in its implementation, and they didn't have an objective way to come up with a measure of the complexity of each school district's student population," said Lewis.
A representative for the province's teachers was a little more reserved in her praise, however.
While she applauded awarding more money to special needs students, B.C. Teachers' Federation president Susan Lambert took issue with the process by which the money was distributed.
"It's a shell game," she said. "Next year there's a frozen budget."
Lambert also took issue with the allocation process, which she said forces districts to compete for funding from an insufficient education budget.
The remaining $7 million of the total strike windfall will be put in the general operating funds of local school boards, according to B.C. government communication liaison Mark Knudsen.
The LIF budget is scheduled to remain at $60 million in 2013 before rising to $75 million in 2014.