School board balances budget, reinstates 12 teaching positions cut in draft budget

By Tina Comeau

NovaNewsNow.com

With financial help from the province, the Tri-County Regional School Board has balanced its budget for the upcoming year. What this means is the board will be able to reinstate some of the jobs it had cut in its draft budget.

In that draft the board cut 24 teaching positions and eliminated 18 positions at the central board office.

“What this mean…is we will be able to put back 12 teaching positions that had to go,” board chair Faye Haley said Friday. She said regrettably the other 12 positions will still be cut because of declining enrolment, a factor beyond the board’s control.

The board is also hoping to reinstate 10 positions at the board office. The majority of the positions axed in the draft budget provided resource and curriculum support to teachers and students. Losing them would impact the classroom.

“But we’re really pleased that we’re able to get the teacher positions back because that’s the most critical,” Haley said.

The board is still working on its staffing allotments.

The board has approved a balanced budget of $68,083,369. It was able to do this with a one-time $500,000 grant from the province.

As well, the board benefited from its share of money the province gave to boards to help with relief from higher fuel prices and to assist with preventive maintenance. The Tri-County’s share was $301,791.

"Last month, we were able to help all boards with additional funding to protect them from rising fuel costs," said Education Minister Karen Casey. "In the case of the Tri-County board, even with that help, financial decisions made in the 2007-08 budget year have made it difficult for them to prepare a balanced budget."

At the invitation of the board, the province sent in a three-person team to help the board with its budget development process. The department will continue to work with board staff over the coming year to identify ongoing opportunities to increase efficiency.

Haley agrees the board needs to look ahead to next year to avoid a repeat of the drastic job measures it was forced to consider this year.

“What we have to do in the next few months is to look very closely at the situation,” she said. “We’ll be looking at some options, the minister said financial decisions made in the last year made it difficult to prepare a balanced budget for this year. We’re going to have to look very closely at what those decisions were and the impact they had and how we can do things differently.

"We still feel strongly that we have special challenges here at the tri-county board,” added Haley. "We appreciate the province's help in assuring that our students will continue to benefit from the best educational resources we can provide."