Tri-County school board crunching numbers to see what fuel relief will mean to it

By Tina Comeau

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

The Tri-County Regional School Board is busy crunching numbers to see what last week’s announcement of fuel relief for school boards will mean to its bottom line.

On Friday Education Minister Karen Casey announced that school boards are to base their 2008/09 budgets using the cost of fuel per litre from February.

The minister said since February the price of oil has hit record levels in international markets, having risen by more than 30 per cent, and she doesn’t want oil prices to have a negative impact on classrooms so the province is stepping in.

Many boards have said fuel prices are chewing up a lot of their budget – at least the part of their budgets left over after salaries have been paid, which accounts for about 85 per cent of board spending.

On the fuel issue, Casey added that if future prices exceed the February prices, the government would provide assistance to boards for the actual costs.

“The board welcomes the press release from the department as the extra funding will help our financial situation and will provide more support for our students in the classroom,” Bill Curry, the Tri-County board’s director of programs and student services said Friday.

The Tri-County board has said any funding this puts back into its coffers will be used to reinstate some of the positions it axed in its draft budget. The draft budget outlined cuts of 24 teaching positions and 18 central office positions. The board said the cuts were necessary because it was facing a $3.3 million funding shortfall.

Casey has told superintendents that the department expects them to limit their staff adjustments to those solely required because of declining enrollment figures. Asked about that statement, Curry said, “Fuel costs were not the only issue, but were a big piece, so I can’t really comment on the minister’s remark about “limiting” cuts until we see what the new numbers look like.”

The school board’s finance department is calculating numbers with the Education Department to see what the result of the fuel relief announcement will mean to the Tri-County board.

Meanwhile, Yarmouth County’s two MLAs have both said they were taken aback by the Tri-County’s draft budget released a couple of weeks ago. Neither Richard Hurlburt nor Chris d’Entremont anticipated the board announcing that it had a $3.3 million shortfall, particularly in light of the fact that, for the first time, the board qualified for supplementary funding due to its percentage of declining enrollment.

“The numbers didn’t equate with the things we’d been hearing,” d’Entremont said, suggesting that the school board and the department should work together to find other efficiencies that don’t result in job cuts.

But Curry says even with the increased funding the board could not balance its books, which by law it is required to do. He says all boards received the supplementary funding – from a high of 4.49 per cent for the CSAP to a low of 0.68 for the Strait Regional School Board. The Tri-County received 2.34 per cent in supplementary funding, or $1.339 million. But, Curry claims, many other boards received more funding or had comfortable surpluses.

“The TCRSB has a small deficit, not a surplus, and is amongst the smallest boards so a percentage increase for us does not go as far,” he said.

Plus, Curry said, even though the board received the supplementary funding for enrollment, it still loses funding because of declining student numbers and is still expected to cut teaching positions to correlate with the lower student numbers.