Teachers in the Sea to Sky School District would like to see the District 48 board of trustees loosen up their budgeting protocols in the spring to help to reduce the potential for staffing shortages in the fall.
"My belief is that the budgeting process is too tightly controlled in the spring to adequately deal with issues that often arise with staffing levels in the fall," Beth Miller, president of the Sea to Sky Teachers' Association (SSTA), told board members at a meeting to kick off the 2012-'13 budgeting process on Wednesday (Feb. 15) at the school board office in Squamish.
"I would like to see a slight loosening in the spring to allow school administrators a bit more leeway to adjust staffing levels."
Last week's meeting was one of two springtime sessions in which the board plans to seek input from the district's education partners in formulating its budget for the 2012-'13 school year. The "partners" include not only teachers but also area First Nations, the District Parent Advisory Council and the Canadian Union of Public Employees' (CUPE) Local 779, which represents about 150 school support staff.
Andrea Beaubien, a Squamish trustee and the board's vice-chair, told The Chief in an email that the school-board budgeting process is a fluid one as the money is allocated by the Ministry of Education on a per-student basis. It's often difficult to predict changes several months ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline for submitting student counts for a given year, she said.
Two years ago, the district lost protection grant funding meant to help districts deal with low enrollments when its actual student count came in only 47 students higher than anticipated. The Ministry of Education's system for counting students (based on a "full-time equivalent" formula) showed an enrollment increase of 100, so the district lost out on a grant to top up its then-$35-million budget.
School boards in B.C. are not allowed to operate in the red and the district wound up its current budgeting year in January with a surplus of some $450,000. Beaubien said when she first became a trustee six years ago, "it was the norm to finish the year with a $1 million surplus. That we have very little surplus now is both the effects of fewer dollars to spend and a result of better allocation and use of dollars.
"We are very lucky to have great monitoring and conservative thinking by our secretary treasurers."
Miller, though, told the board, "Current conservative budgetary and staffing practices are having a negative impact on school operations, especially in the fall." Better long-term planning could help alleviate some of those struggles, she said.
Miller said that while the 2011-'12 school year has been a challenging one - at least partly a result of the ongoing, province-wide teacher job action -"we enter this process with a sense of renewed optimism in the direction of SD48."
Peter Lewis, a CUPE representative, told the board that the union would like to see more consistent hours allotted to teacher-assistants, a move he said would produce a "more productive learning environment" in Sea to Sky schools.
Asked by Beaubien why he wasn't also advocating for more hours for other CUPE support staff, Lewis said, "We're trying to focus on one thing at a time we're working to help the lowest-paid workers first, and a group that I think are most central to the school system's success."
Paul Wick, a Squamish Nation administrator who spoke on behalf of all area First Nations at the meeting, identified six items that First Nations feel are important in the budgeting process. They included implementation of a First Nations language program and the hiring of a full-time district administrator for aboriginal education.
As well, the district's Aboriginal Enhancement Agreement is up for renegotiation this year and Wick said First Nations want to see a new agreement finalized before the next school year begins.
Beaubien, who chaired the meeting in board chair Rick Price's absence, said the board welcomed the suggestions and that they would be part of the board's deliberations. However, she said Education Minister George Abbott recently told trustees that while there would be some changes to funding formulas in time for next year, "the pot of money available remains unchanged."
