Education
Area school boards dealing with cash crunch
astephenson@medicinehatnews.com
While February’s provincial budget announcement wasn’t as tough on K-12 education as many had feared, the Medicine Hat area’s local school boards are still dealing with a serious cash crunch as they try to budget for 2010/11.
It has been a tough year for school boards, who in the spring, had to deal with significant clawbacks and discontinued grants from the provincial government as it attempted to get a handle on the ballooning provincial deficit.
Then in early February, an arbitrator ruled that teachers were owed a 5.99 per cent wage increase this year, not the 4.82 per cent the province had budgeted for. Because the province has said it does not have the funds to cover the salary hike, local school boards were immediately on the hook for the difference. Between the Prairie Rose School Division, Medicine Hat’s School District No. 76, and the Medicine Hat Catholic Separate Regional Division, that figure added up to $837,000.
While boards were spared heavy- handed cutbacks in the provincial budget, the fact that there was nothing from the province to deal with the salary issue is a major concern. The Alberta Average Weekly Earnings Index on which teacher salaries are based is tracking at about a three per cent increase for next year, so if Education Minister Dave Hancock is unsuccessful at negotiating a solution with the Alberta Teachers’ Association, local boards will be hit by that additional cost as well.
“If we don’t get the money (for the salary increases), that means our budget is
going to be hit by approximately four percentage points, and we don’t have the resources for it,” Medicine Hat Catholic superintendent David Leahy told the News.
That means local school divisions are at this point unable to rule out the possibility of program or staffing cuts. In January, the Catholic division held a town hall meeting at which they sought input from parents about which programs could be considered dispensable.
“One of the concerns that parents had is that we didn’t give them information on exact dollar values — if we cut this program, how much money are we going to save,” said Medicine Hat Catholic board chair Stan Aberle. “But our idea was not to give them that information, because we didn’t want them to base cuts just on programs that cost more money. We wanted to see where are their values, what do they think about programs we offer?”
Each of the three local school boards had an operating deficit for ‘09/10, and it seems unavoidable they will face the same situation when they release their ‘10/11 budgets this spring. In fact, School District No. 76 is forecasting an approximate $1.5 million deficit, which would seriously eat into the $3.7 million the district currently has in reserves.
“I think this will probably be one of our most challenging years that we’re going into,” said District No. 76 board chair Gitta Hashizume.
But Prairie Rose superintendent Doug Nicholls says school administrators will be working hard to make sure the budget pain is kept as far away from the classroom as possible.
David Leahy, superintendent of Medicine Hat’s Catholic school division, looks over information from a provincial budget announcement on Tuesday, Feb. 9. While boards were spared heavy- handed cutbacks in the provincial budget, the Medicine Hat area’s local school boards are still dealing with a serious cash crunch as they try to budget for 2010/11.
Gitta Hashizume - Chair of Medicine Hat School District No. 76
“The goal of Prairie Rose will be to minimize the effect on students as much as possible,” Nicholls said.
Aberle agrees. “We’ve never had a year when we’ve said, ‘hey, we’ve got all kinds of money — we can offer anything we want,’ ” he said. “Every year, at budget time, we struggle. It just seems there’s never enough money there, but every year we seem to get through it. So no matter what happens here, we will find a way to get through it.”
KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS ABOUT THE HAT
astephenson@medicinehatnews.com
You can conduct all the polls, launch all the advertising campaigns, and come up with as many catchy slogans as you want in an attempt to market your city and its quality of life. But kids don’t care about any of that — and when you ask them what they think about their community, they’re going to tell the truth. The News sat down with five students from Central Park School to find out how kids see Medicine Hat.
News: What do you like about living in Medicine Hat?
Braydon McGimpsey, Grade 3: I like playing baseball.
Janae Karl, Grade 4: I like going down to the Field House and watching my friends play soccer.
Carson Crawford, Grade 1: I like it because me and my family always go to the airport and have breakfast, and sometimes we watch the planes.
Jalen Mckenzie, Grade 4: Every birthday I have I get to go to the Medicine Hat Lodge and we sleep there and go watersliding.
Savannah Ridley, Grade 2: I like watching my brother play football.
Janae: Oh, and I like going to the Esplanade because you can go there to watch plays and hear music. Savannah: I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory there.
Jalen: When I was young, I used to go to the library a lot and take out one book - Frog on a Log.
Carson: I like going to Ruckers and the Leisure Centre, because I like the waterslides and all the games.
Braydon: I like Medicine Hat because I get to see my family. Mostly every weekend I go to my grandparents, and we have a family dinner and sometimes I stay overnight.
Jalen: I love the food court. I like A&W. I always get Chubby Chicken strips and large french fries.
News: Do you like Medicine Hat’s weather?
(Nods all around). Jalen: Oh yes, the sun. I love the sun.
Janae: Sometimes it’s bad, though. One time, we got hail and the TVs went all out of whack. My mom picked up some hail so I could feel it.
News: Who do you think is the most famous person in Medicine Hat?
(Puzzlement on all the faces. Lengthy pause.) Savannah: I’d have to say the Mayor, I think. Jalen: Yeah, the Mayor. Norm Boucher, I think. . . no, Norm Bouchard.
All kids in agreement, nodding: Yeah, yeah, Norm Bouchard . . . Mayor Bouchard . . . he’s famous. Carson: No! It’s Michael Jackson!
MCKENZIE
Grade 4
JALEN
CRAWFORD
Grade 1
CARSON JANAE
KARL
Grade 4
MCGIMPSEY
Grade 3
BRAYDON
SAVANNAH
RIDLEY
Grade 2
(Interview ends abruptly, as News reporter is laughing too hard and kids are now demonstrating the Thriller dance.)
REPORT ON SOUTHEAST ALBERTA 2010 ■ Celebrating our Community — 59 REPORT ON SOUTHEAST ALBERTA 2010 ■ Celebrating our Community—
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