‘Where is the money going?’ Public school board feeling provincial budget pain

By JEREMY APPEL on November 30, 2019.

jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel

Medicine Hat Public School Division chair Rick Massini says the government’s numbers on K-12 education funding simply don’t add up.

The Oct. 24 budget froze funding for public, separate and francophone schools at $8.223 billion.

“We’re having a little problem with the math here,” said Massini.

He says the government has repeatedly ensured school boards across the province that funding would remain consistent, however “virtually every board” he’s interacted with “has indicated that they’ve had significant cuts, or reductions, to their budgets.”

“Where is the money going?” Massini asked rhetorically. “Are they actually putting $8.223 billion into the budget?”

The board is $4.7 million short of what it submitted as a budget request, but it expected the $900,000 classroom improvement fund to get axed, so it didn’t allocate any funds toward it.

That leaves a $3.8-million hole in the budget, which the government partially plugged with a $1.4 million transition grant.

“That leaves us with a $2.4-million shortfall for this year,” said Massini.

He says the MHPSD has enough reserve funds to cover the gap this year, but that won’t be the case next year, especially if the transition grant is discontinued.

“From what I can understand, all of our counterparts are in about the same boat,” Massini said.

This poses “some significant challenges” for K-12 education, he says.

It could mean larger class sizes and fewer supports to meet the various needs of students in the public system, said Massini.

“We believe in inclusion where possible, but may be forced to make difficult decisions that are contrary to what is in the best interest of students,” he said.

“Notwithstanding these cuts, we still have an obligation to serve children. We raise the risk of meeting student needs and it becomes easier for kids to fall through the cracks. We will have to do more with less.”

The government’s elimination of its class size initiative grant doesn’t help matters, he added.

Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said in October that the 16-year-old grant wasn’t particularly successful in reducing class sizes, but Massini says its name is a bit of a misnomer, since it was used for more than one purpose.

“The issue wasn’t really about class size so much as it was about class complexity,”he said. “Over the last few years, we’ve really witnessed more students with social, emotional and behavioural needs – stress, anxiety, depression, language and cultural barriers – and that has added to the challenge of providing quality educational programs and instruction to all students.”

The funding was used to maintain “relatively reasonable class sizes,” while “accommodating all of these students,” Massini said.

Massini is also critical of the government’s decision to boost funding for charter, alternative, private and home schools to $400 million from $396 million at a time of general austerity.

“That $400 million would serve to assist 10 boards like ours through this problem,” he said. “I’m not suggesting that they cut that, but that’s the reality.”

He says he appreciates the financial difficulties facing the province, but the government’s mantra that the province has a “spending issue” ignores the other side of the equation – revenue.

“Giving $4.8 billion away in corporate tax cuts doesn’t seem to jibe with the claim that we’ve got a real serious budget issue happening here,” Massini said.

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