Public schools make cuts to balance budget

By RYAN MCCRACKEN on May 27, 2020.

mccracken@medicinehatnews.com@Twitter: MHNMcCracken

Medicine Hat Public School Division unanimously moved to approve its spring budget proposal during a virtual board meeting Tuesday.

Secretary treasurer Jerry Labossiere says MHPSD managed to balance its budget for the upcoming 2020-21 school year, but only after taking a number of actions to free up resources as the result of significant changes in provincial funding.

“We started with a $2.3-million deficit,” said Labossiere. “We had $305,000 of grant reduction in the non-enveloped area year-over-year. We had new pressure points, being grid movement and benefit costs and a few other little things for $701,000, putting us in the hole $3.3 million.”

MHPSD went on to create $2 million in savings through school-based and central instruction cuts, then another $2.7 million through the restructuring of Program Unity Funding and $468,000 through a reassignment of custodial services to operations and maintenance – resulting in a surplus of $1.8 million.

School-based cuts were made through a number of means, including the reallocation of a second vice principal at Crestwood School, as well as changes to CEU sharing, embedded collaboration, restructured outreach programs, early literacy educational assistants, mini-budget allocations and funding for athletics and field trips.

“We just decided with all of these cuts we can no longer (subsidize athletics) with instructional dollars, so field trips and sub costs for coaches to go to out-of-town games and that sort of thing, and any support if they make it to provincials, will no longer be there from central office, saving $71,000,” said Labossiere. “That will get recaptured by the fees they charge their students to be in those programs, or they may travel less.”

Labossiere says MHPSD then continued to make cuts centrally, making way for another $217,000.

“It was made by a myriad of things, all sorts of travel, PD, meeting costs,” said Labossiere. “We really looked at every line item we could look at and if we could pull back, we did.”

A total of 13.9 teaching positions, 42.4 educational assistants and 1.2 other positions were cut to accommodate what ended up being a $2.1-million surplus, which was in turn used to restore 1.8 family school liaison worker positions, 2.3 teachers for inclusive education and 16.5 teachers to address new staffing ratios. School-based cuts resulted in the losses of 7.5 teaching positions and 5.9 educational assistants, while restructuring PUF led to 36.5 fewer educational assistant positions.

“When it’s all said and done, we actually end up being 4.8 teaching positions up,” said MHPSD superintendent Mark Davidson. “We think when the staffing process is all done, we might be down roughly 20 educational assistants, but we’re going to be up a couple of family school liaison workers. It’s kind of a mixed story in that we’re increasing professional staff, we’re increasing some social emotional support and then we have a modest decline in the number of educational assistants in schools.”

Staffing ratios are set to rise from kindergarten to Grade 3, but were reduced from Grades 4 through 12. Grades 4-6 dropped from a ratio of 23 students to one teacher to 19.25, Grades 7-9 dropped from 23.75 to 23.23 and Grades 10-12 were reduced from 24.25 to 23.25. Kindergarten climbed from 17 to 19.25 and Grades 1-3 jumped from 18.25 to 19.25.

Enrolment is anticipated to rise by roughly 66 students across the division, to 7,472.

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