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Kootenay Lake school district announces staffing cuts

Nineteen teaching positions are being cut in School District No. 8 but it isn’t yet known how many jobs in Creston schools will be lost...
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Nineteen teaching positions are being cut in School District No. 8 (Kootenay Lake) but it isn’t yet known how many jobs in Creston Valley schools will be lost, board chair Mel Joy said last week.

“We are hoping the cuts will largely come through attrition,” she said.

Joy said the decision to cut positions, which are disproportionate to the estimated decline in enrolment of 90 students, is in response to an anticipated end to funding protection for districts with declining student populations.

“We have used that funding protection from the Ministry of Education each year to maintain our staffing levels above what our enrolment would dictate,” Joy said. “But we have been told that funding protection will end in 2014 and if we don’t start now we will be in trouble in two years. …

“The other impact in Creston is our decision to close the resource centre in Adam Robertson Elementary School, as well as the one in Nelson. We are now in discussions about how best to keep those services.”

In Creston, the closure affects one CUPE position.

A total of four support positions in the district will be eliminated, but the board has yet to determine which positions will be affected.

“We are trying to make staffing decisions before September so employees aren’t kept waiting to the last minute to see if they have jobs and where, but it’s tough,” she said. “And this year all decisions are twice as hard because teachers and boards are really stressed by the lack of a working contract.”

Joy said a positive that is emerging from the budget process is that “student learning is at the forefront of all of our decision-making” and that budgeting decisions are made with specific goals in mind.

“For instance, we know that money put into early learning has many positive implications for the future, so the budget reflects the goals we have set.”

Similarly, “making sure that our kids are fed” is a priority because hungry students don’t learn well, she said.

“I always try to stay positive,” Joy said. “I believe there have been some good things achieved in this budget.”

Creston Valley Teachers Association (CVTA) president Becky Blair said on Friday that not all cuts will come from attrition.

“It is our opinion that the district has balanced their budget by reducing staff disproportionately — and far more than the budget plan contemplated,” she told her members in a letter. “The board has allotted funding to many projects — including staff development, leadership training and an increase of two vice-principal positions.”

“At the last meeting three board members asked to delay the staffing reductions but were outvoted,” Blair said by telephone from Vancouver. “The reductions have a severe impact in the classroom on students.

“We were reassured that the cuts would be made through leaves and retirements — that didn’t happen. As a result, seven teachers are being transferred to different schools.”

Twelve teaching positions in the CVTA, comprising about 8.5 full-time equivalent positions from Yahk to Jewett (north of Kaslo), will be lost, she said, and 41 members will be impacted, Blair said.

“The board is balancing the budget by reducing teachers, while adding two vice-principal positions,” she said. “The result is ratio of 10 teachers to one manager in the district.

“We believe that services to students will be impacted. The process is shameful. It’s all about poor planning.”

She was derisive about superintendent of schools Jeff Jones’ focus on what he calls “a family of schools.”

“We are a dysfunctional family of schools,” the CVTA president said. “I don’t mean to imply that these (school board and senior staff) are wicked people — they just don’t have the money needed to run our district. We now have an entire generation of students who have gone to school with a lack of provincial funding and support.”