Minimal impact expected at SWLSB schools from budget cuts

Despite $110 million in budget cuts ordered by Quebec from the province’s English-language school boards, the rationalization is expected to have little impact on existing resources and programs at the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board during the coming school year, says board chairman Steve Bletas.

Budget impact
With close to three-quarters of Quebec school board costs already allocated for staffing and salaries, the impact of the budget cuts demanded by Quebec could be felt ultimately in the classroom, the leaders of Quebec’s nine English school boards said last May.
The Quebec English School Boards Association said the government informed them “without warning and despite budget promises to the contrary” that they must figure out a way to deal with the cuts. According to Bletas, some of the boards decided to deal with the matter by making cuts that had a direct impact on the classrooms.
“We have not,” he added. “What we’ve done is that we’ve cut different areas like consultants, certain programs that we wanted to institute and we can’t now because of the cutbacks. We’ve been able to do it without any direct influence on the actual classrooms and the kids.”
‘Choices,’ a behavior improvement program directed at teenaged students in some of the board’s more remote territory, is an example of a program the SWLSB wanted to implement but won’t be able to now. “Unfortunately, we cannot set that up in those areas,” said Bletas. Student transportation is another area where the cutback impact was felt to some degree.

Service consolidation
For example, the board was able to save on transportation costs for “special needs” by consolidating those services at one school. Some savings were achieved in a milk program at Laval Liberty High School in Chomedey which has a special designation for students in need. “It’s a lot of different things and usages.”
All the same, Bletas complains that making reductions even in seemingly innocuous areas “is going to eventually affect kids in the school because we’re not providing them service or we’re combining a service with others that we have, so it puts a lot more stress on our people.” Another example of the cutbacks: when an SWLSB employee retires, the board now opts more often not re-fill the post.
A significant complaint from the QESBA and the SWLSB is that Quebec has shown itself willing to supply more Smartboards (an interactive teaching tool that is fast becoming standard in schools), although the government then won’t furnish sufficient means or resources to service them. While the SWLSB has IT specialists for that purpose, according to Bletas the current ratio is around one technician per 1,000 computers and other pieces of high-tech equipment.

Electoral process
Over the past two years, the province’s education ministry sent up smoke signals suggesting it was contemplating a major overhaul of the system for electing the members of school boards, including the possibility of merging the process with municipal elections. Although he has questioned several of the local Liberal MNAs on the issue, Bletas says he’s heard nothing more about it from them. “Nothing is being said about the démocracie scolaire issue,” he said. “Will we have elections? We don’t know.”
The SWLSB has already implemented one of the demands made to the boards by the government: that they reduce the number of board members. The next school board election would see 13 persons seek commission seats on the SWLSB, rather than 19 as in the last election. That is if there is another election. “We don’t even know if there’s going to be another election,” said Bletas. “No one has said anything.”