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THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 2001. PAGE 15.
Separate bd. empathizes with 'coterminous' bd.
By Stew Slater
Special to The Citizen
Officials of the Huron-Perth
Catholic District School Board made
more than one sympathetic comment
about the plight of its "coterminous"
counterpart, during discussion
Monday, June 18 prior to and follow-
ing approval of its own $35-million
budget for 2001-02.
"Wbat they've expressed here are
very Similar' to the problems we
encounter," said Huron-Perth chair
Ron Marcy, in response to the board's
reception of a copy of a letter sent to
thelitntario government by the Avon
Maitland board, requesting a meeting
with the minister of education. The
lettenSigned by Avon Maitland chair.
Wendy Anderson, highlights short-
falls in:,-Such funding areas as trans-
portatio.. and special education. It
also acknowledges the "bitter and
divisive" nature of the board's
attempts to cut costs by closing
schools, admitting that it "detracts
By, Stew Slater
"Special to The Citizen
The Huron-Perth Catholic District
School Board and its approximately
90 elementary supply teachers have
agreed to a two-year collective
agreement set to begin September,
2001, but the board's director of edu-
cation says it shouldn't be used as a
bellwether for smooth negotiations
to come.
On the surface, the two-year deal,
which runs through Aug. 31, 2003, is
a step towards the provincial govern-
ment's stated goal of encouraging
collective agreements spanning more
than a single year. In a recent media
release, the government announced it
would soon require school boards to
sign three-year deals with its
employee groups, in an attempt to
minimize labour unrest and student
disruption.
Top Huron-Perth administrator
Gaetan Blanchette explained the new
deal, which was ratified by the
Occasional Teachers section of the
Ontario English Catholic Teachers'
Association on Thursday, June 14,
was negotiated before the govern-
ment announcement. He also said it
wasn't clear that occasional teachers
would be covered by any new legis-
lation.
However, he said the only reason
the deal could be stretched beyond a
year is because the board's contracts
with its elementary supply teachers
By Stew Slater
Special to The Citizen
There should be one less vehicle
travelling Hwy. 8 between Clinton
and Stratford next year, now that the
Huron-Perth Catholic District
School Board has approved the hir-
ing of a second high school chaplain.
In the board's 2001-02 budget,
approved Monday, June 18, spending
for full-time chaplains roughly dou-
bled, signalling there will now be
full-time positions at both St. Anne's
Catholic Secondary School in
Clinton and St. Michael Catholic
Secondary School in Stratford. Since
the construction of St. Anne's in the
mid-I 990s_one full:time chaplain has
split his, time between the two
schools on a 50/50 basis.
According to Director of
Education Gaetan Blanchette, a full-
time chaplaincy at each secondary
school was given the third-highest
priority during a board-wide
wish-list survey in 1998. The pro-
from the board's education mission."
Earlier, during explanations of
enrolment projections for the Huron-
Perth board, Director of Education
Gaetan Blanchette avoided mention-
ing Avon Maitland by name, but he
did express strong sympathy for
boards like it, which face somewhat
greater enrolment declines than his
own. He made a particular point of
explaining why it's difficult for some
boards, especially those with a lot of
small schools scattered across a large
area, to cut staffing costs at the same,
rate at which enrolment declines
while keeping all schools' open.
Interestingly, both Marcy and
Blanchette — as well as
Superintendent of Business Gerry
Thuss — acknowledged the Huron-
Perth board might be in a similar situ-
ation as Avon Maitland, if not for the
government's "Small Schools Grant"
and "Rural and Remote" funding allo-
cation. Huron-Perth receives almost
$2 million through those sources,
while Avon Maitland receives a much
have traditionally been tied to the
rates of pay for full-time elementary
teachers. That remains true in the
new agreement.
He said nothing has changed when
it comes to the board's inability to
successfully negotiate deals of
longer than one year with other
employee groups, despite the gov-
ernment's recent announcement.
"School boards have said they
want to negotiate longer-term con-
tracts," Blanchette told trustees. "In
fact, it's in our stated goals that we
would like to do that.
"But it's like this. We don't need
legislation to be able to negotiate
longer-term deals. What we need is
to know how much money we'll
have two or three years down the
road."
He said the Conservative govern-
ment continually keeps school
boards in the dark about the level of
funding they'll receive for the com-
ing year, and has failed to establish a
predictable process by which the
level of educational funding is deter-
mined. He added that a few boards
bucked the one-year contract trend
last year and signed two-year deals
based on a one-time government
announcement that public sector
salaries could rise by a certain per-
centage in 2000-01. That increase
never materialized and Blanchette
said some boards will now be caught
footing the bill for a second-year pay
increase.
grams which received the highest
priorities — elementary music and
broad-based secondary technology
courses — have already been imple-
mented.
Superintendent of Education Ray
Contois says employing a full-time
chaplain is the norm for Catholic
secondary schools in Ontario. He
says the bulk of most chaplains'
workdays are spent counselling stu-
dents on a wide range of issues, but
they also work closely with staff and
administration on such things as
planning special events and co-ordi-
nating spiritual education.
"The chaplain is involved in the
whole life of_ the school," Contois
explained.
The superintendent says the cur-
rent St. Anne's/St. Michael chaplain,
Nataneal Mateus-Ruiz, will be
retained by the board. However, he
said no decision has yet been made
about which school Mateus-Ruiz
will serve, once the new chaplain is
hired for September, 2001.
smaller amount.
"If we didn't have that Rural and
Remote and Small Schools Grant, I
don't know where we'd be," Marcy
said. "We'd be where a lot of other
boards are. I guess."
At a recent Avon Maitland meeting,
some trustees expressed support for
defying the government's require-
ment that boards submit .a balanced
— not a deficit— budget by June 30.
In a closely-contested vote, it was
decided to first complete two prelim-
inary budgets: one which balances the
books but highlights which programs
and services have been lost from the
previous year; and another so-called
"needs-based budget" which runs a
deficit but includes the expenditures
which the board would rather leave in
place.
There was no such call for defiance
at the June 18 Huron-Perth meeting.
That doesn't mean, however, that
there was no criticism of the provin-
cial government. Blanchette, never
one to shy away from attacking the
ruling Conservatives, took particular
offense to a recent media release from
the education ministry, ostensibly
"correcting" media reports regarding
the level of provincial funding since
1995. The director of education used
a series of statistics, including infla-
tion levels and a province-wide enrol-
ment increase, to argue the "real"
value of educational funding has been
severely inadequate.
Likewise, Marcy chronicled a list
of funding cuts and unprojected
expenditures in the 2001-02 budget,
which more than erase a recent gov-
ernment announcement of $100 per
Ontario student, A government press
release described the- money as "flex-
ible," in that it could be used howev-
er boards chose, based on local situa-
tions.
"How can you call this flexible?
You can't. Because the purpose of the
board is to educate the students. And
you have to transport them and pro-
vide for their special needs," Marcy
said.
Those two expenditure areas are
significant because the board's budg-
et shows that transportation and spe-
cial education most outstrip what the
government provides in funding. In
both cases, money is drawn from such
areas as administration to make up the
difference. Also in both transportation
and special education, the govern-
ment has frozen funding, either pend-
ing the board's adaptation of a com-
puterized transportation routing sys-
tem or pending a province-wide
review of the way in which special-
needs children are identified and
characterized.
Several board members also point-
ed to the education ministry's 2001-
02 allocation for textbooks, which is
about half what it was last year. This
is deVite the fact an equal number of
new textbooks will be needed next
September as were necessary last
year, for the leading class in the new
four-year high school program. In the
new Huron-Perth budget, about
$32,000 is taken from other sources
to make up the difference and make
sure next year's Grade 11 students
have texts for the new curriculum.
You Are Invited to
attend Vacation
Bible School
at Zion Mennonite
Fellowship Church
5 km. east of Cranbrook
Monday to Friday
July 2-13
9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Ages 3 1/2 to Grade 8 welcome
For more information
call 291-9486
HPCDSB, teachers settle on
2-year collective agreement
Schools get own chaplain