Huron Expositor, 2009-06-24, Page 23[AN
'Stew Slater
News
11>Ie#tsn, o e44offer Kw,'
i
iIc school board. passes- anu.aFb
Rising fuel costs ' and increased
staffing requirements brought
about by new collective agreements
and heightened Ministry of Educa-
tion requirements are putting the
squeeze on school boards.
Business superintendent Gerry
Thuss described his employer's situ-
ation.when he delivered the 2009-10
budget for the Huron -Perth Catholic
District School Board, at a regular
meeting Monday, June 15.
"We went through line by line, de-
partment by department, and even
though (administrators) may have
wanted increases (in expenditures),
,we've said no," he .told reporters af-
ter the meeting — at which trustees
unaniinously approved a balanced,
$50,664,746 budget.
Five years ago, Thuss explained,
the combination of employee sala-
ries, transportation, and heat ° and
hydro accounted for 91 per cent of
Huron -Perth expenditures..
That left just nine per cent for_ im-
provements in . programming and
ior
A
Melltar
classroom .resources.
In 2009-10, however, the major ex-
penditures account for an even more
'ting 94 per cent of the board's
budget.
"It has really put the
squeeze. on us," Thuss s,
told trustees.
Planned spending is T .
up from $46.5 million
for the current school
year, but the increases
are mainly in transpor-
tation and employee
contracts.
There will be a slight
increase in spending - • . , }
on library technicians,
in keeping with fund-
ing
available through an
Education Ministry initiative.
Increases in requirements for the
number of teachers, ,due mainly to
the new collective agreements, will
essentially be offset by the loss of
some teaching positions due to de -
c ' enrolment.
Unlike the Avon Maitland District
School Board, which recently re-
vealed it will lose about five teaching
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positions, the total number of teach-
ers isn't expected to drop.
According to the just -approved
budget document, Catholic board en-
rolment is projected to de-
cline next year by three
per cent in elementary
and 2.2 per cent in sec-
x 5 ondary.
°z s "We face the dame
'�• `� �' '' challenges (with declin-
ing enrolment) as most
boards within the prov-
ince," Thuss told trust-
ees.
One particular di-
lemma 2s that, when
the board loses 25 ele-
mentary students, they
don't all leave from the
same school. So it's impossible to im-
mediately eliminate the one teach-
ing position that corresponds to the
funding the board receives for those
25 students.
Over the past several years, the
Education Ministry has mitigated
this dilemma through a funding
envelope labelled "Declining Enrol-
ment Grant." Boards facing such
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ing topped u € y whtigradu-
ally adapt.
Over the next two years, the PeL
dining Enrolment Grant is being
phased out.
"They've said they're going to clean
it up," Thuss said.
Last year at this time, the Huron
Perth board drew $300,000 from its
reserve funds to balance its bud-
get, and administrators stated they
would "staff schools extremely tight-
ly."
This year, in order to achieve a
balance, they chose instead to defer
some expenditures from this year
and place that money in next year's
document. But the tight staffing of
schools continues.
Thuss is hopeful, however, that
there's a light on the horizon.
"We are seeing a bit of a leveling
off (in projected enrolments) at the
elementary level," he said. "We feel
that we're coming somewhere near
the end of this year -after -year de-
cline in revenues due to declining
student numbers."
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