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By John McDonald
The Central Okanagan School District is considering the unpalatable prospect of program cuts in the face of a possible $6-million deficit next year, just over three per cent of the district’s $170-million budget.
“We’ve cut the so-called fat already,” said secretary treasurer Larry Paul, who delivered some of the details of the looming shortfall to school trustees Wednesday night.
Coming as it is, on top of a combined $7.4-million deficit over the last two years, Paul says the next cuts will be to the bone.
“We’ve done what we can. At this point, we can no longer protect the classroom,” he said. “The educational system is going to erode unless we can get the proper funding to maintain the system we have.”
While the district will actually receive an additional $1,480,000 next year for the implementation of full day kindergarten, Paul says it also faces an additional $7.5 million in costs, including almost $1 million for the introduction of the Harmonized Sales Tax, $1.74 million to fund the scheduled two per cent teacher’s salary increase and a further $1 million for teacher’s pension increases amongst others.
Even the money for full day kindergarten falls short of actual costs by almost $300,000.
Paul’s deficit projections are based on a template devised by the B.C.Association of School Business Officials, designed to show the Ministry of Education where budget pressures are coming from.
“Every year, the ministry says ‘we don’t understand, we gave you more money’,” said Paul. “This gives a provincial prospective on where the pressures are.”
Paul says the district’s finance committee and senior management have already began the theoretical process of deciding what programs could be cut.
“That’s the main topic of discussion,” he said. “We’re way ahead of any year since I came to the district in planning for next year’s budget. We’ve got this number in front of everybody and got them thinking about it.”
john@kelowna.com
250-575-0521
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Has anyone noticed, this government is willing to have the
departments of education make cut, instead of cutting things out of the Olympics. Education does not rank very
high when playing games in the snow comes first so a few
people can profit at the expense of the many, go figure.
Please continue discussion on the forum: link