The Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation is warning school divisions could see more cuts, but the North East School Division said they’ve heard nothing on that subject.
The federation is pointing to a memo sent to staff of the Chinook School Division that said they must innovate to meet the needs of their students with further government reductions coming.
“We’re hearing that school divisions have been told to brace for another tight budget year and then that memo from Chinook indicates that funding reductions are anticipated for 2018-19,” said Pat Maze, the federation’s president. “I’m not sure where they are getting their information from, but that information is consistent with what we’re hearing across the province.”
Don Rempel, the North East School Division’s director of education, said he hasn’t been told to prepare for cuts.
“There’s been zero communication about the budget, especially compared to last year where we had various mandates that we were trying to meet,” he said, adding at this time last year, the division was told not to spend any more money on compensation and told to find ways to reduce wages and benefits by 3.5 per cent.
Rempel said the North East is in a different situation than Chinook. Both divisions were affected by a review on how education funding is distributed, but the North East made its adjustments last year while Chinook was able to tap into its reserves and make changes over two years.
In terms of preparing its staffing levels for the next school year, North East is still looking at future enrolments and waiting to see how many teachers give notification that they are retiring or moving on from the division before making any decisions.
“So far, the North East School Division hasn’t had to balance our budget based on reducing services to schools at all,” Rempel said. “We’re going ahead with our status quo funding expectations and our same staffing processes, meaning that we staff our schools based on the amount of students they project to have next year.”
Maze said the federation will continue to advocate the province for improvements to education, especially after the cuts and below-inflation budget increases seen in previous years.
“It’s government’s responsibility to fund education and we don’t think they should be allowed to shirk that responsibility. It’s an important responsibility and an important function of government to provide for a high-quality education,” he said. “We would challenge them to meet that responsibility.”
