The numbers behind Living Sky reducing its expenses

As a result of the provincial budget earlier this year, Living Sky School Division administrators have been making changes to their own budget. 

Circumstances have led to the school division facing a $6 million deficit in 2017-2018. Chief Financial Officer Lonny Darroch said “we have a cash deficit of $2.8 million, and our funding from the province was down approximately $3.2 million, so that’s where our approximate $6 million deficit comes from.”

Living Sky has decreased a portion of its expenses by reducing staff.

“Every year we’ve had to make some reductions in staff, either staff in central office, staff in the schools, whatever it may be,” Interim Director of Education Randy Fox said during the budget process. “The thing that happened this year was more reductions than we’ve experienced in the past. Would we have made these reductions if we had just as much money as last year? Some of them we might have because they kind of make sense, sometimes depending on your student population and how that shifts. But it wouldn’t have been to this degree.”

Before 2009, school boards were able to raise revenues by raising mill rate taxes as, for example, the City of North Battleford does. In 2009, the provincial government legislated that school boards couldn’t. 

Darroch said he preferred when school boards had the ability to control certain taxes.

“It allowed school divisions to deal with things locally, so if there were local concerns, you were able to do that through access to the tax base. Certainly if you talk to taxpayers they might see it otherwise.”

“Provincial dollars will come out usually around late March, so then we know what our dollars are, and we build our budget on that,” Fox said. “Not knowing exactly what our budget is going to be from the province [makes] this difficult. You kind of look at what funds do we need and what do you expect them to get, and we knew budgets we get from the province would be reduced under the circumstances. But of course, we hoped there wouldn’t have been quite as much as there was.” 

New director of education, Brenda Vickers, who was the division’s superintendent of human resources during the budget process, said there are three principles administrators consider when making staffing decisions: equity, affordability and acceptability. If a proposed idea isn’t consistent with all three principles, the idea isn’t pursued.

“I could put 50 EAs into the system,” Vickers said. “I’m guessing I could do it equitably, it would be totally acceptable, but it would fail on affordability. So if it fails there it all fails.”

Vickers stressed the importance of considering the circumstances of people who could lose their jobs. 

“When you let people go, behind every number there’s a person, and we try very hard to do that.”

For the 2017-18 school year, Living Sky decided to change the way they staff, in part to reduce expenses, and in part because change was imminent.

One common measure used to determine educational quality is pupil-teacher ratio (PTR). PTR doesn’t strictly evaluate the amount of teachers per students, and it’s not to be confused with average class size. PTR involves a number of other staff related to educational experience, including student services and career guidance staff. The Glossary of Educational Reform writes that “one study found that the average difference between student-teacher ratios and average class sizes in a selection of schools was between nine and ten students. In this case, a school with a student-teacher ratio of 20:1 would likely have an average class size closer to 30.” The rationale of a lower PTR indicating higher educational quality is that staff have more time to dedicate to students.

Living Sky determines its PTR using numerical and qualitative factors, such as a student services factor and a career guidance factor. For example, the career guidance factor allows for one full-time career guidance staff member for every 500 students from Grades 10 to 12 in a school. Since 2014, Living Sky worked with an overall PTR of 14.25. Some schools had different PTRs, such as 16 to 1, or 12 to 1, while the division’s overall PTR was 14.25. This year, the division’s overall PTR will be 14.77.

“Overall in the system, going up in PTR means fewer teachers,” Vickers said.

A major reason why the PTR has increased is because one of the factors Living Sky used to determine PTR, the small school factor, has changed. Living Sky developed the small school factor in order to “recognize the need for increased staffing to deliver programs in small schools.” To qualify for the small school factor, if a school’s student population between blocks of Grades 1 to 3, 4 to 6, 7 to 9, and 10 to 12 was less than 60, the school would receive 0.25 of a full-time equivalent teacher for each block (expressed as 0.25 FTE). For example, a school with less than 60 students in each of Grades 1 to 3, 4 to 6, 7 to 9 and 10 to 12 would result in the school gaining one full-time equivalent teacher, or potentially two half-time teachers. Translating numbers into workers is the responsibility of principals.

The small school factor was generally advantageous for schools with low student populations, but Vickers said a problem for schools was that not receiving additional staffing could sometimes be determined by one student. If Grades 1 to 3 in a school had 59 students, the school would receive additional staffing. Yet 61 students in the grade range would mean they wouldn’t.

“The current formula [featuring the small school factor] worked well for most schools most often, but, with the funding uncertainty that was likely to impact every one of our schools, we thought we could do better,” Vickers said.

The small school factor was discontinued for the upcoming school year in favour of an economies of scale model. Economies of scale is an idea in economics in which the larger an organization is, the lower its costs are and the more efficient it is. At the June 28 board meeting, Vickers showed a graph with a curved line representing economies of scale, while the small school factor was represented by a straight diagonal line with a vertical drop in the middle.

“Recognizing economies of scale requires a curved line,” Vickers said. “A straight line will work really well only on some spots on the line.”

“The problem with our linear formula was that it wasn’t getting enough at the low end and it was giving too much at the high end, in a nut shell.”

Even with the small school factor, Vickers determined that Maymont, with low student population, was stressed and that “you could hardly add any students without having to put more staffing in.” Meanwhile, Battleford Central School “could make it work” with less staff.

“Instead of the small school factor where you have those lucky and unlucky schools, and you don’t have them working really well at opposite ends. The curve will remove luck and it will smooth things over,” Vickers said.

The curve, combined with increased PTR, ultimately led to total reduced FTE teachers. Kerrobert was down 2.5 FTE, which principal Paula Ross said would be difficult to work with. Living Sky sometimes adjusts FTE among schools. A quarter was reduced at BCS and given to Kerrobert, resulting in Kerrobert reducing by only two teaching positions rather than two full-time and one half-time. Two teachers were retiring anyway, so no teachers lost their jobs. Other examples include Cut Knife Elementary, Cut Knife High, Lawrence, McKitrick each down half a FTE; Bready, Hafford, McLurg, Spiritwood, St. Vital down by one FTE; and NBCHS down four. FTE reduction totalled 15.68, or about 16 teachers.

However, Fox said teachers won’t be losing jobs.

“Through retirements, through people resigning and moving to other school divisions, we’ve been able to make those changes without anyone actually being laid off.”

Another area in which the division reduced expenses was in reducing educational assistants. Educational assistants hired after the school year had started were on temporary contracts that end June 30, Vickers said.   

“At the end of the year we said ‘your jobs are done, you’re not going to be hired back,’” Fox said. “So those people, as much as they probably would’ve wished their jobs would continue, knew their jobs were done at the end of the school year.”

The division reduced its number of EAs from 185 to 163.

Living Sky also reduced its central office staff, which includes learning consultants, psychologists, counselors, occupational therapists, and tradespeople, along with superintendents, the CFO, and director. 

Vickers said learning consultants are teachers with consulting duties. Reducing the number of learning consultants means taking away consulting duties.

“The contract as a teacher stands, and so they can go back to a classroom and teach.”

Vickers said seven front office staff, including the director, CFO and five superintendents earned $1,135,000 in 2016-2017. Vickers said this past year, the division has spent almost $200,000 less on central office salaries than anticipated.

The Ministry of Education encourages school boards to reduce front office costs. Fox said Living Sky has.

“[The Ministry might] look at us and say ‘you have 15 fewer teaching positions but you haven’t cut any managers or superintendents.’ We cut three superintendents from about 2010 on, we’ve cut three managers, two assistant managers, we’ve done all those because every year we’ve had reductions and we try to avoid going through schools,” Fox said, at the June board meeting.

Reducing staff resulted in savings of approximately $3.4 million for the division, while $504,000 was taken from reserves on capital purchases. 

Vickers said the division would have increased the PTR at some point, but circumstances this year led them to increase to 14.77. Vickers said a PTR of 14.25 is “low normal, if you will.” 

“I think we were looking at going up a little bit but [the provincial budget] just pushed it farther,” Vickers said. “Probably the same could be said for our EAs too, that I think we might’ve maybe looked at a few but not [as many]. It was just harder than we thought it’d be.” 

This article has been updated from the September 7 newspaper story.