When the provincial government mused about amalgamating school divisions, the response for both Northeast and Saskatchewan citizens was clear: no.
Those citizens wanted to see decisions made by locally elected trustees for local schools.
That’s what makes the recently-passed North East School Division budget so concerning.
Many of the decisions made at the budget table weren’t made by the division, they were in fact made by the province, which dictated the minimum – and maximum – amount the division could spend on each line item.
That meant the division had a harder time making decisions that take into account the local situation. For example, the division had the budget used by trustees to attend meetings cut in half. There’s a good chunk of change used for travel expenses in a large area like the North East School Division covers, and so to save money, it looks like the trustees will have fewer – but much longer meetings.
Here’s the key for me: if you have an elected body, they should be, for the most part, trusted to make decisions on how to spend that money.
Dictating line item by line item means that instead of making local decisions, the school board has only one purpose: being a blame-absorbing sock puppet.
If the province thinks it’s necessary to cut funding, so be it. But let the trustees make decisions – or get rid of them entirely so they can expend their energies doing something else for their communities.
