Chinook School Management informed staff about its plan in a letter distributed internally on Wednesday, a copy of which was received by CBC News. A separate letter to parents and students is set to be distributed on Thursday. The department, which has schools in Swift Current and Maple Creek, says the budget did not provide enough funding to cover a projected $ 1.5 million salary increase for teachers and tutors, as well as other “inflationary costs.” “Chinook is not receiving enough provincial funding to support our current staffing levels,” the letter said. “With the limited options we have at our disposal to reduce costs, we have no choice but to make staff reductions.” In an interview Thursday, the chairman of the department, Kim Pridmore, said it was not an easy decision. “It will be catastrophic in many buildings,” he said. The president of the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation, Patrick Maze, said the news of the job cuts was not something he was surprised by. He attributed the layoffs to years of underfunding education by the provincial government. “I would not be surprised to hear that other school departments have to make similar difficult decisions based on what they have received from the provincial government,” he told CBC News. Patrick Maze, president of the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation, said he was not surprised by the news that jobs were being cut as a result of the county budget. (Bryan Eneas / CBC)
Cuts contrary to a minister’s statement
The reason given by the Chinook School District contradicts the comments of the Minister of Education Dustin Duncan when the budget of the province was released. He said at the time that he had no worries about inflation, saying that the cost of education in the province was “not really due to inflation”. The education budget for next fiscal year is $ 3.8 billion, up $ 47.2 million, or 1.3 percent from the previous year. “If you look at the fact that our main cost is our teachers’ salaries and they are fully funded at 2%, then it is not really affected by inflation. Some of the other cost factors in education are not really driven by inflation,” he said. Duncan. On Thursday, the minister left a glimmer of hope, saying there was still time for a budget review before its final signing in June. However, he dismissed concerns about the quality of education available to students at the Chinook School District. “What they have published there about the number of teachers they may need to reduce and what we are waiting for and what they are waiting for in terms of enrollment, I do not think it will necessarily have that big impact,” Duncan said.
Detailed cuts
The department said many of the cuts to 20 teacher posts will be achieved through wear and tear as well as a one-off retirement incentive offered to teaching staff. The budget deficit also affects teaching assistants whose work schedule is reduced by 30 minutes a day to full-time positions to “protect as many teaching assistant positions as possible”. The letter also mentions further forthcoming cuts in various departments, including the removal of additional funding from school budgets and a reduction in the number of buses purchased. The goal is to offset the projected total deficit of $ 5.1 million for the school year 2022-2023. Pridmore says that even if the county somehow covered the $ 1.5 million needed to stop the job cuts, the cuts could have been inevitable. The problem is the complex nature of the province that does not cover the costs that rise with inflation, he said. “Inflation is hitting us in every school, in our department and across the province, from the rising cost of utilities, the rising cost of building materials, the rising cost of contracts and the work that comes with it. So the cost of inflation is “just killing us,” he said.
