Edmonton Public School Board will cut nearly 340 jobs

EDMONTON – The school board trustees unanimously passed the 2013-2014 budget Tuesday afternoon, which includes cutting about 339 full-time jobs.

“It definitely is not a good news budget. We’re looking at more than 300 staff having to be reduced because of this budget, and that is the worst news,” said EPSB Chair Sarah Hoffman following the meeting.

“Those people, no matter what capacity they work in, they work to support students.”

In a news release sent out Wednesday, the board shared the trustees expressed sadness and regret while passing the budget.

The decision comes after the board says it was forced to cut $46.9 million from next year’s budget.

“Unfortunately, our provincial allocations have been cut so substantially that we can’t continue to maintain the status quo,” explained Hoffman.

“The hardest part is that we were planning for a two per cent budget increase that was promised, and instead we’re facing more than a three per cent budget cut.  And it’s really sad news.”

In an EPSB document highlighting the budgeting decisions reads: “the implication of the shortfall in Provincial grant funding has resulted in a loss of funds to the district of about $30.5 million or 3.8 per cent of our total provincial revenue funding based on the 2012-2013 Revised Budget.”

Hoffman says the board will try to focus the cuts on central supports instead of classrooms, in the hopes of protecting students and much as possible.

Of the jobs being cut, about 180 will be teaching positions.

“We’re doing everything we can to make sure that we see as many staff reductions through attrition through people retiring or going on leaves, but there will be a net difference of more than 300 less people to serve student needs and that’s definitely bad news.”

The board hopes 70 per cent of the cuts will come through resignations or retirements.

“We’ve had considerable amounts of reductions in hours and staff cuts,” says Carol Chapman, with the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

“Many of our staff that were full-time staff have had hours reduced. So when you’re hearing ‘staff cuts,’ often times, ‘150 FTE’ (full-time employees) may be representing considerably more staff than 150,” she explains.

“It was not a surprise,” she says of the EPSB budget. “We were hopeful that there’d be some reconsideration, but given the financial climate … the district didn’t have a whole lot of choice.”

Still, Hoffman says the district will now try to meet the needs of more students with fewer staff.

“We will have more kids and we will have less teachers, so of course, class size will be impacted to some degree.”

The board’s budget document shows total projected student enrollment for 2013-2014 is 84,661. That’s an increase of 1,220 students.

However, Edmonton Public won’t have final enrollment numbers until school begins in the fall.

“I haven’t looked at their projections versus what our projections were, but when we did our projections on what we thought they may have coming through the door next year, the overall net loss to the school board was about four million,” says Education Minister Jeff Johnson.

“It’s really unfortunate. We wish that this wasn’t the budget that we were handed down by the province, we’re doing everything we can with the resources we have, but it won’t be easy.”

Hoffman says it’s been very difficult telling staff about the cuts.

“It’s been hard… it’s never easy to say goodbye and thank you. We wish we weren’t in this situation.”

Ed Butler represents those teachers. He’s the president of the Edmonton Public Teachers Local, the Edmonton representative for the Alberta Teachers Association.  Butler tells Global News the EPSB told the group about the budget ahead of time.

“It’s a cruel budget. It’s not good news. But, it’s probably the only budget the board could have developed based on circumstances given to them,” he says.

“This budget represents broken promises by the Redford government, the lack of funding to public education. We were promised a sustainable budget with a two per cent increase, and in actual fact, the total budget is about a four per cent rollback, which is six per cent less than what people intended.”

Johnson says the provincial budget wasn’t easy on anyone.

“We sympathize, and we know this is a difficult budget. It’s a difficult budget for everyone, and we said that right from the start. One of the great things is that the education portion of the budget was really protected. It wasn’t cut as deeply as many of the others. As a matter of fact, education got an increase. However we’ve got an increase of students for next year.”

Johnson says instructional dollars have been protected, and it’s funding for maintenance, transportation, fuel and research that has been affected by the provincial budget.

“I think every parent should be comforted by the fact that we are going to fund every child – instructionally – at the same level next year that we did this year, and every new kid walking through the door is going to have those same instructional dollars,” he explains.

Johnson believes EPSB could examine corporate and capital expenses to help with cost savings.

“I think there are a lot of pieces on the corporate end of the business that they also need to look at to make sure they’re being as efficient as possible,” he says.

“School boards are going to have to try to be as efficient as they possibly can, especially if they’ve got less maintenance dollars to work with. But certainly there’s room for school boards like Edmonton to look at that very aggressively.”

“When you look at 35 schools that are under 50 per cent capacity, and some schools – I think we’ve got about 16 – that are 100 students or less, and some as low as 20 per cent capacity, there’s room for efficiencies.”

Butler says the impact of the cuts will be on teachers and students, and will be felt in the classroom.

“Most likely, it will mean larger classes, it will mean less support available to help students who have high needs, and probably less resources to support the teaching and learning.”

Butler has been teaching for roughly 35 years. He says he’s never seen cuts quite like this before.

“Governments tend to put money into education the year before an election, and then they tend to cut that area afterwards. So, we’ve seen it before, but not to this degree.”

“I think it’s been a very tough time for the board of trustees,” he adds. “The budget they presented was not the budget they wanted to present, and it’s certainly not the budget we wanted to see. And parents, I think parents have every right to be concerned about the lack of funds that are available to support the education of their children.”

Some Edmonton parents are already worried about the effect the budget will have on their children.

“I’m worried about class sizes definitely,” says Kim Bentz, a mother of two. “I think that teachers are working really hard to do their best, but they’re being asked to do more and more with less.”

“I’m worried about the state of education and that kids are getting what they need in schools,” she adds.

“I think we need to put more money into education,” states Gurpreet Narein, another Edmonton parent. “I think some of the promises are not being met.”

You can read the EPSB agenda from Tuesday’s meeting, including budget details, here.

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