A "lost opportunity" is how the New Westminster Teachers' Union president describes a recent board of education meeting where, he says, trustees spent too much time talking about learning supplies and not enough on the impact cutting about 20 teaching positions will have on education.
"There's a real human cost to what's going on here," said New Westminster Teachers' Union president Grant Osborne. "These are going to be cuts across the district. We get that, but if you want to look at a number, 19.4 FTE (full-time equivalent positions) is about the size of a John Robson or a Richard McBride or a Queen Elizabeth Elementary school."
A small number - 3.4 - of those teacher positions were chopped as a result of lower enrolment projections for adult education.
Along with the teaching cuts, the board voted to lay off about 15 support staff positions and 20 special education assistant positions at its Tuesday, April 6 meeting.
Originally, the board considered laying off 35 special education assistants but reduced that number last week.
Osborne said no one has explained to him what the plan is to deal with the sweeping loss of teachers in a district he says is already too lean.
At Tuesday's meeting, the board talked at length about lack of supplies and aging technology in the district, with some trustees saying budgets for those items need to be considered, as well as staffing.
Osborne expects non-enrolling teachers - resource teachers, counsellors, district physiologists, speech pathologist, occupational therapists, and teacher librarians - will be impacted.
Traditionally, New Westminster school district has spent more of its budget than the provincial average on teachers.
According to a presentation from former secretary-treasurer Brian Sommerfeldt last fall, the district spent about 89 per of its budget on instruction in 2011/12.
The provincial average was about 83 per cent.
But Osborne said that doesn't mean the district is over-compensated in terms of teachers.
"We do have more resource teachers because we do have more special-education students," he said.
He described New Westminster as a "lighthouse" district because it provides more in terms of service for special needs students than what the ministry funds.
