With seven weeks to go in the school year, teachers and students are working hard to complete another successful year of learning and look forward to the many year-end activities that are on the horizon.
However, teachers are also looking ahead to the 2013-2014 school year. Unfortunately, they look forward with worry and trepidation.
The financial challenges of the New Westminster Board of Education have been well chronicled in the press. Few New Westminster residents are unaware that the school district spent $2.8 million more than it received last year. Less well-known is that the district has also identified a structural (meaning annual) deficit of $3.5 million. These two numbers are frightening to look at when compared to the annual school district budget of about $59 million.
The impact of this financial crisis has already been felt, with supplies budgets drying up and discretionary spending cut. However, it is in the future, the next school year, when these cuts will fully impact education - and the impact will be devastating. To deal with the deficit, the Board of Education has announced cuts of close to 20 full-time teaching positions, 20 special education assistants and up to 15 custodial and clerical positions, with several other positions also to be eliminated. Education in New Westminster will look vastly different next year under this scenario, and not for the better.
The teaching cuts proposed so far have tried to protect class size, but that has meant a reduction in services to students, particularly those with special needs. Resource teachers - those who work with classroom teachers to support students with special needs, adapt curriculum, liaise with special education assistants, and write individual education plans - are to be reduced 35 per cent at the school level and 40 per cent at the district level.
School counsellors have also been severely reduced, with the heaviest impact being at the elementary level where there will be one counsellor for the entire population of elementary school students. Counselling under this model will be emergency-based counselling, at best.
Cuts have also impacted teacher-librarians, music programs, elective courses and many other services that make up public education.
The union has expressed concerns about where these cuts have landed and has counselled the district to provide more support for what is known as non-enrolling teachers but it has been a painful task. To protect one teaching position here is to cut another teacher there.
As has often been repeated, "We stopped cutting into fat years ago; we are cutting now into muscle and bone."
The school district has taken responsibility for the financial maelstrom we find ourselves in and well it should. Recently, there has been new focus on oversight and fiscal management that was severely lacking. However, one thing can be said - while the district spent far more than it received, the money that was overspent went where it would have a benefit - it went into schools and classes. It went into service to students.
What this budget crisis highlights is the "lost decade" we have experienced in regards to provincial support of public education.
The current government has loudly proclaimed it has provided the highest funding ever. However, it refuses to acknowledge the highest funding ever has not met the highest ever costs, many of them downloaded by the government.
B.C. students are funded at a rate of more than a thousand dollars less per student than the Canadian average. B.C. has the highest student to educator ratio in Canada.
Education funding has not kept pace with inflation and in 2001, public education was 26 per cent of the provincial budget.
Today it is 15 per cent. These numbers are real - they can be confirmed through Statistics Canada.
Essential supports such as resource teachers, counsellors and special education assistants will not be available to those students who need their time and skills. Make no mistake - as a result of this budget crisis, students will suffer.
Teachers will continue to strive for educational excellence. It is amazing what they have done with the resources available.
That work just became that much more difficult, with fewer and fewer bearing the load.
And unfortunately, we will be saying goodbye to many dedicated and highly skilled New Westminster teachers, who will be forced to try to find work in other districts. They will be sorely missed.
Grant Osborne is president of the New Westminster Teachers' Union.
