Cariboo Chilcotin

2011 budget

100 Mile House Free Press: School budget balanced with reserves

June 15, 2011

Carole Rooney, 100 Mile House Free Press

School District 27 (SD27) has revealed its draft budget for the 2011/12 school year, and plans to use its reserve funds and last year’s surplus to make up for a shortfall.

Secretary treasurer Bonnie Roller gave a presentation to the school board at the recent meeting, and demonstrated why the budget comes up $811,495 short.

She also explained the SD27′s plan to use a projected surplus of $400,000 from the 2010/11 school year, plus $411,495 from the reserve fund account.

The board will be left with $288,505 in the reserve once those funds have been withdrawn, but Trustee Pete Penner says he doesn’t like being left with a smaller buffer.

“I’m concerned, if we start dipping into the reserves. The reason we put the reserves there is that we wouldn’t have to make sudden changes when the ministry decides to drop certain funding.”

While it’s not a good situation, he adds it avoids cutting staff and programs.

“We’re just going to have to be very careful after this to ensure we can manage without that reserve.”

Roller’s presentation noted other secretary treasurers in the province have indicated they have already depleted their reserves, which Penner explains is a direct result of ministry cutbacks. Read more

100 Mile House Free Press: School board budget down $1 million

March 9, 2011

Carole Rooney, 100 Mile House Free Press

The School District 27 (SD27) amended annual budget bylaw for fiscal year 2010/11 was adopted at the Feb. 22 board meeting.

The budget was finalized at about $56.6 million and overall iit was down from last year’s $57.6 million. While numerous smaller increases and decreases affected this drop, total salaries were also down about $1 million.

Noting the reduction was because of reduced staff and not salary cuts, Trustee Pete Penner says the board tried to spread those reductions around the district.

With fewer teachers and cutbacks made at the board office level, he adds this is unlike past years where budget shortfalls typically resulted in cuts to support staff, such as janitors and library aids.

“This time we tried to keep a very broad spectrum and to keep programs going the board feels are worthwhile in the district.”

It is fortunate the school board was able to balance the budget this year, Penner says, adding some of the drop in total salary costs was related to programs the board tried to keep.

“Reading Recovery wasn’t kept because the copyright requires a certain staff level, so it was replaced with a smaller reading support program.”

Penner explains the Professional Learning Community program is another the board really didn’t want to lose, but because it requires non-instructional teacher time to observe other teachers who are expert in certain areas, only part of that program could be salvaged. Read more

2010 Budget

Earlier in the year, the Board of trustees for School District 27 passed a motion to submit a “Needs” budget that refused to make cuts and wrote the Premier about their budget crisis. But on April 15, the Board decided to cut fulltime teaching and support positions, programs and administrative budgets in order to offset a $2.3 million funding shortfall and present a balanced budget as required by law:

News reports

Letters to the Editor re education cuts:

Local MLA Donna Barnett (BC Liberal) continues to deny the local budget crisis:

Contact local MLA Donna Barnett (BC Liberal Party):

  • E-mail: donna.barnett.mla@leg.bc.ca
  • 100 Mile House Constituency office: 6 – 530 Horse Lake Road, PO Box 95, 100 Mile House, V0K 2E0, Telephone: 250 395-3916
  • Williams Lake Constituency office: 301 – 383 Oliver Street, Williams Lake, V2G 1M4, Tel: 250 305-3800