This week the Prince George Citizen will be posting series of questions asked of the 13 candidates running as trustees for School District No. 57 (SD57).
The focus of the series is to allow voters to hear from the candidates running for school trustees on how they would handle real issues facing the school board. The candidate’s answers have only been edited for clarity, and are posted in alphabetical order.
Question: In May the district was forced to find $2.2 million in cuts to offset rising costs due to inflationary costs and stagnant provincial funding. After administrative savings have been considered, if you were faced with additional cuts in order to pass a balanced school board budget where would you make those cuts?
Cory Antrim
I would refuse to make any more cuts to equipment, supplies, curriculum and non-curriculum items, or anything that directly affects our students. I would not be ok being a part of what has been decades of cuts to our public education system. I want to see things differently and find out what has not been working. I would look into other districts in our province and see if we can adopt any practices that progress their school system vs detract from it.
Betty Bekkering
There will be no additional cuts until we approve an amended budget in the new year. The cuts implemented balanced our budget which we are required to submit at the end of the school year.
Gillian Burnett
I think I would need to seriously look at the whole district. I’d ask questions to identify what we absolutely can’t touch, like negotiated contracts and minimal service levels, then the next step is to really look at what we are doing with the rest and evaluate how effective each item is in supporting the education delivered in the classroom. The primary responsibility needs to stay focused on providing a high-quality education for all students. Because our student’s needs are diverse, I’d need to ensure that minimal service levels of all effective programs could continue to be supported. These are decisions that no one wants to make, but ones that I take quite seriously. I’ll likely lose sleep grappling with these decisions, but at the end of the day, I’ll want to know that I considered all possibilities and made the best decisions I could for our students.
Craig Brennan
Faced with additional costs, and necessary cuts, my priority is to keep cuts away from classrooms and the supports they require. Specifically, this includes school staffing levels and targeted student support. Student learning happens in school programs. Budget shortfalls must be addressed elsewhere in the operation. SD57 has unique funding challenges owing to geographic range and broad community diversity. Trustees must make frequent and persistent representation to the Ministry of Education to increase funding to meet these challenges. Additionally, Trustees must work with our MLAs and other advocates, to encourage advocacy for more appropriate resources for our students.
Cathy Fortin
I don’t claim to know anything about SD57 monetary needs or budget. If elected I will be looking at the budget and assessing where and whether cuts need to be made along with the other Trustees.
Milton Mahoney
There are no funds left in capital, and we cannot do further cuts to weaken the education of the students. Every time cuts must be made, employers look at support and supplies, direct hits on unions and students. For further cuts, you would have to look at senior administration and administration in general. There are teachers in admin. We are short of teachers. Redistribute them back to classrooms. This would help with the shortage of teachers and cut TOC costs. There are many areas that can be trimmed, we just can`t cut at the students’ expense.
Shar McCrory
We should not have to cut any further as the budget for next year is approved. The offset was from reserved funds and if we had to cut more, we would need to look at using reserve funds, with the intent to cut as far away from funds that directly impact students, programs, staff or schools. As a board of education, we need to advocate to the Ministry of Education as a district, with our branch, BCSTA, to our MLA to increase funding, to review the funding formula & to increase funding based on unique needs of the district.
Erica McLean
I cannot pretend to know what it’d like to be faced with a budget shortfall like that of what SD57 has faced recently. What I will say- if I were a trustee faced with answering this question, I would like to examine what programs are happening in the district where we could “temporarily restructure” program staff to put forth our best efforts for resources staying in place to support student learning.
In times of need, it’s important to look around and find systems to lean on and we can in turn give back to those structures and relationships when able.
I know there’s substantial vulnerability that comes with balancing budget shortfalls but with that, comes meaningful learning. If elected, I will examine the previous shortfall in an effort to learn how I, as a first-time politician, need to steady myself against potential challenges like this.
Bob Schroeder
Further budget cuts may need to be assessed based on an audit of the budget so there is a full and true understanding of where the budget is putting taxpayer dollars. This will help to assess spending priorities in the school district. That said, one option is to possibly look at funds that are currently restricted within the district budget that in the short term may have budget surpluses that currently can not be spent. However, I would also make a commitment to making no more cuts to support staff or teachers in our schools.
Martin Taylor
I would trim non-teaching positions by attrition. Postpone capital projects.
You can learn even more about the trustee candidates through the Prince George Citizen's election page.
This story will be updated when responses from Damon Robinson, Mike Rositano, and Josh Silva are received.
