Prince George and District Teachers Association president Tina Cousins is not expecting the local school district to issue layoff notices on the scale seen in at least one Lower Mainland school district but is bracing for fallout from an expected budget shortfall.
"Our staffing post and fill process is different than in the Lower Mainland and other places around the province, so we don't anticipate anything huge," Cousins said.
But Prince George school board trustees are scheduled to pass a budget for the 2014-15 school year on Tuesday night and Cousins expects it will include a $1 million to $2 million budget shortfall.
There could be some job losses depending on how retirements play out but even if there aren't, Cousins said retirees are usually not replaced, "so we do more with less, over and over again."
The Coquitlam school district sent layoff notices to 630 teachers last week in the face of a $13.4-million shortfall, but anticipates the final reduction will be 91 full-time positions by the time the next school year begins.
The provincial education budget was not increased this year, but districts have to find ways to pay for support staff wage increases, Medical Services Plan premium increases, rising BC Hydro costs and other inflationary pressures.
Meanwhile, delegates to the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils spring conference at the end of this month will consider a resolution urging the provincial government to make changes to improve the transparency and clarity of preliminary budget information.
The resolution calls for information that is complete, easy to understand, in a standard and comparable format for all districts and includes a list of all budgetary items and amounts that are not mandated by the Ministry of Education.
It also says the information should provide significant choice in measures that will increase or decrease the size of the district budget and be available to parents before Feb. 28 each year.
Prince George District Parent Advisory Council president Sarah Holland said Feb. 28 may be too early for this school district because of a decentralized budgeting process in which school principals have a fair amount of control over how their budgets would work.
But she said including specific options rather than "fuzzy" themes would be helpful in dealing with budget challenges. "Show me a price tag, show me how you're going to do it, show me how you can see that it worked," Holland said.
