The Ministry of Education will not cover the added costs caused by its new student information system, MyEducationBC.
That confirmation comes after School District 57 trustees heard from its clerical workers, many who have logged more than 20 overtime hours and are still behind on other responsibilities.
"This is costing our district a considerable amount of money," said trustee Brenda Hooker, who chairs the finance committee, of the provinces new $95-million data management system.
"All of those costs are currently a burden of the already cash-strapped districts, so any cost for implementation is our responsibility but yet they handed us a program that has flaws and has created considerable frustration and hardship for our staff."
The board passed a motion Tuesday to send a letter to the ministry about the program "and the extra burden, cost and workload for district staff."
In an email statement Wednesday, the Ministry of Education said it "is not providing extra funding for overtime costs."
"The MyED BC fixes are in a number of areas, including extra database capacity and application fine tuning," the statement continued. "Implementation of any application of this size always requires some adjustments and tuning in the first few months of use."
Lisa Carson, the district's assistant superintendent, told the board Tuesday how the district office had been supporting local schools by preparing and emailing reports the schools can't seem to access on their own.
"At this point, truly we're waiting for updates daily from the Ministry of Education for resolution of our day-to-day issues and our system slow downs."
Schools are in the midst of preparing 1701 forms to the ministry, which requires data entry for the name, birth date, gender and grade of every student and is used to track full-time students for funding purposes and to track special needs and aboriginal enrolment.
Trustees weren't the only ones talking about the data system Tuesday. On the second day of provincial legislature, new education minister Mike Bernier answered question after question from opposition about system inefficiencies and "gridlock."
"(Our) ministry has been working closely, very collaboratively, with the school districts in every area, every corner, of this province," Bernier said in the legislature Tuesday morning.
"We heard that the program was running slower than initially planned. Again, that's why we contacted the vendor. That's why we've been working around the clock with ministry staff and the supplier to ensure that we can speed up the process."
Trustees heard the district's director of finance has asked the schools to keep track of overtime and other costs, so they can be brought before government.
"It's being tracked at a district level and school level," Carson said.
Carson's presentation followed Karen Wong, president of CUPE 3742, who read dozens of comments from workers describing the program as "painfully slow" and not user-friendly. Wong represents the clerical workers inputting much of the student information, outputting student timetables and preparing reports among other administrative tasks.
"Many of (the problems) have remedies," said Carson. "But the issue of the performance and the time-lag that CUPE spoke about has made it really difficult for us to then make the changes that we need to."
Hooker asked Carson if the ministry had given any indication whether it had a long-term solution in the works.
"As to how well the program works, I don't think we have a very good idea yet because our ability to access the program has been so limited and so challenged by our difficulty getting through the program that the functionality of it is something that I don't think we've had an opportunity to assess properly."
"Certainly this product lives in other jurisdictions and it's working well."
She said the ministry has brought in the vendor, Fujitsu Consulting (Canada) Inc., and others to help.
"And yet we still are in a place where we have significant slow downs and performance issues daily," Carson said.
The board heard that the problems are not a connectivity issue. Prince George is one of the few districts still on the Provincial Learning Network while most have to moved the Next Generation Network.
"It's a performance issue with the software not the connectivity of being able to access it," Carson said.
"This is a provincial issue. This is not a School District 57 issue in any way."
