The Foothills School Division is hoping to save some $400,000 by modifying its 2011-12 calendar. Now all the division has to do is cut another $2.1-million in order to present a balanced budget to the provincial government in June.
The division is trying to avoid cutting teaching staff at virtually all costs.
“We are trying to avoid any kind of layoffs,” said Foothills superintendent of schools Denise Rose.
She said by offering programs such as the Early Retirement Incentive Program (ERIP), which was offered to teachers earlier this month, hopefully young staff can be maintained through natural attrition.
She would not speculate on the future of probationary and temporary teachers. However, she stressed the division wants those teachers in its future.
“We are not saying: ‘Let’s do the math. We need to save $2.5-million so lets cut this many teachers,”” Rose said. “We are trying to be thoughtful in coming to a place where we balance our budget.
“We want to be able to keep our probationary and temporary teachers.”
She said the ERIP initiative is a strategy to keep young teachers, but not at the expense of veteran teachers.
“I think one of the strengths of our division is we have a balance of young and veteran teachers, Rose said. “As a principal, I always wanted my veteran, outstanding experience teachers working with young teachers. It just raises the bar for everybody.
“Sometimes there’s a feeling that when you go to an ERIP, that it is a way to get rid of teachers you don’t want. That is absolutely not the case.”
The Foothills budget for 2010-11 was $72-milliion of that 75 per cent is in salaries and benefits, the majority of which is from the approximately 400 full-time equivalent teachers’ salaries.
The division is also attempting to cut costs within division office.
“We are looking at what can we do in terms of our centralized savings,” Rose said. “We are looking at what can we do at our own division office to cut costs.”
She said some of the division office staff has offered to cut their hours for the upcoming school year.
Hans Woehleke, Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools assistant superintendent of schools, said it is cutting $1.6-million largely with cuts within the administration office.
“It has not impacted our schools,” Woehleke said. “We have cut budgets and personnel at central office.
“We have had a number of retirements at central office that we are not filling.”
There have also been requests from employees at central office for a reduction in hours.
Woehleke said in terms of teachers and class sizes there should be little affect in terms of cutting $1.6-million.
“We do have some support staff in which their hours will be impacted (reduced),” he said. Those staff members would include teacher’s assistants, office staff and other personnel.
During the Foothills School Division’s public meeting, Black Diamond-Longview trustee Jerry Muelaner voiced his displeasure for the Alberta government’s public announcement of increased payments for boards when the provincial budget was announced in February.
When in fact, those extras dollars are already committed to teachers for salary increases the provincial government itself negotiated three years ago.
“They are giving the public the message that this is new money and that isn’t the case,” Muelaner said. “Don’t ever do it again.”
He said the government was trying to “save some public face” when the budget was announced.
