Province defends school funding decisions, unaware of library worker cuts
What districts call budget cuts, the province calls a reallocation of money to the teaching side
The province is standing by its decision to ask all seven school districts to cut a total of $43 million from what they expected in their budgets — a move that resulted in layoff notices earlier this week in Anglophone West.
Premier Susan Holt said the Department of Education's goal is to add teachers to classrooms to improve literacy and numeracy scores.
"We want the money to move from offices to classrooms, to teachers and to students, and we've asked the districts to partner with us in doing that," said Holt.
She said the province has too many classrooms without teachers and too many classrooms without teachers trained in education.
Anglophone West was asked to come up with $9.3 million from its budget. As a result, the district handed out layoff notices on Monday, which will mean the elimination next fall of staff who work in 62 libraries across the district's 70 schools.
Minister of Education Claire Johnson said, "We know that this is tough and we know that these decisions are not easy and we're sad too about the library workers, but we really, we need to be doing this at this time."
She said her department would be working "in partnership" with the districts to help them "make these cuts" to find the money.
The idea to "redirect resources" came from door knocking during the party's election campaign and what they've heard from teachers.
Anglophone West is referring to this redirection as a budget cut, but Johnson and Holt both said the province has actually added $200 million in school funding compared to last year. They said the department needed $250 million, however.
Holt said districts asked for "a certain amount of money," but the province wasn't able to give it to them. She said that makes this change "feel like a cut."
Johnson said she found out about Anglophone West's layoff notices to 69 employees, including library workers, on Monday, the same day the layoff notices were handed out. Her department didn't work with the district to make the decision.
"We're going to hold them accountable," Johnson said. "We're going to ask them questions as to why they decided this."
Holt also said she is "talking to the district" about the decision.
Sending teachers back to the classroom
Part of the province's plan is to send 150 qualified teachers working outside of the classroom back into the classroom.
A plan that Michel Côté, the Francophone South District Education Council chair, says doesn't represent the reality of his district and won't work.
Côté said most of his teachers are already in the classroom and there are few in the district office.
"We don't have those teachers or we can't send them in the classroom. They're already in the classroom. Most of our funding that we get goes into the classroom, goes into the schools," he said.
Francophone South sent six teachers from the district level back into the classroom last year. Only two of them are still there.
Johnson said she thinks teachers reassigned to the classroom will stay and her department will have conversations with them "to find out what it is that they need to be happy in their job."
No 'fat to cut'
Côté said his district, which includes Moncton, Fredericton and Saint John, is growing by hundreds of students every year and schools are over capacity.
His district is responsible for finding $7.1 million in their budget. Côté said Francophone South is already running a deficit of more than $2 million this year in order to add resources such as educational assistants.
"We don't really have any fat to cut," he said.
Côté said the changes will affect students and "the quality of education."
This news also concerns Lynda Homer, the executive director of the Literacy Coalition of New Brunswick, especially the loss of school library workers.
"Making books accessible for young people and for all of us is really important and promoting the reading of books is more important today than ever."
She believes libraries and literacy outcomes are a top priority. Homer agrees adding teachers is important but wishes there was another way.
"I think that not everything is about money, but money does equal resources, both human and physical resources. So I really hesitate to think that cuts to education right now would be wise."
Côté said that "most likely" his district will have to cut positions.
As for the remaining five anglophone and francophone districts in the province, none of them have made staffing decisions except for Francophone Northwest.
In an email, spokesperson Julie Poulin said the district does not anticipate having to make job cuts.
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