Saskatoon dad says teaching cuts 'don't make sense'

Evan Schemenauer has three children in the Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools system and worries about the 19 teaching positions being cut.

“What this is going to mean for our kids is that now there's going to be an extra three or four kids in each classroom, less time dedicated to each kid,” he said.

“The child is struggling, now how much time does that teacher have to dedicate to them anymore? We're seeing a lot of the resources starting to get slashed and there's just a lot of things in it that don't make sense.”

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The province announced a funding increase of $29.4 million for education in Saskatchewan, or 1.5 per cent, from the previous year.

GSCS chair Diane Boyko says that amount of funding is leaving them well short of what’s needed to operate.

“The increase that we did receive pays for the teachers' collective bargaining agreement for this year, as well as some for some of the enrolments,” said GSCS board chair Diane Boyko.

“Everything else from inflationary costs to trying to have programming that would be adapted to the future, I guess I would say all of those things have had to be looked at and we've had to make some tough decisions.

“Things like speech pathologists and counsellors and things like that, and you have money for the basic education and then those extras, they all have to be looked at, and that's the most frustrating part when we know that there's a need there and we aren't able to fulfill it in the best way that we know possible,” said Boyko.

Saskatoon Teachers’ Association president John McGettigan says it’s not surprising that school divisions are being put in the position of making decisions that aren’t good for kids.

“All teachers are in this for the same reason, acting in the best interest of our children,” he said.

“I don't think this budget helps.”

Boyko says GSCS will need to draw $1.3 million from its reserves for the upcoming school year.

“What we've tried to do is ensure that that money is used in the year that it's been given, which will leave us probably with about $4 million, which in a $220 million operation is not a lot of money.”

On Friday premier Scott Moe said reserves for school divisions around the province have been “growing in the last few years”, but McGettigan says reserves in Saskatoon have been spent wisely and out of necessity.

“The reserves are spent,” he said.

“So there are reserves across the province, we shouldn't be punished because we've wisely spent.”

GSCS has introduced a $70 annual fee for lunch hour supervision for students who remain at school for lunch, capped at $140 per family.

“We've basically been put up against the wall, and that's what we've had to do in this kind of a case,” she said.

“We recognize that there's going to be some families and some children that won't be able to absorb those costs, and of course, we will, as we always do with everything, we will make those kinds of allowances.”

The 27 school divisions across the province will submit their budgets to the minister of education by June 30, and that’s when discussions will be had about potential budget increases.

“The realities will all come out,” said Boyko.

“We would be very happy if they looked at all of our circumstances and said, 'you know, you've proven the point that you do need more funding, and here is some.' So we'd be really happy if that would happen.”

It’s all leaving Schemenauer worried about the future of education.

“If we're cutting education funding, we're putting our kids that much further behind the rest of the world,” he said.

“That's something that Canada, as a first-world country, should not be doing.”