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A five-year recovery plan introduced by the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board to deal with a $5.3 million deficit won’t involve any deep cuts to services and won’t affect the quality of education provided to students, says board chairman Steve Bletas. The board’s financial results released in June last year confirmed the SWLSB has an accumulated deficit.
Four per cent of budget
After analysis, it was determined that the deficit had come about as a result of increasing needs which no longer matched board revenues. In an open message Bletas and SWLSB director general Anne-Marie Lepage wrote to address the issue, they said the deficit represents four per cent of the total budget.
Five objectives set out in the recovery plan which ends in 2013 include implementing tighter overall controls, maximizing funding for teacher posts while making certain that proper staffing levels are maintained, fine-tuning management practices in order to reduce expenses, reviewing staffing levels, and maximizing revenues.
Weathering the storm
“We are not cutting anywhere in the classrooms nor with the teachers whatsoever,” Bletas said in an interview with TLN. “We reduced expenses, yeah. We were over expenses on certain things and we did that this year. As a result, we were able to weather the storm. Sometimes when you overspend, you see more clearly at the end.
“For example, library work or help. People were complaining why we had to cut certain library posts. Well the fact of the matter is the choice was given to the administration and they felt they needed an increase in secretarial and they could do without the library positions. There’s teachers that take kids to the library back and forth.”
Streamlining expenses
By the third year of the plan, according to Bletas, “it’s going to start to show. By the fourth year you’ll see it and by the fifth year we’re there. We’re just streamlining our expenses. That’s basically what we’re doing. I mean, we’re careful about where we spend money as long as it doesn’t touch the classroom. We’re not hiring any new posts. Not hiring any new people.
“We’re assessing all the departments. We’ve done whatever we had to do. We’re not cutting anymore. Janitorial help, for example. When someone used to be sick we used to hire someone for the whole day. Now, if the person’s sick at noon let’s say, we don’t have someone come in, but they come in the next day. We’re also doing an energy conservation project, where we’re conserving energy throughout all our schools. That is a big saving.”
Some larger classes
“There’s other boards that have them totally overfilled,” he said. “We’re still respecting the regulations … At the end of this five-year period our budget will be balanced and we’ll be in a positive position.”
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