With a projected budget shortfall of $18.1 million for the 2010–11 school year, there will be cuts to services and staffing levels in the Vancouver school district. The only question that remains, according to school board chair Patti Bacchus, is where the axe will fall and how deeply it will cut.

“The vulnerable areas are non-enrolling positions—librarians, counsellors, support staff, district music programs,” Bacchus told the Straight in a phone interview.

Other options for dealing with the budget crunch include reducing the school calendar by 10 days, postponing building maintenance, selling property, and even closing schools. Bacchus noted that the latter is not likely to happen in the coming school year.

A budget brief prepared by the district shows that the Vancouver school district will receive from the province operating grants totalling $447.8 million for 2010–11. This is $4.3 million short of covering the planned partial implementation of full-day kindergarten and provincially approved collective-bargaining agreements. As well, the grants do not provide for cost increases estimated at $8.6 million due to adjustments in staff salaries and benefits, or inflation.

Salaries and benefits account for 91.6 percent of the district’s expenses, so according to Bacchus, “cuts to staffing levels are unavoidable.”

However, Bacchus pointed out that because of the requirements of the School Act, districts are prevented from making too many reductions in the number of teachers. “For example, we can’t go over 30 students in our Grade 7 class,” she explained. “There is a level of teacher staffing that we have to have because we can’t put 50 kids in a class. So there’s a bit of protection there.”

The Vancouver school district’s situation was raised by the Opposition during question period in the legislature on March 29. According to Hansard, Minister of Education Margaret MacDiarmid responded, “The reality is that by this fall we’ll have 60,000 fewer students in classrooms around this province than we did 10 years ago, and we need to do things differently.”

The district will release its preliminary budget proposals on April 7. The board will approve the final budget on April 29. Parents and other stakeholders can send their input to budget2010_11@vsb.bc.ca.