Fort McMurray school board contemplates four-day school week to deal with budget shortfall

[CHIMO]

The Fort McMurray public school board in Alberta is contemplating compressing the school week to four days to help make up for a projected budget deficit of $4.4 million.

The board of trustees sent a notice to parents in January to seek input on how best to deal with the budget shortfall, saying that among the considerations is reconfiguring or combining schools or chopping a day off the school week.

“Because it is a projected deficit, we are trying to not incur that deficit,” said Superintendent Dennis Parsons. “The reconfiguration would position the district better to give parents choices in areas where they don’t have them, and if we go to a compressed week, it reduces a lot of expenditure,” he said.

Cutting the school week by one day would save the board an estimated $1 million, said Parsons. Students wouldn’t need to be bussed in that day, and teachers who often attend professional development activities on Fridays would not be need to be replaced with substitute teachers.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/02/13/fort_mcmurray_school_board_contemplates_fourday_school_week_to_deal_with_budget_shortfall.html

Some people just can not understand that if one cuts out all schooling one gets a bigger saving!

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/02/13/fort_mcmurray_school_board_contemplates_fourday_school_week_to_deal_with_budget_shortfall.html

Besides, school budgets are a provincial item.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2013/02/13/edmonton-body-lice-homeless.html

[laundry_queen]

1. So, they are just passing on the costs

to the parents. Instead of raising taxes, and asking the government for more money they are instead making the parents pay for that additional day of childcare. I just don't see how chopping the school week or reconfiguring schools is going to help things in the long run. Education is a net benefit to society. And in a rapidly growing place like Ft. Mac, they shouldn't be closing down any schools. I don't live in Ft. Mac, but I live instead in a rapidly growing community in Alberta, and it took awhile, but after some parents going on tv and protesting, we are finally getting a new school and some more money for the older ones, as the last school was built at a time when we had less than half the population we have now. You can't double a population and not get bigger budgets/more schools. Ft. Mac has enough trouble attracting qualified workers, this kind of thing isn't going to help matters.

[arikara]

2. Isn't Fort Mac in the middle of the tar sands?

the aren't the tar sands supposed to bring great wealth and prosperity? How is it the schools don't have enough money in such a place?

[laundry_queen]

3. Amazing isn't it?

I don't get it either. The area I live in had to really fight to get money set aside for new schools, and that was only after it was on the news a few times, parents complaining about kids having to attend classes in a community hall because of lack of school space. We're in the same province.

I just think it's a total lack of planning. Some of these areas have more than doubled in size in the last 10-20 years. But yeah, there's also likely incompetence or mismanagement at differing levels of government.

[Posteritatis]

4. Short answer: "Meh, dropouts can work in the oilfields for $bignum anyway."

Alberta's dropout rate up until a few years ago was rather higher than the rest of the country's because of that. A lot of people just don't care.

Add to that the extra fun of "I'm not in school so why should I care?" that a lot of people get, and add to that that Alberta's government is Conservative with everything that implies, and you get a situation where a drywall hanger can get paid a hundred dollars an hour but they somehow have a harder time paying to keep the schools open than economic basketcases like the Atlantic provinces do.

Imagine that. ;P