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Board of Trustees approves the 2010-2011 operating budget

At Tuesday’s regular public Board meeting The Board of Trustees  approved the Calgary Board of Education’s 2010-2011 Operating Budget, subject to receiving Ministerial approval for the $10.0 million accumulated operating deficit budget.

“This is an extremely sad time for many of our staff, students and parents,” said CBE Board Chair Pat Cochrane. “We recruit the best staff from across the country and knowing we’ll have fewer of them for the new school year is very difficult.” 

The 2010-2011 Operating Budget takes a blended approach in addressing the CBE’s current realities. It will see the elimination of the following estimated full-time equivalent (FTE) positions: 192 certificated staff (teachers), 79 school-based support staff, and 6.5 custodial staff. Final numbers won’t be known until the fall when the final enrolment count is completed. Many of the reductions will result from retirements and resignations.

The CBE currently has 9376.8 FTE employees, which equates to 12 900 individual employees, many of whom work part-time. The breakdown is as follows:

Teachers, Support Staff, Custodial: 96%
Trades: less than 1%
Administration: less than 4%

In addition to staff reductions, the CBE will run a deficit of $10 million and has depleted all of its operating reserves. During the budgeting process, senior administration asked all service units throughout the CBE to find efficiencies where possible and to work with anticipated reduced budgets.

“We directed our administration to do everything possible to minimize the impact on our students while preserving the CBE’s overall financial health,” says Cochrane. “All of our staff has maintained their focus on the needs of students while working with less during this challenging time.”

A number of factors have contributed to the CBE’s challenging situation. The recent provincial budget did not raise grant rates for school boards despite many inflationary pressures. Changes to class size funding resulted in a further reduction of $4.9 million for the CBE. Earlier this spring, the Alberta Government asked school boards across the province to cover the 2.92% Alberta Average Weekly Earnings increase payable to teachers. 

With approval of the Operating Budget, the CBE has until June 30, 2010 to seek Ministerial approval to run the deficit.

 


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Last Modified: September 22, 2011