The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Financing Education and a Shorter School Year A past Reminder article noted that Creighton School Division pays Flin Flon approximately $7,000 per pupil for each student attending Hapnot and Many Faces alternate high school with numbers this year at 90 and 40 respectively. The high percentage of students opting for Many Faces is surprising in itself, and one could question if the $7,000 per student will cover the costs at this school. The article mentioned that if Creighton establishes its own high school that Flin Flon would lose about $910,000 in annual funding. One would hope that readers do not believe that Flin Flon is making a profit on the backs of the Saskatchewan taxpayers, as it costs approximately $7,000 to educate each regular student, and much more for special needs pupils. Checking with Mike, the secretary-treasurer of a large urban school division, I received the following information, some of it rather disturbing from a taxpayer's viewpoint; School divisions receive a per-pupil grant of $2,346 for each resident student enrolled. When you add up all the block grants-equipment, technology etc. and divide by the enrollment it rises to $3,481 per pupil a little less than half the costs of the $7,000 yearly tab. The Manitoba Government is now covering about 49% of the costs of education with taxpayers paying the rest. It used to be 80% which is considered the ideal split, but has been dropping each year in recent times in spite of government claims of more money each year for schools. What has happened is that school divisions have been receiving merely cost of living increases in most years while their actual costs have been double or triple the percentage received. Mike also stated that grants for Special Needs students can be from $9-19 thousand per pupil depending on the disability. The per pupil costs of a trainably-mentally-challenged class in this writer's school was $25,000, certainly a significant amount. It is worth repeating that Manitoba and Saskatchewan are the only two provinces to tax property owners, and now most of the costs are paid out of this fund. School year Is a shorter school year a good or bad thing, and will it cost the taxpayers more? More than a year ago Manitoba's NDP government announced that starting in 2003 public schools in the province would start after Labour Day, as they had in the past. NDP election ads trumpeted that Gary Doer was increasing the summer holidays. As promised this year, classes opened on Sept. 2nd and a Sept. 7th start was announced for next fall. Surprisingly this has caused some consternation among school officials who are now complaining that losing five teaching days on 2004 is harmful to the students. Is this harmful or not? Manitoba still retains one of the longest school years in North America and has one of the shortest summers. It is certainly possible to teach any course in a 180-plus day school year, and there is no evidence that a 200 day school year makes kids smarter. Nevertheless, if the province and school divisions wish to make up for any days "lost" there certainly are ways to do so. The Premier at the time of the announcement proposed some possible ideas such as switching teacher's professional development days to the fall, increasing the length of the school day, or decreasing the length of the school year(good idea). Adding 10-15 minutes to the school day is not a good idea as the day is already too long for younger students,especially when bussing is a part of their school life. With up to 11 non-teaching days allowed during the school year, switching teacher's P.D. days to the fall prior to school opening has merit, and another plan would be to eliminate most of them from the regular school year. Most working parents hate "inservice days". Those with young children must make child care arrangements or miss work, as an important function of the school is the "baby-sitting function". Some even propose that P.D. days take place during the 165 days that teachers Are not in school. Some school divisions agree and pay the costs of evening, weekend and summer courses successfully completed by teachers. Perhaps Mr. Doer should consider an exception for northern school divisions in Manitoba. In the North, the long June days are often preferable to those in late August. As well, the resort factor on Labour Day is not as important as it is in the South. It would make a lot of sense to start school in August, and end early in June. This was and presumably still is the case in many northern Reserve schools, dictated in large part by the local economy. Don't count on this happening, as most governments and bureaucrats dislike exceptions to the regulations. By the way, secretary treasurer Mike says there is no financial penalty to the school divisions for a shorter school year. The length is set by the minister and the schools receive the same grants as for a longer year.
