School boards across Quebec, including boards governing Pontiac schools, are facing some tough budget decisions after the Quebec government asked them to cut millions of dollars in costs before the end of this fiscal year.
In December the province announced school boards would lose $200 million in previously-approved budgets for the period ending in Mar. 2025.
In the Pontiac, the Western Quebec School Board (WQSB) must reduce spending by $906,000, less than 0.6 per cent of the board’s annual operating budget, and the Centre de services scolaires des Hauts-Bois-de-l’Outaouais must cut $324,303.
WQSB director general George Singfield said in the coming weeks his school board will start looking at which programs or schools will receive cuts, which the province has said should not affect students’ learning experience.
“We’ll take a hard line on things that we have committed to and we won’t cut in areas where it’s going to have a huge impact on learning,” Singfield said. “We have to be strategic and minimize.”
Singfield said the fact that the board has been able to save money on certain things, such as last year’s elections, will help mitigate the impact of the cuts.
“It’s not about cutting programs, and it’s certainly not about cutting staff. There are things that are sacred that we are going to continue with. It’s really about looking at things that we are not committed to for this year.”
WQSB chairwoman Joanne Labadie said despite the province’s directive that cuts should not impact students’ learning experiences, the board will be hard-pressed to come up with solutions that do not impact students in some way.
“Whether it’s in buildings, IT, library services, special education technicians [ . . . ] everything we do is going to affect student services,” she said, adding that the board is currently in the process of figuring out ways to minimize the impact on students and should complete its recommendations sometime in January.
The government has also implemented a construction moratorium preventing the completion of new projects, as well as a hiring freeze, which Labadie said comes with the same directive – that hiring decisions should not impact students’ experience.
For example, she said the board can continue to hire teachers and special education attendants, but if a position becomes vacant it can only be filled internally. She said the school board only has so many resources and it cannot currently fill all those positions if they became vacant.
“We lose a lot of staff to Ontario, and then to be told that we can only fill positions internally, well, we’re not that big of an organization. You lose two or three people, that creates some pretty big gaps for us,” she said.
Labadie said she is more concerned about what next year’s budget will look like, as she anticipates the province will implement more widespread cuts.
“My biggest concern is that these are budget cuts for this fiscal year, until March of 2025,” she said. “When the new budget comes out we are expecting drastic cuts for next year as well.”
The Centre de services scolaires des Hauts-Bois-de-l’Outaouais was not offering interviews on the subject of the budget cuts, but did offer a brief emailed statement.
“The sources or sectors of spending in danger of being affected have not yet been identified,” wrote communications coordinator Mona Lirette in French. “Our objective remains to preserve the integrity of services offered to students.”
THE EQUITY requested an interview with the provincial education department but did not receive a response before going to print.
