Despite being presented a balanced budget for Anglophone East, it has been rejected by the District of Education Council.
In a 6 to 3 vote against the proposed budget, members cited concerns for the lack of funding for Educational Assistants.
The Anglophone East School District is lacking funding for over 60 Educational Assistants, a gap of nearly two million dollars.
Superintendent Greg Ingersoll says despite a larger number of enrollment, that still wasn’t enough to make up the funding gap for EAs.
“Because we do have a global budget, we do take money from one area to cover off another. This year, because we has a higher increase in the number of Educational Assistants needed, we had to dig deeper to try to find that money,” he says.
Some DEC members agreed that it shouldn’t have to come down to cutting from other resources to fill the gap.
District of Education Council vice-chair, Angela Lawson says changes need to be made to the model.
“We’ve asked the Minister of Education to consider a per student model., meaning not just ‘this is what you get for teacher salaries and EA salaries’ and then ‘here’s a lump sum, you figure out how else to make your district work’. Fund us per student, give us a per student number and let us figure out how to allocate those funds,” says Lawson.
She says when the inclusion model was introduced, it should have been accompanied by a budget to ensure the needs of each student was met.
Priority one students require an EA to be able to come to school.
