From Monday's Leader Post. Just what we need - more administration:
Layer of administration called a waste by group
Lana Haight
Saskatchewan News Network
Monday, March 05, 2007
SASKATOON -- The provincial government is wasting $12 million on another layer of administration within the school system, according to a group that represents parents with kids in school.
"It's an interesting use of money when school divisions are saying they don't have enough money," said Sarah Sun, president of the Saskatchewan Association of School Councils.
"How many teachers would that have hired?"
When the provincial government last year condensed 57 of the province's 81 school divisions into 12 larger divisions, it also legislated that each school in the province have a school community council, instead of the parent-teacher associations, home and school associations and other local boards that existed within schools.
Sun supports legislation mandating an advisory committee that includes parents for each school, but she believes the government legislation re-invents the wheel. Prior to school division amalgamation, the Saskatchewan Association of School Councils represented parent groups from 250 schools. The association was founded in 1938 and its members should have been included in the government's plans, says Sun.
She sees the new school community councils as mini-school boards, and along with the new organizational structure comes a budget. The province's boards of education will receive $12 million in 2006-07 to implement and support school community councils, according to the government.
The 2006-07 Saskatchewan Learning Funding Manual says the money will be used "for the designation of a senior divisional administrative person with responsibility to provide advice, support and communication assistance for School Community Councils; principal release time; in school administrative support; and, operating expenses for individual councils ($2,000 per school)."
Sun's organization, which received a government grant of $30,000 this year, had asked for that to be increased to $75,000 next year and for an additional $75,000 to educate and train parents to participate in the new school community councils.
Learning Minister Deb Higgins was not available for comment on Friday.
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1 comment:
The more I read, the more frustrated I get. A small point from this article...at our SCC Annual Meeting last week in Climax, the SCC Coordinator from Chinook told us that we were given a $1000 operation grant each year and that it was directly from Chinook's budget and not from the province. Does this not differ the Provincial Gov't's $2000 per school in this article?
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