Mini-town hall at Crescent Heights High School with parents of school council (photo courtesy Colton Mckee)

By Chantal Wagner

MHPSD collecting priorities from parents in anticipated provincial budget cuts for schools

Jan 27, 2020 | 9:58 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – School priorities in the face of budget cutbacks, that’s what parents were brainstorming last night during a mini-town hall with the Medicine Hat Public School Division.

According to the division, they experienced a $3.8 million decrease in the province’s 2019-2020 budget to several educational grants received by public school jurisdictions.

The division’s financial reserves had enough to cover the reductions over the past year.

But, if the upcoming provincial budget has more cuts in store, there will have to be some tough decisions according to the division’s board chair Rick Massini.

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“Then we’re going to have to go and take the information that we’re gathering from our parents in terms of what they feel are priority items and find $3.8 million worth of services, supplies, and personnel that we have to reduce from our budget.”

Some top priorities from the Crescent Heights’ school council parents included maintaining class size, supports for students and teachers, and to continue optional classes for student engagement on all learning levels.

“We also don’t want to see the loss of more creative options for our kids. It would be a mistake to just hunker down and go back to a sort of a core set of programming. There’s lots of really creative programming with those sorts of community partnerships and those sorts of things should be supported because all kids learn differently and we can’t lose that,” said Karen Saffran Acting Chair of the Crescent Heights School Council.

The division has no idea what the upcoming budget will look like, but anticipate it will be lower. The minister has said school boards may have greater discretion on how they can spend the money, according to Massini.

Crescent Heights’ Principal Kelly Pitman says adequate supports for students need to be maintained.

“Prioritize supports for learning and that starts with getting teachers in front of kids. So that would be certainly priority one. Also looking after kid’s social-emotional health and that requires a lot of additional supports and those are the two areas we are really trying to attend to.”

Massini says administration needs to be guided on what the community feels are essential priorities that schools must continue to provide with the unknown budget direction.

The mini-town halls will continue into February with schools in the Medicine Hat Public School Division.

The central office will then compile the feedback to start planning.

A schedule of the school town-halls can be found by visiting this link.

The provincial budget is expected to come down in mid-March or in April.