Sarah Pledge Dickson, LJI Journalist
The Western Quebec School Board (WQSB) has clarified how it plans to handle the province’s demand it cut $906,000 from its budget by the end of this fiscal year, now about a month away.
In December the Quebec government announced that school boards across the province would have to cut millions in spending by March.
At the WQSB’s Jan. 28 meeting, assistant director general Pascal Proulx announced the board will cut just over $1.1 million from its spending this year in response to this demand, which amounts to less than one per cent of the year’s budget.
Proulx said after some serious penny-pinching, including the cancellation of tiny budget items like a principal’s breakfast and free use of a public workplace coffee machine, he believed the cuts would not affect student services.
“We worked with the Resource Allocation Committee, and with these first cuts we were able to do it without impacting the schools,” he said.
The board plans to save money by not filling four positions that were vacant – including that of a psychologist – and pointed to the late hiring of six new employees as having already saved the board almost $300,000.
About $250,000 will be saved in caretaking and maintenance fees, through measures such as reducing an annual window cleaning service to a bi-annual service.
Many of these changes will only help the school board meet this budget requirement this year and will not be recurring.
Joanne Labadie, chair of the WQSB, said she was pleased with how the cuts were handled this time around but warned that even if these cuts are not supposed to affect students, everything the board does has an impact.
“I think the team did an exceptional job in identifying areas that could be cut without impacting student services and with having minimal impact on staff,” Labadie said. “But we are a school board. It’s impossible not to impact student services somewhere, but we’ve done it in a way that hopefully won’t. Any further cuts would make it impossible not to impact students.”
Proulx said it looks like more cuts are on the horizon.
“We know almost for certain now that we’re going to have more cuts in April when the new budget appears,” he said. “So we’re working with the schools and the principals to prepare for that.”
Labadie echoed this concern for the greater budget cuts anticipated this spring.
“When the government brings forward the 2025 budget, [cuts are] going to be a lot harder.”