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The after-hours programs at Ottawa’s English public schools lose money and trustees are at each other’s throats over what to do about it.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board’s staff say they need to charge more to parents whose kids are in the before- and after-school programs it offers for elementary-aged students to make up a $1.8-million deficit. For certain parents, it could mean paying as much as $1,000 more a year.
Some trustees are skeptical. “I don’t necessarily agree that that is the route to revenue-neutrality,” says Shawn Menard, who represents neighbourhoods east and south of the downtown core. He questions how much of the deficit was a one-time fluke, and points out that the board raised fees last year to, trustees were told, close the deficit once and for all. Fee hikes, also, will push some kids out.
“I had a lot of problems coming back this year and saying, after we just made those changes last year, saying some parents are going to pay 32 per cent more,” Menard says.
Donna Blackburn’s the trustee for central and south Nepean. She comes from the same factory of blunt-talking conservative-minded politicians in Barrhaven that produced Jan Harder and Lisa MacLeod. She calls trustees like Menard who resisted the fee hike “whackjobs” and says they’re out of control.
“It’s like they think there’s a f—— money tree out behind the board office and the money just comes off like leaves,” Blackburn says. The board’s staff are superb, there’s a deficit to be dealt with, and people like Menard won’t do it, she says.
It’s an ugly disagreement over a service the board never really wanted to provide in the first place, until the province ordered it.
Where its buildings were used by outside providers to take care of elementary students after classes, the board largely left them alone. But nearly 4,300 kids are now in board-run programs, in schools where there wasn’t previously enough demand for neighbourhood daycares and preschools to run programs of their own, and the trustees are stuck with them.
Next year’s school-board budget is tight. Overstretched, actually. Staff are proposing to cut as many as 200 jobs to save $10 million — and that assumes this $1.8-million problem is already solved. So it’s serious money, especially for a service that under provincial rules has to cover its own costs.
Counting mornings and afternoons, the programs have 10 “sessions” a week. Parents can choose how many sessions to put their kids in, and they can change the schedule monthly if they want.
Here’s the problem: The board charges parents by the session, but it staffs the programs as if they’re all being used full-time so it doesn’t get caught short-staffed if a bunch of kids flood in one month.
According to the board’s figures, more than half the kids in the programs use five sessions a week, probably a lot of them for daily care after school. Only 30 per cent of the kids are there for the full 10 sessions the board supplies and pays for whether they’re used or not. Small percentages are in any other combination.
Right now a morning-and-afternoon combo costs $22 a day. Mornings and afternoons cost different amounts at different schools because the school days start at different times, but one of each always adds up to $22. The school board’s staff propose replacing that with a rough sliding scale.
If you use all 10 sessions, you’d pay based on a daily rate of $22.50, a 50-cent increase. But if you use two sessions a week, you’d pay based on a daily rate of $29.50, because part of what you’d be paying for is the system’s flexibility. The people who use the program for six or seven sessions a week would pay the biggest increase in raw dollars, from about $3,000 to about $4,000.
The board would also charge a $50 first registration fee for each kid, then $25 in each subsequent year.
In Tuesday’s first vote, to be confirmed in another one next week, that’s pretty much what trustees agreed to do — the only tweak was to exempt parents who get daycare subsidies from the registration fee but raise it to $55 for everyone else.
The real fight, over that $10-million boardwide deficit, is still to come.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board’s staff say they need to charge more to parents whose kids are in the before- and after-school programs it offers for elementary-aged students to make up a $1.8-million deficit. For certain parents, it could mean paying as much as $1,000 more a year.
Some trustees are skeptical. “I don’t necessarily agree that that is the route to revenue-neutrality,” says Shawn Menard, who represents neighbourhoods east and south of the downtown core. He questions how much of the deficit was a one-time fluke, and points out that the board raised fees last year to, trustees were told, close the deficit once and for all. Fee hikes, also, will push some kids out.
“I had a lot of problems coming back this year and saying, after we just made those changes last year, saying some parents are going to pay 32 per cent more,” Menard says.
Donna Blackburn’s the trustee for central and south Nepean. She comes from the same factory of blunt-talking conservative-minded politicians in Barrhaven that produced Jan Harder and Lisa MacLeod. She calls trustees like Menard who resisted the fee hike “whackjobs” and says they’re out of control.
“It’s like they think there’s a f—— money tree out behind the board office and the money just comes off like leaves,” Blackburn says. The board’s staff are superb, there’s a deficit to be dealt with, and people like Menard won’t do it, she says.
It’s an ugly disagreement over a service the board never really wanted to provide in the first place, until the province ordered it.
Where its buildings were used by outside providers to take care of elementary students after classes, the board largely left them alone. But nearly 4,300 kids are now in board-run programs, in schools where there wasn’t previously enough demand for neighbourhood daycares and preschools to run programs of their own, and the trustees are stuck with them.
Next year’s school-board budget is tight. Overstretched, actually. Staff are proposing to cut as many as 200 jobs to save $10 million — and that assumes this $1.8-million problem is already solved. So it’s serious money, especially for a service that under provincial rules has to cover its own costs.
Counting mornings and afternoons, the programs have 10 “sessions” a week. Parents can choose how many sessions to put their kids in, and they can change the schedule monthly if they want.
Here’s the problem: The board charges parents by the session, but it staffs the programs as if they’re all being used full-time so it doesn’t get caught short-staffed if a bunch of kids flood in one month.
According to the board’s figures, more than half the kids in the programs use five sessions a week, probably a lot of them for daily care after school. Only 30 per cent of the kids are there for the full 10 sessions the board supplies and pays for whether they’re used or not. Small percentages are in any other combination.
Right now a morning-and-afternoon combo costs $22 a day. Mornings and afternoons cost different amounts at different schools because the school days start at different times, but one of each always adds up to $22. The school board’s staff propose replacing that with a rough sliding scale.
If you use all 10 sessions, you’d pay based on a daily rate of $22.50, a 50-cent increase. But if you use two sessions a week, you’d pay based on a daily rate of $29.50, because part of what you’d be paying for is the system’s flexibility. The people who use the program for six or seven sessions a week would pay the biggest increase in raw dollars, from about $3,000 to about $4,000.
The board would also charge a $50 first registration fee for each kid, then $25 in each subsequent year.
In Tuesday’s first vote, to be confirmed in another one next week, that’s pretty much what trustees agreed to do — the only tweak was to exempt parents who get daycare subsidies from the registration fee but raise it to $55 for everyone else.
The real fight, over that $10-million boardwide deficit, is still to come.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
