Union to fight Cape Breton school cuts
CBC News
Posted: Feb 13, 2012 12:15 PM AT
Last Updated: Feb 13, 2012 1:30 PM AT
Nova Scotia's eight school boards will see their funding cut for the second year in a row. (CBC)
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The union that represents non-teaching staff in Cape Breton says it won't take more job cuts lying down.
Kathy MacLeod, a national representative for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said her members took the brunt of the cuts within the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board last year.
In light of more budget cuts announced last week, MacLeod said CUPE members will campaign to protect teacher assistants, bus drivers, clerks and cleaners.
"There will be information pickets, we'll probably be doing forums and rallies," she told CBC News.
"We'll be wanting the public — especially in particular the parents of students with special needs — to get involved with our campaign."
Education Minister Ramona Jennex announced last week that Nova Scotia's eight school boards will see their funding cut for the second year in a row — by $13.4 million in the 2012-13 fiscal year.
The cuts for each regional school board vary slightly based on declining enrolment; the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board is grappling with a reduction of 2.1 per cent.
The board is scheduled to meet Monday to discuss how to deal with the $2.8-million shortfall.
Lorne Green, the chair of the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board, said there will be some retirements within the staff but not enough to guarantee no layoffs.
"Attrition — the numbers are not going to be high. We're hoping that they will be higher but unfortunately, we haven't seen high numbers in terms of attrition," he said Friday.
"We're probably looking at around the 40, 41, 42 mark — not much more than that."
Ambrose White, the superintendent of the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board, said he also doesn't know to what extent attrition can be used to achieve staff reductions.
"We cut and sliced last year as best as we could. We even laid off people last year, we laid off teacher assistants and we laid off teachers and were able to get them back," White said Friday.
"The last place we want to go is to the programming for the students."
White said the board was able to hire back 14 teachers last year because of retirements.
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