THUNDER BAY – The director of education for the city’s Catholic school board knows changes are coming in wake of the announcement of planned funding cuts for education.
Pino Tassone admitted he was surprised to hear the news that governing Liberals plan to reduce the provincial education budget by $500-million by 2017-2018, especially after Premier Kathleen Wynne pledged during the spring campaign that education would remain untouched.
“It’s obviously a huge concern for our board,” Tassone said at the Thunder Bay District Catholic School Board office Wednesday afternoon. “It will affect us in many ways. Obviously, the concern is going to be around declining enrollment and the possibility of school closures.”
Minister of Education Liz Sandals acknowledged the cuts in Queen’s Park on Tuesday during the legislature, saying all sectors would be affected as the government works to bridge the deficit.
Declining enrollment has led to many schools across Ontario running well below capacity, with speculation that the government might look at closing poorly attended to schools.
Tassone believes the board is in a relatively strong position if the province starts looking at shuttering empty schools.
“We’ve very fortunate to not have schools under 50 per cent,” he said. “We do have some small schools and we’re looking closely at those schools to see how we can fill those spaces and revitalize those schools with popular programs.”
However, other measures might be taken to fill classrooms.
“It’s something we don’t like to do but we might have to look at splitting some classes and some possible restructuring,” Tassone said.
“Our goal is to not split classes and we’ll do our best not to.”
Reducing the number of classes, whether it be through school closures or split grades has the potential to result in teacher layoffs.
Officials with the Lakehead Public School Board declined to be interviewed for this story.
