Dear Editor
In a recent News Optimist Letter to the Editor, Sask Party MLA, Herb Cox, claims that cuts to our classroom haven’t happened. He says the NDP are being dishonest and misleading the public when using the word “cuts” to describe expenditures of the provincial government, particularly when it comes to education funding.
Thankfully the News Optimist has been regularly reporting on Living Sky School Division Board meetings and providing information to the public. Herb Cox attended one such meeting in January 2020 where the Education Director, Brenda Vickers, showed the MLAs a graph indicating “education funding in 2019-20 was down almost 12.5 per cent in real dollars from 2012-13, when adjusted for inflation.” Board chair Ronna Pethick said, “We’ve cut and cut and cut to the point where we can’t cut anymore.” A key message from the school division to the MLAs was that there was no more room for further efficiencies.
The following are statements made by board members at previous LSSD meetings: April 2013 - the “2013-2014 funding drop of 3.5% from the year before means dipping into reserves” and “Until the reserves are gone they (the Sask Party government) are going to keep cutting us.” April 2014 - “a decrease in operating funding of $105,000 from last year”. April 2015 - “we are getting farther behind and not catching up,” April 2016 – “our school division received less money from the province in this spring’s budget”. In April 2017 a News Optimist headline read, “Big $6 million budget hole for Living Sky to address” and in April 2018 the headline was “Living Sky: $653,000 less funding than last year.” Would Herb Cox say all these people are just being dishonest and misleading the public?
Also reported over the years, the LSSD has gone to great lengths to find efficiencies, postponing needed repairs and not replacing buses, increasing the student-to-teacher ratio, reducing the number of teachers and education assistants, reducing professional development, fewer class trips and making kids walk farther to school.
Herb Cox’s statement that “’cuts’ to our classrooms haven’t happened.” contradicts not only the LSSD’s experience but the 2018-19 Public Accounts Volume 1 which states, “Education expenses was $3.38 billion in the current year, representing $88 million, or 2.5 percent decrease from the prior year…” Graphs in the 2019-20 Public Accounts indicate education spending as a percentage of total spending has decreased year over year since 2016.
You can say it louder and more often if you like, Mr. Cox, but it doesn’t change anything. Whether the NDP or the Living Sky School Division label it a cut, a decrease or a drop in funding -- the end result of underfunding education has a negative impact our children and their future.
Evelyn Johnson
Spiritwood
