Province looking to merge school boards

The province announced today that it will be looking to save $10 million in non-classroom expenditures in 2013-14 and school board amalgamations will be part of the plan.

Education minister Laurel Broten says Ontario is not considering a merger of public and separate school boards and will respect the constitutional protections afforded to french-language and Catholic school boards. “The 2012 budget directs the ministry to pursue the amalgamation of some neighbouring district boards to encourage economies of scale and allow the new boards to focus on student achievements.”

The province says it will be working with school boards, education partners, parents and teachers to find the savings and determine what boards will amalgamate. The consultation will launch in the fall and implementation will begin next year.

However Annie Kidder, executive director of People for Education says she’s not sure if the plan makes sense. “This is a very, very small amount of money they will be saving. It may cause a lot of concern among parents, among school boards because the boards that they are probably going to amalgamate do have very few schools in them that’s totally true, but they’re also enormous so to save $10 million so you can get rid of a couple of administrations, I’m not sure if it makes sense.”

The McGuinty government says it wants to reduce administrative costs while continuing to roll-out full-day kindergarten, maintain small class sizes, and preserve 20 thousand teacher and support staff jobs.

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