NEW GLASGOW – Half of the local school board's consultant positions will be cut over the next three years.
It was reported at Wednesday’s Chignecto-Central Regional School Board meeting that 12 consultants will lose their jobs; 10 in the next school year and the remaining two in three years time.
"Every student will be impacted," said Scott Milner, director of education services. "We are not going to be able to present the same services."
The positions lost include two literacy mentors, a virtual school consultant, a grade 7 to 12 assessment consultant, two French programming consultants, two technology infrastructure student information system implementation consultants, an active healthy living consultant and three Reading Recovery lead teachers.
Consultants who will lose their jobs were notified on Monday.
Milner said the area will likely have a significant impact on all areas, but specifically French programming.
“I’m particularly concerned about our French languages – we were stretched thin as it was,” he said.
Board superintendent Gary Clarke said the job cuts were not the board's idea.
"We were not consulted. This was not our idea," Clarke said, adding it was a directive of the Department of Education to cut the number of consultants by 50 per cent within the next three years as one way to reduce spending in school boards across the province.
Stellarton-Westville representative Ron Marks expressed his concerns about having 10 of the positions eliminated this September.
“The province gave us three years to reduce the number of consultants by 50 per cent – there may be other options,” Marks said, adding that he’d like to see some sort of public discussion about the issue. “Because we do this in isolation, I’m not sure I have the input I want to have.”
Many people in the public have stated their disappointment over losing the Reading Recovery program, which will be discontinued next September.
Board chairwoman Trudy Thompson said a replacement for the program is being sought.
"I don't know what it will look like at this point in time," she said, adding that the government will claw back one-third of the funding for the current Reading Recovery Program, while the board would be left with the remaining funds.
However, because the fiscal year ends March 31, some of the remaining funds have already been targeted towards running the current program until June.
“We can’t stop it midway through,” Thompson said, adding that it would leave the boards with about one-third of the current funding to work with come September.
Other board members expressed dismay about the dissolution of the program, calling it a “department in crisis” and indicating they “don’t know how we’re going to get through it.”
Hello Casy, love your myopic assessment of yesteryear, when, may I remind you all of the medical, engineering,and living advancements were made, I for one at 14 knew exactly what I wanted to be, and so did many of my peers. Maybe it is for the reason that you claim, that many of today's students are late into their teens and early twenties, still roaming around the halls of our schools, looking for guidance from a guidance councilor who does not have a clue, nor do they particularly care. The problem with your assessment is that you promote the telling by another of one's abilities, rather than acquiring self knowledge about strengths or weakness. However there is no high paying job in the latter, hence your opposition to it's merits. I really pity your children, they have missed so much by your methods and have much to learn.