Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Next Year's Preliminary School Budget To Be Made Public Next Week - Chairman says decisions made on $1.7-million shortfall



District 22 Chairman Bill Turanski says the school board has made a ``number of decisions'' after reviewing the draft budget for the 2011-12 school year. And Turanski message is blunt. ``We had a 1.7-million dollar shortfall so we had to make that up.'' He refuses to provide detail, stating that some matters involved personnel. That could be an indication of upcoming staff cuts. There have been alot of responses from parents to an online school district survey on the proposed budget. Turanski says 70 people made suggestions although very few can be adopted. He says one suggestion was to cut employee benefits which would be impossible. The board plans to adopt a preliminary budget at a public meeting at school board offices on Tuesday, April 26th, at 5 pm. District 22's board has adopted next year's school calendar.  Turanski says there will still be a two-week spring break. He says officials have also worked out a way to make up two days when students will be off due to the 2012 BC Winter Games in Vernon. Many of the schools will be in use for the Games. Students must be in attendance for at least 180 days a year.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I remember having a conversation with Mr Turanski many years ago about my concern about impending enrollment shortfalls (demographics is not a difficult science) and as funding is tied to student population this school board was going to face the crunch one day. Get ready for some more empty schools!