By Tommy Osborne

SD57

SD57 passes 2025 budget, $2 million in cuts made

May 29, 2024 | 3:45 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The School District 57 (SD57) Board of Education meeting saw the board pass its 2025 budget. The budget, totalling $207,554,415, saw the board make $2 million in cuts, as it was necessitated by law.

“These are not cuts that we really wanted to have in place. These are the best of some very challenging decisions that we had, but we certainly will be monitoring next year to see what the impact of those reductions has been, and we will work to make sure that we address anything that really does create a problem or create situations that we’re not comfortable with,” said SD57 Superintendent Jameel Aziz.

The approved cuts to SD57’s 2025 budget. Photo Courtesy SD57

The biggest cut among them is the $500,000 reduction towards school administration. Aziz says there is no doubt there will be an impact, but believes this was the best way to lessen the impact on classrooms, families, and teachers.

“Having less administrative support in a school means that during a certain portion of the day, you may not get the immediate response that you were looking for, something might have to wait, to receive an answer,” he said.

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“Nobody has lost their job. Through attrition, through transfers, every individual who’s employed by SD57 will continue to be employed by SD57. It’s just that their role will change or their responsibilities will look a little bit different next year,” he continued

Another cut towards the Indigenous Education Director certainly looks bad on paper, but Aziz explains this position was actually no longer needed, as the former Indigenous Education Director Pam Spooner has actually been promoted to Assistant Superintendent of Indigenous Education. While a first glance may appear to show a hit to SD57’s Indigenous Education program, Aziz says the opposite is actually true.

“A school district this size doesn’t typically have a director and an assistant superintendent overseeing the portfolio of Indigenous education, so by raising the profile of that role and that position, we no longer need the director’s role to be filled,” he explained.

While this year’s budget was difficult to balance amid all the cuts, Aziz believes this positions the school district well for future budgets.

“We are looking to find efficiencies within our system. We’ve had a structural deficit year after year where we’ve been using our surplus and really dipping into our savings account essentially to pay for the bills in our checking account. And I think with some careful analysis, we hope to be in a spot next year where we are managing our district based on the funding dollars that we receive, and we’re not having to dip into our surpluses,” he said.

Among other things, Aziz says one efficiency that could be implemented is centralizing the decision making around purchasing, as he notes some schools actually operate on surplus due to a school-based funding system, but Aziz expects this to change as “we do not have the luxury of hanging on to those dollars on an annual basis.”

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