TDSB passes budget without cuts to music
Posted June 19, 2013 1:38 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
School trustees have passed the Toronto District School Board’s 2013-14 budget without reducing the number of part-time music teachers or charging International Baccalaureate (IB) students a fee.
Trustees met Wednesday evening at the TDSB headquarters to discuss a long menu of potential cuts proposed by staff, to shave $27-million from the budget. By law, the board had to pass a balanced budget.
The elimination of 24 part-time music instructors would have saved $2 million a year. A registration fee for the 700 students in the IB program would have generated of between $1,200 to $1,500 per student.
At the start of the meeting an online petition with over 10,000 signatures was brought forward to trustees to save part time music instructors.
The TDSB says it will now have to find ways to fill the $10.5 million deficit caused by avoiding the music program cuts with in year savings. Some of the cuts are focused on the maintenance department as well as reviewing care taking contracts, a reduction of overtime hours and a four per cent budget reduction to individual schools which would mean a reduction in classroom supplies.
Shortly after the budget was passed trustees went in camera to discuss the issue of selling off school properties.
The Toronto Star reported Wednesday that the board will decide whether to sell $162-million in school properties over the next three years, to free up any money to pay for a list of pressing school renovations and new building projects.
The confidential report before the TDSB reportedly recommends that 11 properties be sold. Most are schools that were closed years ago and are now being rented out.
Officials from the board weren’t immediately available for comment. Etobicoke-Lakeshore trustee Pamela Gough told CityNews in an email she couldn’t discuss the property sales as the matter is being debated in a private session on Wednesday afternoon.
Trustees will meet again on Thursday evening at 7 p.m. to complete the agenda.
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