TDSB cuts hundreds of jobs to balance budget
Posted March 11, 2015 12:06 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Toronto District School Board trustees cut over 250 jobs as they struggled to eliminate a $16.5-million deficit and balance their budget.
After hours of debate, 88 elementary school teaching positions and 168.5 secondary school teaching positions across the city were cut – including regular teachers, special education teachers and English as a Second Language teachers.
Trustees originally voted to maintain all 33 special education support staff positions, but that number was later changed to 10 saved, with 23 positions eliminated.
TDSB chair Shaun Chen said in order to keep those positions and maintain a balanced budget, the board advised staff to find $500,000 in savings next year.
“Staff will have to look for those (savings) in central administration, discretionary budgets and other budgets that have discretionary control… when we’re buying paper, maybe we buy less,” he explained.
The board hopes to make all of the cuts through attrition or retirement.
“Staff changes will mostly be absorbed in a system as big as ours with people retiring, moving, etc.,” the TDSB said in a tweet.
The TDSB said school board funding is based mostly on the number of students. According to the board, “there are fewer students across Ontario and positions are being adjusted to balance.”
“The difficult decision tonight was really how do we grapple with the decrease in provincial funding for special education and as well our declining enrollment,” Chen explained.
The board also discussed how to generate more revenue in the wake of of provincial cuts, including a possible partnership with the Toronto Parking Authority to create parking spots on school property.
Earlier this year, the TDSB reviewed the future of 60 schools that have low enrollment and are under-utilized. The schools, which have enrollments at 65 per cent or less, could face closure or have their boundaries rezoned in the next six years.
