Calgary board to hire more teachers, freeze fees

The Calgary Board of Education's budget tabled on Tuesday includes plans to hire more teachers, repair a few schools and hold the line on fees for the next school year.

The $940-million budget — an increase of nearly $40 million over the current year — is a good news budget, said CBE superintendent of corporate services Don Dart. "First of all, it's balanced.

"It does add a few staff members into our district. It's not a down-sizing budget at all. I think it offers us hope around our fiscal stability."

The board also benefited from a 4.5 per cent boost in provincial funding to help with the plans to hire 67 new full-time teachers, mainly for kindergarten through Grade 3 to help comply with provincial standards on class size, and adding new English as a Second Language spaces.

These plans "will stabilize the Calgary Board of Education as far as the services and programs that we're offering to over 100,000 students in Calgary," Dart said.

There also will not be any fee increases for parents next year, said Wayne Braun, the board's director of corporate financial services.

"There will be no increase in student fees. Transportation fees are being held at the same level as they are in 2007-08. As far as instructional fees at the school level, there is no increase in the instructional supplies or materials fee or in any other fees. The only increase in fees that you will see is for students that are from outside of the province of Alberta," he said.

In fact, the board plans to reduce the fee for the noontime supervision program for students who don't take the bus to school by $25 a year, from $240 to $215.

The board also plans to do some small maintenance work on schools. Dart said the board is actually still spending money it got from the province two years ago.

"We have not been able to spend all of those resources over the last couple of years, just because the marketplace is so tight to get contractors," he explained. "So we actually are going to be spending an additional just about $7 million out of what we call deferred revenues, so our total spending for deferred maintenance items next year will be $25 million."

Trustees are expected to approve the budget at a June 3 meeting.