Nova Scotia school boards face continued declining enrolment

Only two Nova Scotia school boards will grow over the coming school year, with every other board losing teachers as fewer children move through their school systems. 

The boards have set their budgets for the 2015-16 academic year and most will have fewer staff, including teachers, because of declining enrolment.

Education Minister Karen Casey says when it comes to funding, boards are actually getting an increase in funding compared to last year, but fewer students.

"Every year with declining student enrolment, they are obviously declining in the number of teachers. That's to be expected," she said.

"The money we put into our schools to support programs for students or support direct services to students has increased, so that's how we believe the funding is adequate."

In releasing their budgets, many school boards specifically mentioned declining enrolment as the reason for position cuts.

The South Shore Regional School Board on its website said 15 teaching positions have been eliminated for the upcoming school year and they expect 200 fewer students in the classroom in September.

The Strait Regional School Board reports of the 17 full time teaching positions reduced, nine were directly related to the decline in enrolment. They said all positions would be eliminated through attrition.

Of the 36 unionized positions eliminated in the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board, 17 were directly related to declining enrolment.

Last month, the Cape Breton Victoria School Board reported their enrolment continues to decline at the rate 450 to 500 students a year, leading to the elimination of 40 teaching positions.

Casey says declining enrolment is justification enough for eliminating teaching positions.

Two boards will have more teachers

"The model that we use for distributing the dollars to school boards is kind of a hybrid," she said. "It's used to be focused mainly on enrolment, and now we look at enrolment and programming, so enrolment does play a role in that."

Two school boards report they will have more teaching positions in September.

The Halifax Regional School Board will lose some positions because of declining enrolment, spokesman Doug Hadley said, but it will also need more teachers because class sizes are smaller. 

"The overall net effect was an increase in positions," he said. 

In total, 33 positions will be added, most of them classroom teachers.

CSAP, the province's French-language school board, won't see staff reductions for the upcoming school year.

"At CSAP, there are no reductions in teaching positions nor in the budget, as we are a school board where student enrolment increases each year," spokesman Richard Landry said.

Karen Casey says any funding cuts that have been made to the boards won't impact the ability to teach in the classroom.

"The cuts that boards are experiencing with respect to staff and enrolment of teachers is directly related to enrolment decline, so the staffing is based on that enrolment," she said.