School boards find planning tricky without P.E.I. budget

A delay in passing the P.E.I. budget is making it difficult for school boards to prepare for the coming year.

The new fiscal year began April 1 and, without a provincial budget, the English Language School Board says it's in a difficult position because it doesn't know how many teachers it can employ in September.

I don't know why the government's keeping this big secret from them.- Steven Myers

"We're always ready to roll in April to meet with our principals and start our preparations for staffing for September, and it usually takes us April until the end of August until we can staff our schools," said school board superintendent Cynthia Fleet.

"So today is June 12 and we still do not know our budget or our allocation for our human resources."

The board also doesn't know how much it can spend on school summer maintenance.

Opposition dragging out budget response

Education Minister Hal Perry says he won't discuss details of the budget until it's been tabled.

"We're just waiting for the budget to be tabled. You know, we can have that discussion as soon as that happens. And the sooner it happens the better it's going to be for all of us."

For the past week, the Opposition has been delaying the budget by dragging out its response to the speech from the throne.

But Opposition leader Steven Myers says it's not the Opposition's fault if school boards don't know how much money they're getting this year.

"I don't know why the government's keeping this big secret from them," said Myers.

"They seem to know without a budget being approved how they can spend money in there. I'm not sure why they would keep it from the school board. I'm not sure why they're keeping it from school principals."

The school board says it can't start the hiring process until it knows how many teachers it can have.

Fleet says all the board has been told so far is to find ways to save money.