Director of Education Jim Costello says the contract with the union states they have to send out potential layoff notices by April 30th of any year, but that doesn’t mean 111 positions will be cut.
“The government is still in a consultation phase until May 31st. They’ve asked school board to let them know what we’re planning and how we’re planning to handle the revenue reduction. We will be doing that, we have a template we’ll be using to send information in. It’s possible the government may be revisit some of these grants and hopefully some dollars may come back in terms of our revenue stream but for now, in anticipation of what we’ve been told, it’s pretty significant cuts,” explains Costello.
Costello says the average year sees about 25 teachers retire and a half dozen have come in in the last week.
“Last year we didn’t have to lay anyone off, so we didn’t have any redundant staff. In 2017, in elementary, we declared 20 teachers redundant, and in 2015 we declared 33 secondary teachers. So this is the first we’ve done it in 2 years, and it’s also quite a bit more significant in terms of number,” says Costello.