School District No. 8 reduces senior staff, eliminates Assistant Secretary Treasurer position
By Bruce Fuhr
School District No. 8 administration has decided to reduce the number of staff at the board office on Johnstone Road by eliminating the Assistant Secretary Treasurer position, effective Wednesday.
“This particular (decision) aligns with our intent that all of our resources as much as possible go directly to the classroom, while we still recognize we have to maintain a certain level of staffing to ensure our business operations are continuing as well,” Kootenay Lake School District No. 8 Superintendent Jeff Jones told The Nelson Daily Wednesday.
Jones said the decision is a result of an on-going effort to find strategic efficiencies in the organization and to address the known reductions in operating grants that are anticipated between 2012 and 2015.
School District No. 8 administration anticipates that the operating grant reductions will be approximately $750,000 per year.
Since 2007, when the Assistant Secretary Treasurer was hired, the District has seen a decline of about 300 students.
Jones told The Nelson Daily there were 5300 students enrolled in the 2006-07 school year and the district estimates that number will decline to 4700 in 2014-15.
“Lets face it (we’re running a) $50 Million organization so we need to make sure we have the right people in place doing the right work to ensure we’re using the money well to support student learning,” Jones explained.
The decision to eliminate this administration position reduces the number of senior staff at the board office to six.
Jones said there is no recall for the Assistant Secretary Treasurer position, although there is a severance package.
The final student registration numbers will be available September 30 for all districts in the province.
School Districts receive funding from the province on a per student allotment.
Jones said the numbers appear to be up from what the board originally projected. That increase has been seen in the Creston area where children from the Bountiful area are now attending public school.
Bountiful’s community is made up of members of a polygamist Mormon fundamentalist group.
“What were finding is the challenges the Bountiful community is facing we’re seeing number we hadn’t projected coming into the school district at this point,” Jones said.
Jones, who applauds the work the Assistant Secretary Treasurer gave for the past five years, doesn’t expect any more layoffs in the near future.
He added the teacher layoffs announced in the spring have been reduced to a few after attrition took care of most of the reduction.
“The majority of the people laid off were recalled,” he said. “We are down to one or two people on our list and we still have positions to fill.”
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