With Premier Doug Ford asking school boards to comb through budgets to find more savings there has been some reaction to the request.
The Near North District School Board that includes schools in Parry Sound, North Bay and Almaguin responded to an interview request with a statement from its Director of Education, Jackie Young.
“The NNDSB has begun to receive information regarding Grants for Student Needs (GSNs) funding for 2019-20 through the issuance of the first memo from Ministry and waits for further information,” her statement begins.
“Senior administration will be conducting a thorough analysis of funding for the 2019-2020 school year once it is in receipt of all information, including the 2019-20 Education Funding Technical Paper, which is critical, in order to determine the impact and to develop the annual budget for the 2019-2020 school year. Until this information is available and analysis is complete, any comment on funding, allocation or impact would be therefore speculative in nature.”
Yesterday at an event in Durham region Ford urged school board administrators to try and cut another four cents from every education dollar being spent.
“Our government was elected to fix 15 years of Liberal mismanagement, put the province on a path to balance and protect services like health care and education,” said Ford. “But the previous Liberal government was using the credit card to pay the mortgage and, with interest payments costing our province $36 million a day, we can’t do it alone. We campaigned on finding four cents for every provincial dollar spent and we are asking our partners to do the same.”