New lunchtime supervision fee unfortunate need for school budget

Saskatoon Public Schools board chair Colleen MacPherson said lunch hour supervision is not part of the teachers’ collective agreement, so they contract separately with teachers and other school staff to provide lunchtime supervision.

That costs the division around $1.3 million each year. Currently, Saskatoon Public Schools is facing a deficit of $4.5 million.

Through the new fee — $100 each year, per child — the division hopes to recover some of that sum.

MacPherson said it works out to about $10 a month, or 50 cents a day in cost, though details are still being sorted on the decision.

Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation president Patrick Maze says the new fee isn’t surprising because school budgets have been shorted for years.

He says the compounding impact has led to school divisions having to take more drastic measures to make up their deficits.

With growing inflation and schools just emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic — with students struggling to deal with mental health and learnings gaps — he said it’s even more frustrating to not see more government support for schools.

“Unfortunately, government hasn’t recognized any of those needs,” Maze said.

“We’re seeing divisions have to make really difficult decisions (and) school board trustees are having to make really difficult decisions.”

Maze noted the most vulnerable students will be the most affected. MacPherson said the division will do what it can to support these families by offering exemptions and capping the annual supervision fee at $200 for families with more than one child.

Families will also be issued a receipt they can claim as eligible child care for the expense during tax season.

“We do know that it will be a financial burden for some families and we will attempt to accommodate that through exemptions,” MacPherson said.

“I think the fact we’ve had to resort to this is really an indication of the real challenge year after year … of finding savings to balance a budget.”

She said finding places to save has become more difficult with each passing year, especially with inflation continuing to force prices upwards.

Saskatoon Public Schools has also made “small” adjustments to its student-teacher ratio, MacPherson noted, meaning there will be reduced teaching positions available for elementary and secondary school levels in the coming school year.

MacPherson said she believes “education should be viewed as an investment in our collective future.” She also tries to make each decision in her position in the interest of the students they are educating.

However, she said the decision made to introduce this fee was “absolutely not” in the interest of students, an unfortunate consequence of needing to produce a balanced budget to continue their programming generally.

MacPherson predicted the new fee will generate about $500,000. She said the cost has been introduced for the coming school year, but couldn’t comment on whether it will be removed in the future.

Education Minister Dustin Duncan wasn’t made available to comment on the issue, but did send a statement.

“Currently, school divisions across the province are working on their budgets to have them submitted to the Ministry of Education by the June 30th deadline,” he wrote. “I appreciate all of the effort that goes into preparing school division budgets.

“This is only the first step of the process. Once budgets are submitted, they are reviewed by the Ministry of Education and myself. I look forward to working with divisions in the coming weeks to ensure the needs of their students are met. As formal proposals are still being submitted, any further comment prior to discussion with the boards would be speculative.”

Duncan has said previously when asked about shortfalls in budgets that divisions may have to dip into reserves. He said there is about $400 million in reserve funding for the 27 divisions in the province, including about $140 million of unrestricted reserves.