The number of Saskatchewan school divisions will drop to 34 from 81 after the government last week accepted a map proposed by the task force charged with redrawing the boundaries.
“The current system today is not workable. It’s not sustainable and it’s not equitable,” learning minister Andrew Thomson said.
He immediately accepted the map, unlike his response to the Boughen Commission that looked at funding the Kindergarten to Grade 12 system.
Boughen had recommended restructuring but his proposal to fund it by raising and expanding provincial sales tax overshadowed other parts of his report.
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Thomson said financing can now be dealt with because the new map is workable and practical. It comes into effect Jan. 1, 2006.
“I understand that this is a dramatic set of changes,” Thomson said. “I also appreciate that these changes are disruptive.”
The Education Equity Task Force was appointed last May to draw a new map containing no more than 40 school divisions of at least 5,000 students each.
Twenty-two divisions did not change, including Regina, Saskatoon, Lloyd-minster, francophone, three northern and the separate divisions. As well, divisions that had already amalgamated were left intact.
“We have tried very hard to try to find the balance,” said task force chair Fred Herron.
The task force report said the number of separate school divisions recently dropped to 14 from 21, and will drop again to eight or nine as the public divisions restructure.
All of the new divisions will have 10 subdivisions and Thomson said a priority now is to develop a new mechanism to enhance the involvement of local boards and parents.
The restructuring means all divisions will get government grants. Seventeen divisions had been zero-grant boards because they were able to raise enough money from local assessments.
However, one of the new divisions, in west-central Saskatchewan, will receive $1.9 million, while a north-central division will get $36.6 million.
Saskatchewan School Boards Association president Lance Bean said that disparity isn’t the problem. He is more concerned about how sustainable that will be.
“Two or three are going to be back in a zero-grant situation unless there’s increased (provincial) funding,” he said.
Bean took issue with Thomson’s assertion that amalgamation will result in administrative savings and that school boards have to better control their costs. He said most of the increases, such as teachers’ salaries, utility costs and transportation, are passed on from the government.
Saskatchewan Party education critic Don McMorris said he expects some areas will see major tax increases.
Thomson said mill rates should stabilize between 16 and 20, and noted that one division now has a rate of six.
McMorris said that is one small area and it will likely see its tax rate triple.
He added there should have been more concern for geography, using the southwest as an example. That new division runs about 250 kilometres long at its widest points.
“There are some concerns that the efficiencies that amalgamation has shown so far will be lost on the pure size,” McMorris said.
