KAWARTHA LAKES-The Trillium Lakelands District School Board (TLDSB)says it will have to cancel the Tutors in the Classroom program this year due to a recent round of funding cuts by the Ontario government. “We won’t be able to run that program this year.” Larry Hope, Director of Education, TLDSB told Kawartha 411. “For us it’s not a large amount of money, it’s about $20,000 that we have received. It’s typcially for a program we run in the springtime in our schools as we lead up to EQAO assessments where we hire university students or beginning teachers to spend time in the classroom.”
On Friday night the government announced it is slashing $25 million in funding for specialized programs in elementary and secondary schools across the province.
Cuts have also been made to the Innovation and Learning Fund which means the school board will not be receiving about $108,000 but Hope says they weren’t banking on those funds anyway. “That was money we had recieved over the last number of years to support a lot of the technology work that we were engaged in.” Hope explained “We didn’t really expect to get it. Because we weren’t certain about this we did not budget for it and we have not spent any money against that line.”
Hope says larger school boards will be affected the most by the cuts, specifically Youth Programs. “It’s about an $8 million dollar piece of the $25 milion that was announced in terms of reductions. TLDSB has never had that funding and we have not been a part of that project. It’s typically for school boards with students in urban centres or larger cities, so there will not been an affect for the students of TLDSB.”
Although TLDBS won’t have to reduce or lay-off any staff at this time, Hope says they are concerned about what comes next. “We are concerned overall about the flavour and tone and we anticipate that as we get into the next rounds of Grants for Students Needs or GSN’s that we are going to see some reductions, but right now its all speculation.”
