The Upper Grand District School Board has passed the 2017-18 school year budget. Trustees approved an operating budget of $388,474,690.
The 2017-18 Grants for Student Needs (GSN) were announced by the Ministry of Education on April 12, as were a number of Education Program – Other (EPO) grants. Funding is included to support centrally negotiated labour extension agreements and to keep up with increased transportation and utility costs.
In order to support centrally-negotiated labour agreements, the following funding enhancements will be included in the GSN: a 1.5 per cent salary benchmark increase; funding for a one-time payment in 2017-18 for professional development; local priorities funding, including more staffing support for special education students; and class size investments for kindergarten and Grades 4 to 8.
The UGDSB enrolment projections for 2017-18 indicate growth in the elementary panel.
Enrolment projections in secondary continue to decline, however international students, who are not included in ministry funding calculations, offset this decline.
Since many grants are based on number of students, the board’s projected higher enrolment for 2017-18 has a positive impact on most grants received.
Elementary staffing increases by 37.9 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions due to increases in enrolment, reduction in class size for junior/intermediate classes and the implementation of the labour framework extension agreements, which include the addition of 7.3 special education resource teachers and 3.0 elementary itinerant ESL teachers.
The implementation of the labour extension agreements includes the addition of 13.5 FTE educational assistants.
Secondary staffing increases by 12.84 FTE, including six FTE due to the implementation of labour extension agreements and 3.66 FTE increase related to the international baccalaureate diploma program at Guelph CVI.
Additional supports: The budget also adds a speech and language pathologist, psychological consultant, 0.3 FTE communication disorder assistant, IT support and an ASD facilitator to assist students with special needs.
The extension agreement implementation includes the addition of 1.6 FTE child and youth counsellors, 1.0 IT support technician and 1.0 social worker.
There are no changes in board administration FTE.
