The Richmond Board of Education voted 6-1 to pass its 2021/22 budget, albeit with a dip into reserves and some cuts to staff.
While the board voted to draw a substantial amount from its reserve fund to cover revenue decreases – because of less rental revenue and investment income – Trustee Richard Lee said he’d prefer taking another 0.8 per cent of reserves to supplement the budget.
He cited this as his reason for voting against the entire budget.
The school district’s budget for 2021/22 is almost $280 million.
Because of a $7.2 million projected shortfall, staff will be reduced by almost 35 full-time positions to save about $3.1 million.
This includes nine CUPE support workers, 17 teachers, two elementary vice-principals and a district administrator as well as the director of facilities operations.
The majority of the cut positions, however, won’t result in any layoffs, stated a report prepared for the board of education.
Some positions being cut are currently vacant or won’t be filled after retirements; some staff whose positions are being eliminated will be reallocated to other positions.
Secretary-treasurer Roy Uyeno said the budget adjustments reflect a “balanced approach that attempts to minimize the impact to our students.”
“However, budget cuts are never easy, particularly when they affect staffing, but are necessary given the reality of having very low flexibility when our budget consists of 90 per cent of staffing costs,” Uyeno said.
He added the cuts are to all employee groups in a “balanced and proportionate manner.”
Furthermore, the school district will draw $3.6 million from its reserves, bringing the accumulated surplus down to $6.2 million, and reduce some one-time operations.
The school district, however, will spend $675,000 for daytime custodians from September to February to continue pandemic-related cleaning.
Trustee Heather Larson said, as a first-term trustee, she is now seeing the budget process differently after having worked “on the other side” for 19 years as an educational assistant and homestay coordinator for the school district.
“It’s difficult being on the other side seeing the whole district,” Larson said.
She said the information staff brought forward and the answers to trustee questions gave her confidence in the process.
“I have complete faith, as difficult as this is, in what (school district staff) have put forward for us to vote on is the best we can do for our district as a whole right now,” Larson said.
Policy guides reserve fund
The school district’s reserve policy states it should retain between two and four per cent of its overall annual budget in reserves.
Cutting another 0.8 per cent, as suggested by Lee, would have brought the reserves down to two per cent.
However, board chair Sandra Nixon told the Richmond News, because a shortfall is expected the following year as well, dipping further into the reserves this year could cause it to be too low – below what’s recommended by their own policy.
