The bomb dropped

I was driving to Port Elgin to train to host a radio show next week (more on that later) when I caught the 9 am news.

I'm going to paste the news directly here as posted on Bayshore Broadcasting's website

Job losses at Bluewater Board
Written by Jody Johnson

The Bluewater District School Board has approved its 2007-08 budget.
In order to find savings, the school board has cut a number of staffing positions. Staff will be reduced by 4 in administration, 10 to 12 in plant operations, secondary school staffing will be reduced by 14.7 staff and French Immersion staffing will be reduced by 2.3. Special education has been hit really hard with the cuts in elementary resource teacher staffing by 4.3 as well as 5 elementary teachers for the learning disabled. The SALEP centre in Owen Sound will also close.

Trustee Carol Poucher-Urbshott says if the goal of the school board is to put students first, then this budget is not doing that. She questions how they will keep literacy and numeracy high if programs are cut.

Board Chair Jennifer Yenssen says the board is struggling to maintain service levels and programs at the same level as last year. She says they plan to meet with the Ministry of Education to discuss funding. Yenssen says the cut back in funding for special education and declining enrolment grants have pushed the board to cut back on programs.

Superintendent of Business Dean Currie says the board is working on paying down its accumulated deficit of 3.2 million dollars. He says provisions have been made to recover 835 thousand dollars for 2006-07 and 950 thousand dollars in 2007-08. Currie says this will leave 1.4 million dollars to be recovered in future years. The total budget for 2007-08 is 182 million dollars.

The United Way Centre is home to the SALEP center in Owen Sound. On any given day I can have upwards of 12 kids hanging out at the building, learning, becoming adults, growing, being kids. The loss of the program is huge and I'm truly stunned.

What really stuns me is to hear it on the radio. If the decision was made Tuesday night there is noway there was time to phone the parents etc and let them know, no time to let the staff know in a respectful manner. Everyone would have learned as I did, from the radio.

I'm so upset I really can't make full sentences of how I feel right now. These kids have no one to speak for them, they have been totally marginalized by a system that focuses on numbers.

The only positive thing that has come out of today was the media's reaction. We've always included the media in all we do so they know about the centre. They saw what we were doing and they knew how important the school is to the kids. So Bayshore Broadcasting was here and A Channel showed up to follow up on the loss of the school, reporters just as stunned as I was.

And what were the kids doing? Outside helping make the community garden!! What a great back drop to the story. Here were these kids who can't catch a break in life, out helping in the community.

What a sad commentary on our society.