Shane Woodford | Email news tips to shane.woodford@corusent.com
1/17/2013
Another Lower Mainland school district is dealing with a large surprise defecit.
"We are looking at a deficit of around about $7.5 million."
Coquitlam School Board trustee Brian Robinson says they will have to ask the province for help.
"This one has implications where I think we are going to have ask Victoria to allow us to run a deficit going into the new year and hopefully they will okay that but if not we are looking at some serious cut backs."
Robinson says downloaded cost pressures like paying for salary increases for support staff and other cost pressures played a role
"The Ministry of Education has negotiated salary increases for the teachers and they didn't fully fund it so we still have to pay for the pension increases and that sort of thing."
Robinson says they also missed the mark when putting the budget together.
"We programmed our budget expecting an increase in our school population and that didn't materialize so we can't put all the blame on Victoria."
The New Westminster board of education discovered last year it had a deficit of $2.8 million in 2011. Staff are looking at another deficit of $2.2 million in 2012.
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