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By Curtis Galbraith

More teachers among highlights in final 2017-18 GPDCS budget

Dec 20, 2017 | 2:12 PM

Grande Prairie & District Catholic Schools says it was able to put more services in place for classrooms in its final 2017-18 budget.

Superintendent Karl Germann says among the additions are more teachers and support staff.

“We’re now a system that employs over 700 people. Of that, almost 300 of those people are teachers and the rest of the individuals are contractors and support staff. The Board allocated more money for more teachers, we increased the number of support staff by 16 percent, we added $100,000 for more classroom literacy resources. (We) spent more money on equipment, especially for John Paul II (the new high school) as we open it up and we gave every school some more money to spend on their kids. So, schools got more money in their mini-budgets. In addition, the Board saw that mental health was an important part for students, so they increased that budget by 25 percent.”

More than a dozen Full-Time Equivalence teaching positions have been added. School-based fees have been eliminated. A new Speech Pathologist has been hired.

Germann adds total spending in the current budget is around $66-million. 

“So that puts our District in the range of operational expenditures similar to the County of Grande Prairie. We’re not a small entity anymore is what we’re seeing, we’re actually a large entity within the region and employ quite a few people. We try to spend that money in the best way possible to make sure that our staff and our students have classroom resources, supports, professional development and everything (like) the heating and lighting and materials that the schools need to function.”

Germann says some of the money came from reserve funds, the rest from provincial funding.

by Curtis Galbraith