Schools may go on hiring spree

After years of punishing cutbacks, English-language schools will be able to go on a mini hiring spree as the Quebec government boosts spending on education.

Jennifer Maccarone, president of the Quebec English School Boards Association, estimated that the 4.2-per-cent increase in overall spending “could translate into 150 new direct service positions in the English sector.”

“We recognize the government continues to invest in education,” she said in a statement. “However, the association is concerned about how the ministry intends to distribute and control the funding.”

The association said it also expects to continue working with the government “on the serious problems associated with the inequitable school-tax rates,” Maccarone added.

The QESBA represents about 100,000 students in the province’s nine English-language school boards, plus the Littoral School Board along the Gulf of St-Lawrence. Angela Mancini, chairperson of the English Montreal School Board, was unavailable for comment.

Meanwhile, the president of the Commission scolaire de Montréal reacted with lukewarm enthusiasm for the budget. Catherine Harel Bourdon argued that the funding hike in education will not be enough to take into account the projected increase in enrolment of 1,000 students per year in the city’s French-language schools.

“It would take several more years of (significant) spending increases to make up for all the cuts in the past,” Bourdon said in an interview.

She estimated that the CSDM will be able to hire about 150 teachers and other professionals this year, but that the school board needs to create at least 250 positions.

While the Association québécoise des cadres scolaires (representing school administrators) praised the government for reinvesting in education, union leaders accused Finance Minister Carlos Leitão of an accounting sleight of hand in making the spending hike look much bigger than a hard look at the numbers would suggest.

“The increase announced in the budget is grossly inflated,” charged Louise Chabot, president of the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ), noting that the government is relying on $134 million that was budgeted but not actually spent on education last year.

The spending increase, she added, will do “nothing to address the $850 million in cutbacks in recent years.”

And the Fédération des commission scolaires du Québec expressed concern that no funding has been identified in the budget for school-board elections, as is the case for municipal elections in 2017 and the provincial election next year.

In total, the budget for education will rise to $17.8 billion in 2017-2018, from $17.2 billion the year before.

The government is also projecting that spending on education will increase by 3.8 per cent in 20182019.