GUELPH – The Ontario government recently announced $24.66 billion for the 2019-20 school year in Grants for Students Needs (GSN) education funding.
Perth-Wellington MPP Randy Pettapiece said that amounts to $403,478,539 for the Upper Grand District School Board and $97,990,239 for the Wellington Catholic District School Board.
However, Upper Grand spokesperson Heather Loney cautioned that those amounts are just projections.
“Our board’s total funding will be based on updates to enrolment and final calculations,” she said. “What we do know is that the funding per pupil has gone down.”
Earlier this year the Upper Grand District School Board issued redundancy notices to 56 high school teachers and layoff notices to 54 elementary teachers.
Loney said this announcement won’t change the situation with the issued notices.
“Boards, including ours, have experienced additional funding reductions, which have an impact on boards’ budgets,” she said. “Our layoff notices were issued as a result of funding reductions in areas other than class size changes.
“At this point, it is too early to comment further on potential job losses.”
The Wellington Catholic School Board issued layoff notices to 22 teachers and seven support staff last month. Officials did not return an email by press time.
