Quebec has sent a letter to all of the province’s school service centers (CSS) to order them not to adopt a budget in red ink this year. An approach of the government deemed “insulting” by actors in the education environment, who apprehend the effects of the budgetary compressions imposed by the State on the quality of the services offered to students.
For a few days, a series of parents involved in the school of their children have planned on an open letter, transmitted to Duty Wednesday, whose objective was to encourage the administrators of the CSS of the province to have the “courage” to “maintain services to students” despite the budgetary restrictions of $ 570 million imposed by the state on the school network.
“What is needed is not a blind budgetary rigor, but a vision,” adds the letter, many of the signatories of which sit on CSS boards of directors. The document thus recommends that the administrators of these organizations adopt this year a deficit budget, accompanied by a recovery plan, so as not to have to “sacrifice” the students by reducing the quality of the services offered to them.
“Each cut weakens a network more a network whose needs are constantly increasing, particularly in students from disadvantaged backgrounds or living in vulnerability,” added the document.
“If we budget at the bottom of what we need, there are children who will have no services,” insists in an interview with Duty The spokesperson for the grouping of autonomous parents from Quebec, Sylvain Martel, who is among the signatories of this open letter.
Quebec says no to deficits
However, on Monday, the undermin in education, Carole Arav, sent a warning to all the presidents of the boards of directors of the CSS, as well as those at the head of the councils of the commissioners, in the English-speaking network.
This year, they will not be able to “present a deficit budget” without having obtained a “ministerial authorization”, indicates the letter, of which The duty obtained a copy.
“Despite the challenge of the decisions that will have to be made, we are convinced that the teams of the general management and the management teams, already entirely invested, will find the best possible solutions and preserve the services rendered to the students as much as possible,” adds the letter of Mme ARAV, whose content was first reported by The Montreal Journal.
This same document reiterates the “importance” that each school organization ensures that the balanced budget is respected throughout the network this year. “We are counting on you to play the role of guardians of the good management of public funds that your function entrusted to you,” adds the letter.
Deficits anyway in some CSS
This was coldly welcomed into the network.
“It’s perceived as a threat,” says Sylvain Martel. The president of a CSS in the Greater Region of Montreal, who has claimed anonymity since he has no authorization to contact the media, believes that this letter is “insulting and infantilizing” towards administrators of the school network.
It is “impossible”, according to him, that the budgetary restrictions imposed by Quebec “do not have an impact on the students”. In this context, to sign a deficit budget, “it’s the thing to do,” he argues.
Some CSS have also confessed in the last days their intention to sign a budget in red ink this year. This was notably the case of the director general of the CSS des Rives-du-Saguenay, Chantale Cyr, who indicated in an interview at various media that she intends to accuse a deficit this year in order to avoid having to reduce services to students offered in schools under her governing.
