Education minister says she may back off district budget squeeze
Claire Johnson says additional money, talks with education councils could reverse some controversial job cuts
New Brunswick's education minister is signalling that the Liberal government is backing away from a controversial approach to district education council budgets that has led to the elimination of dozens of support positions.
Claire Johnson says this could include additional funding, or moving money around so they can reverse some of those cuts.
"We're looking at, yes, potentially redirecting some funds from elsewhere, maybe setting out our targets on the longer term instead of short term," she told CBC News in an interview.
"It's all on the table, and we're in discussions right now. We're working with the districts."
She said any additional funding won't reach the level the districts asked for.
The Holt Liberals' first budget boosted education spending by $200 million for 2025-26, but directives on how to spend large chunks of the money left the districts with less than they said they needed.
Anglophone West eliminated more than 30 school library positions among a total of 69 jobs, while Francophone South said last week it would cut 25 support positions for students with behavioural problems.
The government said it wanted more resources directed to classroom teaching to improve literacy and numeracy scores.
But the district cuts put the Liberals on the defensive, facing accusations that classroom teachers would find themselves spread ever thinner, trying to pick up the slack.
"A teachers' time needs to be respected," New Brunswick Teachers' Association Peter Legacy told Information Morning Fredericton on Thursday. "Their plates are full right now, and adding anything else to that plate is simply unacceptable.
"We certainly can't be looking to download more work onto the classroom teacher."
Johnson said the government was "sort of surprised" at some of the cuts because the districts were expected to make up the reduced funding from administrative positions "and that there'd be zero impact on the schools, zero impact on the classrooms."
She said it was a good exercise for the Liberals to push the districts to rethink how they do things, but "the part that was probably a little bit too fast or too far is that it was done very quickly, without necessarily having specific activities in mind."
Asked who had moved too quickly, Johnson responded: "Everybody. The government. We did. We pushed. We're impatient. … We all have a sense of urgency where we want to see change right away."
Department decision led to district cuts
Besides the library positions, Anglophone West is also cutting 36 district leads — staff who offer support in areas such as curriculum — and 15 people who work with child and youth teams.
Some of the laid-off employees are able to apply for classroom teaching positions, but Legacy argued Thursday that it wasn't clear how that would work and who would fill the gap left behind.
"The leads certainly do important work in our districts, and I think how that support is going to roll out in the fall is yet to be determined, is yet to be seen," he said.
"Moving people into classrooms without measuring unintended consequences can cause some concern. Change that's not measured can create a little bit of confusion out there."
But he said he had confidence that Johnson has "boots on the ground" and wants to know what is happening in classrooms.
Johnson blamed the budget squeeze on an unexpected slowing of revenue growth that has left the Holt Liberals having less money to maintain levels of spending established by the previous Progressive Conservative government.
"We — as a government now, as candidates, people who ran in an election — had a different idea of what the economic situation was going to look like when we made our election promises," she said.
But that is flatly contradicted by warnings from PC candidates during last fall's campaign that the province's population-growth-fuelled revenue windfall was levelling off to the point that Liberal commitments were unaffordable.
Johnson said she's hopeful that her department's discussions with districts can identify administrative savings that won't affect classrooms, including reduced spending on travel to teacher conferences.
"Where's the sweet spot, where someone can still be blossoming as a professional but not costing too much to the system?" she said.
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With files from Information Morning Fredericton