The Chair of Quesnel’s Board of Education is pleased that the Provincial Government is taking the time to get it right when it comes to a new funding formula in B.C.
Gloria Jackson says that’s the biggest takeaway for her following the release of the “Education Funding Model” report on Wednesday…
“I think most importantly for us as a Board there will be no immediate implementation and that we won’t see any changes to the funding formula for the 2019-2020 school year, and most importantly they’re going to use the remainder of this school year to engage stakeholders, and that’s exactly what Boards of Education and stakeholders around the province were asking for was more time.”
Jackson says there are 22 recommendations in the report.
She says she hasn’t had a chance to go through all of them yet, but she says the Board will…
“We will go through the report extensively and we of course as a small district have concerns. We just really hope that whatever the funding formula ends up being is that there won’t be winners and losers. But it’s looking like initially, two things that are really important to the government through this report, is equity for students. We have quite a few students, a high population in our district are vulnerable students. We also want to see a change to the special needs funding, so it looks like some of those things are going to be addressed.”
Jackson says in the end she hopes that the final recommendations address the differences in rural and urban School Districts.