The Ministry of Education has sent the South East Cornerstone Public School Division back to the drawing board to find that 3.5 per cent reduction in staffing costs the Ministry is demanding.

This comes after the public school division embraced technology and engaged in consultations with their staff and the Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division to find some cost savings related to staffing.

A longer Christmas break - from Friday, Dec. 22 to Monday, Jan. 8 - is an extra bonus. (CLICK HERE to view the 2017-18 school calendar.)

The calendar adjustments and move to technology-based PD days is set to save the school division $1,269,255. Assuming staffing costs change little from the 2016-17 SECPSD's budget, that could amount to 1.5 per cent savings from the projected $77.2 million staffing budget. That would not satisfy the full 3.5 per cent requirement but would take care of a good portion of it.

"We did get direction earlier that that would not be allowed but we're hoping now that they maybe softened a little on that," said Carol Flynn, vice chair of the SECPSD board, of the province refusing to count those savings towards the 3.5 per cent salary and benefit budget reduction demanded by the Ministry of Education following the budget announced in march.

secpsd calendar efficiences
Kelly Hilkewich, deputy director of education for SECPSD, presents the breakdown of cost savings to the board found by reorganizing the calendar.

"It's like speaking out of both sides of their mouth. They want the efficiences. They want us to do it. We've been working really, really hard on doing it but 'we won't allow that one to be it' which is really, really frustrating for us," she said.

Kelly Hilkewich, deputy director of education for South East Cornerstone Public School Division, said the longer Christmas break was also a big benefit. They considered many different calendar options but teachers and staff requested this one.

"The other calendar option would have been January 3. What we did was strategically add those two other days in there so we can include the weekend," said Hilkewich. Those two days he was referring to are Days in Lieu built into every school calendar.

The biggest cost savings in the calendar are in changes to the timing of unassigned time for staff to prepare for classes and the timing and instructional format of professional development (PD) days for teachers and educational staff. More PD days will be full days, instead of half days, and will include webinar instruction. The full PD days were also requested by teachers within the school division.

"Knowing that if we did some changes to our calendar we could become very efficeint and in a time of fiscal restraint that we could also save a large sum of money," said Hilkewich as to why the board persued these options.