The chair of the Avon Maitland District School Board says this school year has been very challenging.
Colleen Schenk said she experienced things this year that she's never seen before, especially with regard to some of the directives that have filtered down from the Ministry of Education.
"The proposed changes to class sizes, for example, in this, a negotiating year, will particularly be interesting this fall. Also with the reductions, we've had to make with the budget. I've never seen that before," she said.
Schenk said there's also a great deal of uncertainty going into next year.
"We don't have a lot of answers to our questions either, especially starting with the staffing back in March. We usually had those questions answered before we were able to staff and we just don't. Another loss in our area is coaches," said Schenk. "We had a lot of great coaches for our students that go out and help in our schools and we've had to cancel all of those and put those teachers back into the classrooms."
The board chair points out that Avon Maitland has always been a very lean board, so asking them to trim a little over seven million dollars from the budget is asking a lot.
