Western Standard - June 18, 2022


NDP demands Sask government increase education spending by $50 million.


Episode Stats


Length

1 minute

Words per minute

153.65594

Word count

290

Sentence count

15


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

School divisions across the province are making deep cuts as they finalize their budgets for the coming school year because of inflationary pressures and an uncertain financial future. Education critic Matt Love has demanded the Saskatchewan government provide $50 million in emergency funding to cover the current shortfalls and to fund additional inflation costs for the next school year.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 NDP official education critic and teacher Matt Love demanded the Saskatchewan government provide
00:00:04.660 $50 million in emergency funding to cover the current shortfalls and to fund additional
00:00:09.980 inflation costs for the next school year. School divisions are making deep cuts as they finalize
00:00:15.460 their 2022-2023 budgets across the province because of inflationary pressures and an uncertain
00:00:22.700 financial future. Love said that schools are facing massive increases to operating costs
00:00:28.500 given the 31-year high inflation. Teachers and administrators are unequivocal. They desperately
00:00:35.800 need funding that actually keeps pace with the soaring cost of gas, heating, and other expenses.
00:00:42.240 If the government doesn't step up, our kids will pay the price. Now Saskatchewan's Minister of Education
00:00:48.060 Dustin Duncan said Tuesday he would monitor inflation's impacts on school boards and families
00:00:53.220 before making a decision on whether to provide additional support. Now Love said this response
00:00:59.060 from the government is not enough. That's not good enough. The numbers are coming in and we know that
00:01:03.740 without an urgent funding package there will be huge cuts to jobs and support services. With budgets
00:01:10.180 being finalized by the end of June, the time to act is now. School divisions may not run deficits and that
00:01:18.280 forces the school divisions to cut teaching and other positions as well as add in lunchtime
00:01:24.680 supervision fees. There are close to 100 job cuts announced including 41 in the Saskatoon public and
00:01:30.200 Saskatoon Catholic schools alone. Love said despite the minister's claim that the things that are
00:01:36.360 affected by inflation are relatively minor, the province's fourth largest divisions paid a whopping
00:01:42.200 30 million dollars for transportation last year. An expense that's only set to grow as the Saskatchewan
00:01:49.160 Party government refuses to provide any relief at the pump.