All parents with students in the Rocky View School Division, regardless if they ride the bus, should mark February 13 on the calendar.

A level two consultation will take place at Cochrane High beginning at 7 pm allowing parents to voice their opinion on changes the school board will eventually need to make to offset the shortfall in the transportation budget. As the decision will be made for the division-wide, it is imperative Cochrane has good representation. 

Fiona Gilbert, Ward 6 Rocky View School Trustee and Board Vice Chair, shares the public consultation will look at a variety of options on the best way to manage the one million dollar deficit it anticipates the transportation budget will see this fall. "What they really are, are changes to service levels... most of them not all of them. So whether it's a longer bus ride for kids, or it's that we're not coming quite as close to your house as we used to. Other ones are triple busing and the Friday closure...that's not a change of service level because we are still providing it, it would be a change in parent's schedules. Some of them are kind of connected but some can stand alone as well."

One other said option is to take one million dollars out of the instructional budget and while Gilbert says a million dollars is nothing to scoff at, parents have to remember the impact of the million dollars would be shared amongst the 53 schools throughout the division. Exactly how much schools would be impacted is difficult to answer. "That could mean so many things. Easy for parents to grasp is that a million dollars equals ten teachers, a million dollars is 0.5% of the instruction budget, yes it means ten teachers but over 53 schools that is 0.2 of a teacher out of every school. I don't want to water that down because it is an impact but I think some parents think that it is one million out of my school." The instruction budget covers staff that may work more centrally helping all schools throughout the division as well as learning specialists but with so many variations it hard to say exactly what area would be most affected.

Since 2008 transportation costs have risen by 17.83 percent, while grant revenues rose by only 1.27 percent over the same time period and is further compounded by a $360,000 levy for carbon. It is not that the government is not providing any dollars to transportation but with the Transportation Fee Replacement Grant being based on 2015/16 fees and student counts, RVS feels penalized for being a rapidly growing division. 

A full of list of cost-saving options for transportation can be found HERE, and at this point, the board is nowhere near a decision. The only thing, Gilbert can attest to is some solutions were already taken off the list. "There were definitely some options we took off the list, ones that we would not consider. Things like not bussing French Immersion students because that would be against our planning principles because that would cut or negatively impact that program. As a board, we are committed to programs of choice French Immersion being one and Christian programming being the other."

Trying to do the best with what they have, Gilbert knows families in Cochrane and throughout the entire division will be impacted. Will those impacts end here? At this point, the school board does not know. "We do know that there have been amendments to the School Act that impact transportation and that the 2.4 km walk limit has been removed from the legislation so we are anticipating some changes in the transportation regulations but we have had no indication as to what those changes will be." Trying to hold off as long as they could, the RVS School Board feels they couldn't wait any longer for parent feedback.

Kicking off the process is the 4-page communication/information sheet that is found above and an online survey link found HERE which will be available until February 16. If you can't make the public meeting on February 13, you can email MLA Cameron Westhead at banff.cochrane@assembly.ab.ca or the Minister of Education David Eggen at edmonton.calder@assembly.ab.ca to voice your concerns about the shortfall in funding.

The Rocky View School Division is the lowest publicly funded public school board in Alberta due to a number of factors. With RVS continuing to see a 5% growth in population each year and having limited opportunities to cash in on extra grant opportunities the board will continue to do the best it can for the families in its care.

 The Rocky View School Board is slated to deliberate a decision on April 12.