Kamloops, B.C., school district could cut nearly 80 positions

The Kamloops, B.C., school district may cut nearly 80 staff positions as it faces a $5.79-million budget shortfall for the 2025-26 school year, according to preliminary figures.

School District 73 covers the city of Kamloops and nearby rural municipalities in the Thompson area of the south-central Interior, and has an enrolment of around 16,600 students, according to its website.

The school district's preliminary budget, presented last week, shows that 79 full-time-equivalent positions could be eliminated, with the district's superintendent attributing the budget shortfall to flattening enrolment and inflationary pressures.

While the budget won't be finalized until a board meeting on April 28, superintendent Rhonda Nixon said the cuts will primarily affect staff that don't directly interact with students.

"The reductions are reductions we don't want to make, but at least we're ... trying to save as many positions as we can," she told Shelley Joyce, host of CBC's Daybeak Kamloops.

Nixon said teachers and education assistants wouldn't be affected by the staff reductions, but counsellors and learning assistance resource teachers would be.

There would also be custodial support staff who would be affected, and vacancies for a district principal and some administrative positions would not be filled.

"We retained as much as we could in literacy and numeracy to ensure supports continue," Nixon said. "And then as far as exempt staff, there were positions already reduced this year, and those will continue."

Nixon said the budget shortfall was entirely separate from a $2.2-million deficit the board announced last year that was due to an accounting error.

She said that inflationary pressures, and the rising cost of benefits and salaries, were to blame for the shortfall this year.

"What is making it difficult is that our per-student funding does not include those costs," she said. "So we have cost increases that go beyond the funding we received."

In addition, Nixon said the district had been relying on steady enrolment increases, of about 250 students a year, for the last five years. But now, enrolment figures are flat or decreasing.

The superintendent chalked that up to a number of factors — including declining birth rates, interprovincial migration, and immigration cutbacks that mean post-secondary students who are parents can't stay.

Meanwhile, the president of the Kamloops district parent advisory council blames stagnant funding from the province for the shortfall.