Chinook's Edge School Division's cut of over $107 million in recently restored education funding will be just under $1.8 million, CESD Superintendent Kurt Sacher confirmed last week.ìWe're very pleased to be receiving (the funding) as a school division,î Sacher said Friday. ìAs far as where the funds will be allocated to, the (education) board is going to be discussing that in the very near future.îThe funding, which was announced by Premier Alison Redford and Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk on Oct. 12, had been cut earlier this year under former premier Ed Stelmach's administration. Redford has directed school boards to focus the money on areas that are ìstudent-centred,î including reducing class sizes and providing additional support for English as a Second Language (ESL) programs.ìThere's no doubt that some of the decisions made earlier this year with respect to funding were unfortunate,î Redford said while making the announcement.While a decision on where to use the funds won't be coming until the end of November, possibly at the Nov. 23 Board of Education meeting, Sacher said the board will have to decide if they want to distribute some of the funds off the top, and whether they want CESD's resource allocation working group to give them advice on the impact of funding in other areas.ìI'm quite confident the board is going to want to make sure class hot spots have been addressed. They have already dipped into reserves to make sure many of those cases were looked after, regardless of this new funding,î he said. ìThe board is going to be very interested in doing what the (education) minister wanted them to do ñ which is seeing that the money supports students directly and indirectly.î
