By ROY WOOD
Osoyoos residents’ hopes for a reprieve from school closings were dealt a blow Tuesday with the province’s announcement of a miniscule increase in education funding.  Okanagan-Similkameen School Board chair Marieze Tarr said in an email late Tuesday that the increase of eight dollars per student for the year is disappointing. “This is causing a lot of concern with districts and you can expect our district to add our voice of concern and frustration to many other Boards of Education across the province,” she said.

The per-student funding will go from $7,158 to $7,166 for the fiscal year starting July 1. That would mean an increase of just over $18,000 for the district if the number of students remains the same. But enrollment is projected to decline from 2,158 to 2,144 this year. Tarr added: “Districts will be expected to fund the teacher and CUPE salary increases from this funding as there won’t be additional funds to cover the increase.” The announcement from the education ministry also failed to include any changes in other funding or funding protection, she said. “Once we receive our revenue tables, we will have a clearer picture of what we are looking at,” she said, “but we did not hear anything that would translate into greater revenue for next year.”

In an interview last month, Tarr discussed the board’s impending decision on the closure of one of the two schools in Osoyoos. “If on March 15 we all of a sudden get a lot more money than we bargained for, we could decide to postpone the decision for a year,” she said. No such new money was included in Tuesday’s announcement. The board will make a decision April 6 on options proposed by staff to address declining enrollments and a growing budget deficit. Each would save about $400,000 per year:

· Close Osoyoos Secondary School (OSS) and bus students to Southern Okanagan Secondary School in Oliver; or
· Close Osoyoos Elementary and change OSS to a kindergarten-to-grade-9 school and bus the grade 10-12s to Oliver.
The board could decide to adopt one of the two recommendations. It could also choose to do neither or it could postpone a decision until next year.
The April 6 meeting follows two raucous public consultation meetings in Osoyoos at which hundreds of angry and frustrated residents demanded the board step away from the idea of closing a school.