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Living Sky reducing its home-schooling funding

Sep 15, 2017 | 3:11 PM

Living Sky School Division has reduced funding for its home-based education program this year, to meet its ongoing budgetary demands as a result of the province’s overall funding cutbacks.

Superintendent of Learning Jim Shevchuk said the division anticipates it will save about $15,000 by slightly reducing funding provided to parents to use for home-schooling their children.

“We like to try to support the students as best we can,” Shevchuk said. “But [in] the allotment of dollars that we would provide for their program there are fewer dollars this year.” 

He said these changes are related only to Living Sky‘s specific home-schooling program, and are not province-wide.

Shevchuk said the division’s funding from the province in general has been “dwindling and dwindling,” so it has had to look at all its programs to find savings.   

In total, the division’s entire budget was reduced over the past six years by almost $8 million, so it has had to make some changes to make up for that loss.

For the new school year, for Living Sky’s home-based education program, each student will now be eligible to receive a maximum of $500 annually, a decrease from a maximum of $650 annually from the prior school year. 

Parents would usually use the funds to purchase resources and materials for these students’ specific educational plans. 

The division reported 101 students are registered for home-based education this year, based on the Sept. 8 enrollment numbers, released at Wednesday’s board meeting. Last year the division had 113 students being home-schooled.

Shevchuk said this school-year’s numbers are ultimately expected to be about on par with last year.

While students from ages six to 17 are registered to be home-schooled at both the elementary and high-school levels, there are more students in the elementary-level program.

Students in the home-schooling program are required to set up their own curriculum. The school division acts as the registering authority for home-based education. 

“We have to make sure they have an education plan in place, and that they are doing home-school for all the right reasons,” Shevchuk said. “After we register them, we make sure there is a notification about how they will assess what they have taught for the year. They send that in to us and we go through that with them.” 

There are a variety of reasons families may choose to home-school their children.

“Some folks do it for religious reasons, some… for social-emotional reasons, and some people feel the quality of education they can provide is better at home than we would have offered in the public system,” said Shevchuk. “I think we have a great public system, but in Saskatchewan it’s peoples’ right and privilege if they want to home-school.”   

 

angela.brown@jpbg.ca

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