Portage College in St. Paul will cut four full-time positions for the 2011-2012 school year after the board of governors cut around $300,000 from the campus to balance the budget.
The college’s board of governors cut the total budget by $1.68 million after the provincial budget provided no increase to college funding, said Portage College President Trent Keough at a press conference on Thursday.
In the Cold Lake, Lac La Biche, and St. Paul campuses, the equivalent of almost 20 full-time positions will be severed, eliminated, or reduced to casual wage positions.
The four positions in St. Paul will come from reductions in upgrades and services, said Keough. The budget will not necessarily reduce staff numbers, but will reduce service related activity like the mentoring program, which will be eliminated, he said.
One full-time faculty position will be eliminated in St. Paul due to projected reduction in enrollment in the Early Learning and Childhood and Educational Assistant programs, he said.
The college’s operational budget is around $32 million. In previous years, the college received 4.5 to six per cent increases in provincial funding. Last year, the college received no increase due to the provincial deficit and challenges to revenues that the Alberta government faced, said Keough.
The college expected not to receive an increase this year again, he said, but the shortfall was unknown until the province gave the college its budget.
The province committed $1.2 million to the college to improve infrastructure and to address the college’s $7.5 million infrastructure deficit, Keough said.
“While we’ve not seen an increase to our operational budget, the government of Alberta has seen fit to give the college approximately $1.2 million to address some of the operational and infrastructure challenges that we have,” he said.
As the government’s situation improves, so too does the situation for education, he said.
“We are hopeful as all Albertans that the price of oil and gas increases so the Canadian dollar remains strong and gives the government of Alberta some significant return so its investments can improve,” he said.
Lac La Biche will be the hardest hit with a $1.2 million reduction because it is the corporate headquarters of the college, said Keough,
“Lac La Biche is the largest of the campus locations and so consequently … it’s logical that it would feel the hardest hit in terms of the reductions.”
The campus will eliminate 8.5 existing positions. Cold Lake campus will reduce less than one full-time staff position.
