Rural communities say they were not consulted in SD57’s budget decisions

“There is widespread discontent up here with the education we are getting from School District 57.”

Jesse Wright, a District of Mackenzie Councillor, did not mince words when talking about SD57’s 2025 budget, which was passed by the district’s board of trustees yesterday afternoon.

This follows a strongly worded letter to School District 57 from Mackenzie Mayor Joan Atkinson, which reads: “The consequences of these budget cuts will result in unacceptable additional hardships for our rural schools, that already lack the same resources that schools in Prince George receive.”

“We view the students in Valemount, Mackenzie and McBride as being doubly hit with the budget cut,” Wright, who used to work as a teacher in Mackenzie, explained. “There is a $30 cut per student across the board, but then there are additional cuts that are specifically for rural schools.”

SD57 published a list of 19 cuts made to balance their budget which was running at a $2 million structural deficit.

You can see all those cuts here:

“The administration cuts, District Learning Commons, clerical cuts, the transportation cuts; we think those are going to disproportionately and doubly hit rural students that Prince George students won’t get hit by,” Wright said.

“One example that is clear cut to me is the cuts to administration. In plain language, they are going to cut principal positions.”

Both Mackenzie schools currently have a principal and vice principal, but in the past they had shared a vice principal.

“That just does not work,” Wright said. “Two, three years ago the state of our schools got to such a negative place that they had to do an internal cultural audit up here.”

“Part of the outcome was that the shared VP position does not work. We are already struggling with two and they want to cut more, it is not sustainable…

It has negative impacts on the mental health of teachers because it puts more on their plates. It means our principals are overworked and don’t have the support they need, and that directly impacts students.”

The budget breakdown was only half of the frustration Mayor Atkinson voiced in her letter, however.

She also wrote about her concerns with the lack of communication between the district and the rural communities which it governs, saying “We have had to learn about these updates through social media and news reports, rather than School District 57 representatives coming and talking to our communities.”

Atkinson also echoed a frustration that some parents and community members in Prince George have also had, that the district has chosen to stop livestreaming their board meetings over Zoom or YouTube. Instead they upload the footage of the meeting a day or more later.

“We have had zero communication,” Wright said. “Everything we have learned about these cuts has been through news outlets or the District Parent Advisory Council Facebook page.”

This is not exclusive to Mackenzie, Wright said conversations with the McBride and Valemount governments revealed they have also not had any communication from SD57 about the cuts impacting them.

“We aren’t in the jurisdiction of education, so we don’t expect they have to reach out to us at the municipality, but we didn’t see any communication to anybody in our communities,” he clarified.

“I am not aware of any communication that SD57’s central office did in Mackenzie.”

Elections BC requires two of SD57’s trustees to be from the remote communities it serves – one from Mackenzie and one from the Robson Valley.

Those seats are currently held by Rachael Weber and Bob Thompson.

Wright said he is not sure if the responsibility of communication lies with those trustees or with the board chair (Craig Brennan, formerly Weber) and Superintendent (Jameel Aziz), because the apparent communication blackout has blanketed his two years of serving on council.

“This letter is strongly worded because as much as the budget is the inciting incident, this has been a chronic problem as long as I have been elected,” he said. “We have not had any council-to-trustee meetings at all, despite requests from our end to have them. I don’t know whose job [communication] is because nobody has taken the lead to reach out to us, despite us reaching our hand out and asking.”

“There is widespread discontent up here with the education we are getting from School District 57, this budget is what made us finally write a letter but we could have written letters in the past. Talk to a parent, talk to a teacher, they are not happy,” he said.

Despite this, Wright was not unsympathetic to the fact that the board was put in a difficult position in needing to make these cuts.

He said frustration also needs to be directed at the Ministry of Education who “let SD57 flail in the wind to deal with this shortfall.”

“[The Ministry’s] feet need to be held to the fire, they let this happen. SD57 was put in this spot where they had to make cuts that I think is totally the wrong thing for the education of our students,” Wright said. “I don’t think SD57 should have been alone in this, the Ministry should have played much more of a role… I don’t think either are without blame here.”