The English Montreal School Board (EMSB) has postponed a vote on a staffing proposal that could reduce positions linked to special education services, amid conflicting accounts over the scale of the reductions and growing concern from union and advisory representatives about the impact on students with higher needs.
Commissioners voted Tuesday night to table the resolution for one week. The board says it will seek a legal opinion as part of its ongoing court challenge against the Quebec government over education funding rules and restrictions on how it can use accumulated surplus funds.
The delay leaves the proposed staffing changes unresolved as the EMSB continues to manage what it describes as ongoing and worsening financial pressure.
EMSB spokesperson Mike Cohen said commissioners wanted more certainty before moving ahead with any vote on staffing changes.
“The councillors decided to do their due diligence. They’re going to get a legal opinion,” Cohen said. “We’ve been in court with the government since last fall disputing the cuts that they made and the fact that we’re not allowed to use our accumulated surplus.”
He said the legal dispute is directly tied to the board’s financial planning and ability to manage deficits.
Cohen said the board reduced a projected deficit of nearly $8 million to just under $3 million this year through internal adjustments, but expects greater financial pressure in the next cycle.
“This is just the beginning, unfortunately,” he said. “We have engaged a firm to look at everything in terms of how the system works, to recommend redressment plans so that we can afford to pay back whatever deficit we’re going to be incurring.”
He also said the province has not yet formally approved the board’s budget.
“They haven’t even formally accepted our budget yet because you have to get permission to have a deficit budget,” Cohen said.
A key point of disagreement is the number of positions affected by the proposal.
Cohen said the staffing changes have been mischaracterized publicly.
“There are 17 posts that are not included in the staffing plan. That’s what it means,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anyone’s getting abolished or losing their jobs. It means that in August when we come back and we start staffing for the year, right now there’s 17 less positions, but the 17 individuals who are affected by that could in fact all be employed by the board based on how many teachers are on mat leave, sick leave, retire at the end of the summer. So it’s not the dramatic numbers that have been shared in the media,” he said.
He adds that special education positions are being discussed because they are among the few areas where the board has non-permanent employees and flexibility to make staffing adjustments.
“The reason why you see staff related to special needs being discussed, it’s because that envelope is one of the only ones where we have a group of staff who are not tenured, who are seasonal workers, and so they’re not, they haven’t got permanency. And you have to maneuver the best way you can. When you’re faced with a deficit of millions of dollars, it’s unfortunate, but you have to look at personnel adjustments and you’ve got very limited wiggle room.”
Union representatives strongly dispute that interpretation, saying the broader proposal would result in far deeper reductions once all staffing adjustments are included.
Kimberly Watson, first vice-president of the Association Professionnelle du Personnel Administratif (APPA), said the original plan involved significant job reductions.
“The original proposition would have seen 117 positions abolished,” Watson said. “Of course, we do have some vacancies, but by the end, it would have still resulted in about 70 positions being fewer positions available than employees that we had.”
She said the net result remains substantial even after accounting for vacancies and newly created positions.
“After we take all of the created positions and the vacancies into account, it still is 68.5 total positions abolished. So it’s almost 70 positions that get abolished.”
Watson said many of the positions affected involve attendants working directly with students with special needs, including those requiring daily physical and educational assistance.
“If the proposed staffing plan were to be adopted as is, we would have about 70 fewer attendants who are able to help the most needy students, the most disadvantaged students, the most vulnerable students in our system,” she said.
She outlined the range of support those attendants provide during the school day.
“They might be in wheelchairs, they may need help getting from one place to another. They may need toileting, so they might have to have a diaper changed. They may have medical apparatus that need to be maintained. They may need to have medication given to them,” Watson said.
She said support staff also help students participate in classroom learning activities alongside their peers.
“They might need help just manipulating materials in order to perform the regular academic activities that all the other students are doing, but with a little bit of help, they can participate fully,” she said.
Vassilios Bill Mandelos, chair of the EMSB Advisory Committee on Special Education Services, said he has heard widely different estimates about the number of positions under discussion.
“When I first heard that they were targeting the elimination of 130 roles specifically for special education services, I was shocked,” he said.
Mandelos said the staffing debate is happening in a system that is already under strain.
“The current workers that are involved in special education services are exceptionally stressed. There’s a tremendous workload,” he said. “They’re very stretched. In many cases, they’re not able to take breaks for lunch, just breaks throughout the day.”
He said the challenges extend beyond staffing numbers, pointing to limitations in training support and school-level resources.
“There’s already a lack of funding in terms of reinforcing training and so on,” Mandelos said. “There’s many cases where we have students that are on modified curriculums or modified schedules at schools because there’s not adequate support to be able to reinforce them doing full days at school.”
He said layering additional reductions on top of previous cuts creates uncertainty about service levels going forward.
“If you add on top of that the cuts that happened last year… and you add on top of its subsequent cuts, I’m just not sure what level of support we can realistically offer these children,” he said.
Mandelos also raised concerns about staffing stability and turnover in the sector.
“Many of these roles do have retention issues. There’s very high turnover just given the current conditions and the stress that many of these frontline workers have,” he said.
“The worry is that by eliminating these roles, you’re now also potentially impacting retention even more.”
Mandelos said future budget decisions should involve greater input from those directly affected by staffing changes.
“Budgeting is a set of decisions. It’s a set of trade-offs,” he said. “My guidance and my hope would be that there would be a revisiting of the entire budgeting process with transparency and hopefully with some involvement and consultation from a lot of the affected parties in order to make the right decisions that would minimize the impact to many of these vulnerable students.”
Cohen said the financial constraints facing the board are largely tied to provincial funding rules and restrictions on surplus use.
“The message that parents and staff should take, and the union should take too, is we need everybody on the same team. The problem here is the government. They’re the ones that made significant cuts to our budgets. They’re the ones that are not allowing us to use our accumulated surplus, which could cover us for several years of deficits,” he said.
He said the result is limited flexibility in how the board manages its budget.
“It’s like me going to the bank and saying, okay, you know what, I’m short on cash. I need to take something out of my account. And the bank’s saying, ‘sorry, you’re not allowed to do that. We’re keeping it’. That’s what the government’s doing. So, I think the parents need, and the staff and the unions, they need to vent their anger in the right direction, because where are we going to be next year? The situation could be far worse, and, you know, you can’t spend money you don’t have.”
