LIF Allocations

Hi Folks,

Karen Zoffmann and I met with Scott Benwell, Katherine McIntosh and John Martin yesterday to discuss the allocation of the Learning Improvement Fund.

The fund this year is about $232,000.  According to the legislation 12.5% is to be allocated to SEA time.  The remaining approximately 200K is to be assigned to teaching staff.

We started by looking at how the fund was spent last year.  After the discussions last year, the district initially split 2.0FTE among the schools in the district for ‘learning support’ positions.  There was also some money assigned to each school to allow for release time.  Over the course of the year two things became apparent.  There was very little use made of the release money assigned to each school, and the teachers who were filling the LIF positions were in the early stages of their career, and were at the beginning steps of the salary grid.  When we met with the district folks last November we agreed the district would post a further 0.6 FTE.

The fund is meant to be completely spent each year.  If there is money left over it will be deducted from next year’s allocation.  The accounting for this year will be complete by the end of June.  It is possible there could be a small amount of money remaining in the fund.  If this is the case the money will probably be directed to our Pro-D fund to help with next year’s district day.

This year we agreed we would try and direct as much of the money as possible toward teaching positions.  At this point the discussion is focused upon using the money to fund 2.8 FTE positions.  We then tried to assign the money as equitably as possible to schools in the district.

The following is the plan we came up with:

The District position will be split along the following  lines –
FRES 0.15;
Seaview 0.1;
other schools 0.15.
It will be a full time position from September through December.
The idea is for discrete blocks of time to be used with each school.

Cheslakees and Eke Me-Xi will receive support through the Sunset and PHSS positions respectively.  There should be 7 postings sent out by Friday.

We will review the LIF fund in November and if it looks like not all of the money will be spent – there could be further postings.  The document we agreed to is on our website at, http://www.vinta-bctf.ca/publications/

If you have any questions please call the office or send an e-mail.

Thanks,

Fred

Fred Robertson
President
Vancouver Island North Teachers’ Association
lp85@bctf.ca