WEEKEND, March 22-24, 2013
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CALGARY News worth sharing.
In the dark Hundreds of millions of people will be switching off their lights on Saturday, but is the mostly symbolic gesture just a waste of time? PAGE 34
beauty and the belle curve our culture’s transient notion of beauty means there are no real icons for women to emulate. is that entirely a good thing? PAGES 28 & 29
CBE plans staff raises despite funding freeze Tough times. School boards have lamented lack of student-grant increases
PILEUP IN LEDUC
An estimated 45 cars were damaged in a chain-reaction pileup on the QE2 Highway Thursday, sending 120 people to hospital with various injuries. Story, page 2. DEREK FILDEBRANDT/CTF/CONTRIBUTED
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Calgary public school trustees voted in private to press ahead with a raise package of up to $1.5 million this week, even in the face of a tough provincial budget that could see classroom resources cut, Metro has learned. But Calgary Board of Education officials would only suggest Thursday that performancebased pay bumps for exempt staff — employees without a representing union — were initially approved last May as part of the 2012-13 budget. CBE spokesperson Richard Peter and trustee vice-chair Lynn Ferguson also confirmed a second approval was needed
from the board on the maximum amount allotted for raises for roughly 220 staff. However, neither would specify when that would happen or whether it already had. But multiple sources told Metro that second approval was granted in a 5-2 vote Tuesday night. It was also specified that the raise package will cover the first eight months of 2013 and, if the maximum amount was used, would see a roughly $10,200 hike per staff member when carried forward annually. Peter confirmed top superintendents would be included in the exempt-staff category but said it would also involve staff members in other areas, including himself, human-resource workers and engineers. “Before any of this money is allocated, we are looking at this and every other item in our budget to determine what
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we need to do to balance the budget for 2013-14,” Peter said, adding initial calculations suggested roughly 75 per cent of the maximum would be used. Word of the raises prompted a concerned response from Kim Capstick, press secretary for Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson. Alberta Education has frozen salaries for all management and opted-out employees and negotiated the same terms for teachers in a tentative deal currently before school boards and local instructor representatives. “We think that’s a prudent approach,” Capstick said of the freezes. “With the expectation we have of school boards to reduce their administrative spending by 10 per cent, we think that it would be prudent for them to be looking at those kind of measures as well.” Jeremy Nolais/Metro