School librarian Kristen Welbourn says it is horrible to feel uncertainty over who pays for her job and how much longer she might have it.
Welbourn was among a crowd of about 40 people who rallied outside Halifax city hall on Tuesday evening to urge the municipality to keep funding in place for school librarians.
The Halifax Regional Centre for Education (HRCE) pays for about 75 library support specialists through the Halifax municipality’s supplementary education fund, which is unique in the province.
The HRCE and Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) are currently negotiating a new memorandum of understanding guiding how the supplementary funding is spent, and no final decisions have been made public yet.
But Welbourn said she has learned that Halifax councillors recently voted in private to have HRCE not use the supplementary funding for school librarians.
“That leaves a lot of questions if HRM is not going to fund us. Will the [provincial] government fund us? Are our jobs at risk? I don’t know,” Welbourn said Monday.
Welbourn, who works at Bay View High School in Upper Tantallon, said she has not gotten a clear answer from the municipal and provincial governments on what is happening. She said members from both levels have been pointing fingers at each other about who is responsible for funding her role.
Halifax’s supplementary education fund is the only one of its kind in Nova Scotia, and is one of two education funds the municipality is legally required to collect through property taxes.
It was created in 1996 during HRM’s amalgamation, and is required within the Halifax charter. The legislation states that council can only cut the fund by 10 per cent each year.
The supplementary fund amounted to nearly $13 million for HRCE overall this school year, with about $2.5 million of that covering librarians.
The HRCE describes the fund as a way to “enhance learning opportunities for students” beyond core education. While it has supported a broad range of services in the past, this school year funding went to staffing and programming for fine arts and music, librarians, and social workers.
Halifax also has the mandatory education charge all municipalities collect for the province.
In the upcoming 2026-27 budget, Halifax expects to collect and send $226.8 million to the province for mandatory education, an increase of about $16 million (seven per cent) over last year.
“I think when HRCE went beyond arts, that caused the problem. They were … taking advantage of the supplementary funding to backfill gaps in positions they had,” Coun. Tony Mancini said Tuesday.
“That started the challenge, in my opinion, where it was quite clear that [supplementary funding] was supposed to be fully the arts.”
Mancini said he could not confirm whether council had voted on anything to do with librarian funding, because all contract negotiations are done in private.
But Mancini said he understands the librarians’ fears, and spoke during Tuesday’s rally about the importance of their roles.
“We’re waiting to hear back from the negotiations, staff on staff,” Mancini said. “I really would hope that the province would step up, and HRCE. Yet to be determined.”
Councillors have examined the supplementary funding more closely in recent years.
Halifax’s auditor general presented a report to the city’s audit and finance committee in December 2024. He said there was a lack of monitoring and detailed reporting around the fund that could use more attention, if council was interested in making changes.
On Tuesday, Education Minister Brendan Maguire was asked about funding for Halifax librarians. He said the province will spend more than $1.4 billion on education in this budget, which is up over last year, and HRCE decides where its general education funding goes.
“They’ll delegate it based on the resources that they need. And if those are the resources they need, that’s where it’s gonna go,” Maguire told reporters at Province House.
But when asked if the province would commit to new funding to cover any possible gaps for librarians left by Halifax funding changes, Maguire did not directly answer the question.
“I can’t speculate on what’s going to happen. Like, obviously, they’re going through a budget that’s difficult, like all of us … we’re just gonna wait to see what happens, and then we’ll have those conversations with the HRCE,” Maguire said.
“Around librarians … I hope that HRM and HRCE are able to come to a [memorandum of understanding] that doesn’t impact them.”
For Welbourn, she said it has been “devastating” to become a political talking point.
She said it should not be up to her and her colleagues to emphasize how vital librarians are to students’ literacy and learning outcomes, and to their social well-being by creating a place where everyone feels safe.
“I’ve poured my heart and soul into this job, into my students, into supporting teachers,” Welbourn said.
“It’s my life’s work, and it feels really demeaned right now.”
Halifax will finalize its municipal budget next Tuesday, which will set property tax rates and outline how much will be in the supplementary fund for the 2026-27 school year.
A spokesperson for HRCE said there is not a set time for when the new supplementary funding agreement with the municipality will be finalized.
Source: CBC Nova Scotia
