The education funding formula released last spring provides considerably less funding to school boards for support staff jobs. No doubt their recommendations will be creative and imaginative to produce cost savings. There have been many example in the USA and other jurisdictions where public school boards have experimented with privatization of support services. In almost all case the experiments have been abandoned. Contracting out and privatization has led not to increased savings and efficiency, but rather to reductions in the quality of services, diminished public accountability, job loss and increased workloads.
Most contractors have few or no screening practices in place with respect to hiring employees.
This creates a student safety concern. Rates of employee turnover rise up to 10 percent when services are contracted out. Jobs are often reduced or part time positions created. There are many cases where the contractor has promised not to lay off employees and done so immediately after the contract is signed. Many contractors make profit because they often sell their products with their service.