Educational Delivery in the Classroom brought in its report in 2000. Several stakeholder groups praised the work of the panel, in particular, how it handled the difficult task of developing a model of teacher resourcing that was sensitive to the needs of small, rural schools during a period of enrolment decline. However, its recommendations, including equipping schools and hiring teachers for more on-line learning, cost government more than $20 million in the first year of implementation alone (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2000). The changes, introduced in the 2000–01 school year were welcomed by school boards, but the problems of staffing schools during a period of continuous enrolment downturn means that resource models are very difficult to sustain. Just three years after the new funding model was implemented, in 2003, the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers Association (NLTA) presented to government and school boards a brief titled Putting the Teacher Back in Teaching. In the brief the NLTA called for increases in teaching and school board positions, more school-based secretarial and technical staff and teacher assistants to assist with non-teaching duties in schools. While there was no immediate action on the brief, in 2006, the government of the day under then Premier Williams, appointed yet another commission to ―address the limitations of the current Teacher Allocation Formula‖ (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2007, par. 6). The report of the so-called Shortall Commission recommended enhancements to the provisions of the allocation model developed by the Ministerial Panel in 2000, noting that ―changing demographic trends have warranted a reassessment of the province’s teacher allocation practices‖ (p. 20).
Among the recommendations was a decrease in class size (with class size caps), more specialist teachers, more teachers for rural and remote schools, and the provision of additional student resource (special education) teachers. Lessons in Leadership: Perspectives on Corporate Managerialism and Educational Reform 18