The Calvert government announced a massive reorganization of public school boards on Thursday without changing the percentage of education tax that almost led to a tax revolt among farmers this spring.

The government will cut the number of public school boards by more than half within two years. Learning minister Andrew Thomson said Thursday the plan is the most substantial change in the school system since 1944.

Each new division will educate 5,000 students, about five times the number in current divisions in Weyburn and area. No education tax relief is planned for this year.

"This doesn't do anything for the RM. (The government) is not responding to us at all," said Doug Watson, reeve of the rural municipality of Scott which has taken one of the hardest lines on the need for changes to the education tax.

Watson said any farmer doing his spring budget knows he has to pay out the "regressive" education tax this fall, and can't use that money for crop inputs to boost production. Besides, school amalgamations don't save money, he said.

Scott RM has approved a resolution refusing to disburse the 2004 education tax it collects to local school boards, although the policy might change after a public meeting with ratepayers on June 2. Councillors want to find out what the ratepayers want, said Watson.

The RM is one of many trying to put pressure on the government to change the property tax system, which sees property owners pay 70-100 per cent of the cost of K-12 education in some school divisions.

They are supported by a provincial task force on education last year that recommended big tax cuts and changes to what it called an "unfair" system of financing education. The Boughen Commission on education funding said RMs faced a 59 per cent increase in education taxes between 1966 and 2002 while cities saw a 16 per cent increase.

The commission said education property taxes in Saskatchewan are the highest in Canada, on a per capita basis and as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product.

Sunrise, South Central and Holy Family school divisions voluntarily amalgamated this year with surrounding boards to create student populations of about 1,000 each. The Weyburn Comprehensive School Board educates another 5-600 students from the area.

Thomson said a task force will be set up to draw the new boundaries for school divisions by November. Divisions will not be cut up again but will be attached in one piece to other boards, he said. No public input is planned but boards will be consulted on the new map.

Northern schools boards and Catholic school boards throughout the province are exempt from the reorganization. Thomson told The Weyburn Review on Friday the province has no constitutional authority to change the boundaries of Catholic boards and northern boards already very large regions.

Sunrise education director Jan Chell said Sunrise board members also wanted tax relief but otherwise support the government's move.

"For (Sunrise trustees), the issue is equity." With equity comes the capacity to provide appropriate programming for children, said Chell. Thomson said Saskatchewan currently has a ratio of 25:1 between the dollars available to the wealthiest and poorest school boards.

"With this restructuring, we would come to the place in Saskatchewan where all boards would receive a provincial grant," said Chell.

Sunrise also supports the province's intention to maintain a local board's ability to set its own mill rate and raise local funds. Thomson told The Review the government considered the Alberta example which eliminated local financial autonomy but rejected it, for now.

South Central board chair Audrey Trombley is less pleased with the new plan. South Central taxpayers pay 100 per cent of the division's education costs.

"The government hasn't learned from its mistakes," she said. It regionalized health boards and is paying much more for health care, she said. South Central has already reduced administration costs by sharing an education director and other officials with Holy Family School Division, she noted.

"Our worst fear was that only part of the Boughen commission recommendations would be implemented without changes to the method of financing."

Trombley said Thomson's promise that 30 per cent of new federal transfer payments will be used to reduce education taxes in the future may mean nothing if there's no new money. "Thirty per cent of nothing is still nothing," she said.

Thomson said he's confident Ottawa will compensate Saskatchewan for taking an unfair share of resource royalties in the recent past. He also said the province was frustrated to see no property tax decreases in the past few years after it added $100 million more to education spending.

While acknowledging there is no education tax relief for 2004, the minister said farmers still can use education tax as an income tax deduction. "That's a luxury homeowners don't have," he said.

Not all farmers pay a high education tax either, he said. "Some pay the lowest property tax in the province."

Trombley said the good thing about the plan is that education tax won't be pooled province-wide but it's still a regional pooling and the plan will transfer property tax revenue from the rural areas to the towns and cities, she said.

"My fear is that rural Saskatchewan will have less representation," said Trombley. With new boundaries imposed by government, there will be some areas with no (trustee) representation for miles and miles, she said.

Trombley is also concerned about school closures in the future, and higher transportation costs.

Thomson placed a moratorium on new school closures until the new amalgamations are concluded in 2006. He said the province will establish a school council model of governance to ensure more local accountability for communities.

RM of Weyburn reeve Carmen Sterling said she's concerned the government is talking about tax relief that might not happen if no more federal money is forthcoming.

"That means there's nothing for this year and maybe nothing for other years," she said.

Sterling said there's no assurance that bigger school divisions educating 5,000 students will result in lower administration costs.