Living Sky School Division is scrambling to find ways to cut $1.3 million from its budget, after the provincial government shuffled $5 million of school funding.
"We're going to have to go back and revisit all the areas of our budget," said Ray Kopera, LSSD's chief financial officer. "Our goal is to have the least impact on school operations."
Kopera said he was disappointed in the Ministry of Education's lack of transparency, explaining when the ministry opted to re-distribute $5 million, they could have provided more notice, preventing the affected school boards from compiling their operating budgets, only to have to go back and do them again.
"A lot of things are already in place," said Kopera. "It's difficult working a reduction of $1.3 million through the budget."
Education Minister Donna Harpauer explained the adjustment was necessary. She said the new funding model, earlier anticipated to be released along with the provincial budget in March, was delayed until next year. The delay, according to Harpauer, was necessary to gauge the effect on school boards.
"That's the whole point of the delay, so we can take the model and get that input from school boards," said Harpauer.
In the meantime, said the education minister, a small re-distribution was needed to address the needs of school boards in the interim.
"There were some fairly large discrepancies between school divisions," said Harpauer, adding the decision to re-distribute $5 million in operational funding was not made until it was determined the new funding model would not be going ahead for this year.
She said although Living Sky School Division is receiving $1.3 million less than anticipated, "every school division had an increase this year."
Harpauer added that once teacher contract negotiations are complete, the government will also cover teacher's wages.
"Almost half of school divisions costs is teachers' wages," said Harpauer. "So that will not be a financial stress that they will have."
Living Sky School Division was one of six school boards negatively impacted by the redistribution, but although $1.3 million is a difficult shortfall to handle, it could have been worse.
"I appreciate the Ministry did take some consideration of the impact to school divisions," said Kopera, explaining the calculation for the re-distribution called for an even greater decrease to LSSD's operating budget, but the Ministry 'tweaked' the numbers.
The formula for the calculation is also a little puzzling for Kopera, for a number of reasons.
The first was the geographical groupings of school divisions, in which LSSD was grouped with divisions it hasn't historically been grouped with, some of which seem to have little in common with LSSD.
The second was the calculation itself, which used assessments, student enrolments and revenues from 2008, when school divisions still set their own mill rates, and applied the resulting number to 2010 enrolments.
"The calculation is based on '08 assessments, we're now in 2011, we're three years past that," said Kopera.
Clint Repski, the Ministry's director of financial services, said 2008 numbers were used because, although mill rates are now uniform across the province, the funding each school division receives hasn't really changed, and won't until the new funding model is completed.
"We have based this interim funding on the historical funding models of the school divisions," he said, adding this is what made a re-distribution necessary in the meantime. "That's really at the heart of the issue."
Harpauer said the new funding model will address the individual needs of school divisions by taking into account the number of First Nations, English as an Additional Language (EAL) and high or special needs students.
She also said the re-distribution formula is only being used for this school year, and will have no bearing on the new funding model, anticipated to be released with next year's budget.
