They passed their 2011-12 budget, but they weren't that happy about the trend they see developing along the revenue side of the ledger.
The Â鶹´«Ã½AV East Cornerstone School Division board of trustees put their stamp of approval on a $102.7 million budget last Thursday afternoon during their regular business session in Weyburn.
With operating expenditures of $92.3 million and capital expenditures of $22.9 million, this will be a belt-tightening experience for the division and its 1,100 employees, especially in light of the fact that the school enrolments are creeping up after decades of decline. It is now at the point where the public school kindergarten to Grade 12 system in southeast Saskatchewan caters to well over 8,000 students who attend school in one of their 38 facilities.
Board chairwoman Carol Flynn in speaking with The Mercury the day after the budget approval, confirmed that in straight monetary terms, the division is receiving just $385,000 less from the provincial government with its new, but not yet publicly revealed funding formula. But in actuality, the funding shortfall is more like $1.3 million, she said. That is due to the fact that with increased enrolments, the division's income on a per-student basis reduces the loss. In other words, if the enrolment had stayed static at 2010 levels, Cornerstone would be receiving a cut of well over $1 million dollars.
Flynn said that a recent meeting with Education Minister Donna Harpauer gave the local trustees an opportunity to express their dismay with the new look funding model.
"We are one of the five or six 'have' divisions, and were told the rebalancing has to accommodate a shift of about $5 million to the 'have not' divisions, so they took $1.3 million from us," she said.
"This is doubly difficult because we've already been cut and then not knowing what the actual formula is going to be, it's becoming very difficult for our financial people to set a budget and do their work," Flynn said.
"The indication is that our funding will be cut and they'll give us some time to adjust," said Flynn.
"This is really hard to take because right at the outset with the major amalgamation, we levelled our mill rate right away while others took three years to do that and our taxpayers paid for it. Then the government promised that until they came up with the promised new funding formula, no school division would receive less than what they had received in the past. Well, that obviously isn't true. It's pretty hard to speculate on where our cuts will be made, but when you don't get that promised base budget, we still have to ensure our students get looked after program wise and that becomes more difficult with enrolment increases."
Flynn went on to say that not only did the board make choices to level the varying mill rates right after the school division mergers, but the new, larger division made choices to launch several initiatives, including some major technological projects that led to greater efficiencies. They feel they are now being punished for making those decisions because other school divisions that were slower in implementing their required changes now required supplemental funding ... courtesy of Cornerstone.
"I guess that frustrates us more than anything ... that others will benefit from what we did yet our students won't benefit from our decisions, it'll be students in another division that will reap the rewards," she said.
But after saying all that, Flynn said the Cornerstone trustees will eventually come around to accept their fate, but she promised, "you know, you've heard us. The Cornerstone trustees are not a quiet bunch, so we won't be doing it quietly."
In the interim, Shelley Toth, vice-president of finance for the division, received a motion of support to accept a long term debt resolution that will allow Cornerstone to borrow funds for the upcoming major renovation and expansion to Weyburn Comprehensive School from the Royal Bank over a 20-year term at an annual rate of 4.67 per cent.
Five financial institutions made a bid for the contract.
Cornerstone is also set to receive a line of credit of up to $20 million, but that requires approval from the Education Ministry.
Returning to the new budget situation, the board acknowledged that the provincial government has indicated that any increase in costs resulting from a new provincial agreement for teachers will be covered by additional provincial funding, so no provision was made in the current budget for an increase in teacher contract costs. Cornerstone currently employs 552.98 full-time equivalent teaching positions, an increase of 6.47 from the prior year and a non-teacher full-time equivalent staff of 560.98, which represents an increase of 7.87 full time equivalent positions from the previous year, all due to increased student registrations that exceeded 150 this year.
The Weyburn Comprehensive remodelling project will absorb up to $16.5 million in the current fiscal year and will require more funding in succeeding years until the project is completed around 2013.
The current budget also provides for the purchase of five new school buses at a cost of $450,000, three relocatable classrooms for $2.1 million, and computer hardware and audio/visual equipment to the tune of $1.8 million.
