Local school boards will sustain current staffing levels in the 2015-16 school year as the budget adoption process is underway.
Trustees for Canadian Rockies Public Schools (CRPS) and École Notre Dame des Monts (NDM) have passed 2015-16 budgets, while trustees overlooking Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Academy (OLS) are expected to pass their budget at a June 25 regular meeting.
The NDP government extended provincial school boards’ time to submit final budget estimates by a month after pushing out the Progressive Conservative government’s 44-year reign in Alberta this past May.
In the first major move in the NDP’s tenure, they announced $103 million would be restored to education funding in 2015-16. Part of the announcement was a commitment to maintain funds to cover a two per cent salary increase and one per cent lump sum payment under the previously negotiated Teacher Agreement.
Three local Rocky Mountain school divisions expect staff levels to stay balanced and in some cases, additional staff may be added to fit student needs.
Alberta is expected to welcome 12,000 new students into the system in 2015-16, which caused major concerns when the PC’s proposed education budget in March indicated cuts to enrolment growth in classrooms would be on the way.
The Conseil scolaire FrancoSud (CSUD) approved a $44,709,580 budget. CSUD has francophone schools across southern Alberta, which includes École Notre-Dame des Monts.
Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools board chair Vijay Domingo said they are expecting a “balanced budget” to be adopted at the end of June.
CRPS approved a revenue budget of $27,941,865 last week, with a total expense projection of $27,941,427. The base instruction grants have increased by 1.8 per cent, and all other funding rates remain identical to 2014-15.
CRPS Superintendent Chris MacPhee said the division is “no longer digging deeply” in the reserves as previously expected under the proposed PC education budget and is expected to get about $130,000 back and will “only be using $75,848” of the reserves.
MacPhee added the government profile sheet for school division finances that comes out online are “really misleading” to a community.
School division funding is responsive to enrolment growth numbers, which CRPS isn’t expecting this year. A lot of Grade 12s will graduate at CRPS this summer, said MacPhee, and a smaller number of kindergarten students are expected for fall. It’s projected to work out to about a 2.25 per cent decrease in enrolment from 2014-15.
“The profile sheets shows that we’re going up about $673,000 in the school division, but this is based on enrolment numbers where we’re increasing in population size. But we know we’re not increasing, we’re much lower than the formula calculates,” MacPhee said.
“Provincially, there are a large number of school divisions that would still want to see the funding framework for the province to be reviewed because we still feel, as a small school division, that the funding framework that exists does not support Canadian Rockies (Public Schools) and other small rural school divisions.”
Restored funding to transportation, inclusive education, and First Nations, Metis and Inuit programs was also an NDP priority, among others.
MacPhee said the restored funds are a boost as the division looks to expand into other options such as outdoor education and a duel credit program.
“Those courses are extremely important to have CEU (Credit Enrolment Units) funding to offset the costs and just the April budget had all those numbers frozen,” he said.
Anne-Marie Boucher, CSUD trustee board president, said the numbers have been positive for this budget as they’re expecting a healthy student growth throughout the division of five to eight per cent.
“We think there’s going to be 12 to 15 new teachers hired to answer the need of those new students; that was a significant amount that has been given back to the board,” Boucher said.
“The cuts (the PC government had proposed) had an impact on mostly professional development and special projects … because we have a small high school in Canmore, we know we need more resources to grow our high school program. So having the New Democrats reverse the cuts is really going to help in terms of professional development and support to high schools to better address all the needs of kids.”
OLS Principal Vince Behm said the announced Alberta Education budget really puts the Christ of the Redeemer school division in the position to hire staff and support staff, particularly with the reinstatement of the per student grant.
Class size funds are allocated as per student grants.
“We’re just thankful as a board as a whole that our teaching staff is already guaranteed for next year,” he said.
