BOW VALLEY - The Canadian Rockies Public School (CRPS) division will not have to cut any jobs next year to balance its budget and will instead dip into its operational reserves to cover a $332,000 deficit for the 2018-19 school year.
BOW VALLEY - The Canadian Rockies Public School (CRPS) division will not have to cut any jobs next year to balance its budget and will instead dip into its operational reserves to cover a $332,000 deficit for the 2018-19 school year.
Deemed a "good news" budget by Superintendent Christopher MacPhee, the school division will be able to maintain its staffing levels thanks to $306,000 in last minute funding from the province's classroom improvement fund.
The funding is about $114,000 less than what the division built into its budget, but it will save 3.5 full-time teaching positions and 1.5 full-time in-class support staff that were on the chopping block in April.
"This is a good news budget considering the challenges that we're facing," said MacPhee prior to the board unanimously passing the budget on Tuesday (May 22).
He emphasized that at this time there are no plans to cut programs.
In April, the school division's draft budget revealed it was facing a $700,000 deficit.
To balance the $29-million budget, it floated the idea of eliminating jobs to cut its projected deficit to $400,000, however, through additional funding from the government, cuts to its maintenance budget and finding administrative efficiencies, it was able to reduce its budget deficit to $332,000.
Carol Picard, chair of the board, said she was "relieved" that CRPS was able to maintain staffing levels and reduce its deficit.
"The world of education funding is bizarre. We have to pass a budget in May, but we don't know how many kids we've got until September, so then we have to pass another budget then and if enrollment shifts on us in a positive way then the deficit we were funding last year will disappear," said Picard. "It doesn't take all that much to make that number disappear in a budget the size of ours."
To cut its deficit, the board approved reducing the division's infrastructure maintenance renewal budget by $78,000 to $584,000 for the 2018/19 school year.
At the board and administrative level, the division was able to save an additional $65,000 by combining two positions into one after a staff member retired and another resigned.
According to its budget, spending at the administrative level represents 4.8 per cent of its entire budget, well below the 5.4 per cent expenditure cap established by the province, which is equal to about $170,000 below the cap.
"All of that money is not put in the bank, it's money that's put into the budget," said MacPhee.
Like many rural school divisions, CRPS is facing financial pressure on several fronts, including inflationary costs, a drop in student enrollment and a change to the province's funding formula for high school students.
According to MacPhee, provincial grant funding has been frozen for four years in a row while operational costs have continued to increase due to inflation and other commitments, such as annual salary increases.
"The last two board meetings we spoke extensively about the challenges small, rural school divisions face, such as ourselves, fiscally, when we have situations where we have static costs that keep increasing and compounding year-after-year, but we do not get any additional funding from the government," said MacPhee.
According to Mike Guindon, secretary treasurer for CRPS, salaries for staff will increase by $164,000 in 2018-2019, with the average teacher salary, including benefits, hitting $102,000 annually.
"Our purchasing power is eroded because the government doesn't provide the funding to offset that cost every year, so it's a compounding effect until they reach the maximum of step 10 on the grid," said Guindon, referring to the division's pay grid.
According to MacPhee, the division has 246 staff, which eats up about 80 per cent of the entire budget.
In addition to growing inflationary costs, the school division is also expecting student enrolment to drop by 39 students next year, hurting its bottom line because schools are funded based on student enrollment.
"Our budgets are drafts at best and they are very fluid until today, but it even remains fluid moving into the next school year because we don't know our actual numbers until the end of September," said MacPhee, cautioning that number could go up or down and will dictate staffing levels in fall.
On top of this, the provincial government's decision to cap its funding formula for students from Grade 10-12 has also squeezed its budget.
In previous years, the province funded high schools based on a cap of 60 credit enrolment units (CEU), however, that cap was reduced to 45 CEUs per student in April 2017. A full course load for a high school student is 35 CEUs.
As a result, the school division estimated it lost approximately $277,000 in funding as many of its students earn more than 45 CEUs, according to Guindon.
He said it was difficult to accurately project the loss because the cap only came into effect a year ago.
"We did some projections and, based on the 2016-2017 credits earned for high schools from that year, if that 45 CEU cap existed at that time we would have lost $277,000 in funding," said Guindon.
"It kind of gives us an idea, but it's only one year. To get an actual real average you'd have to look at four of five years of history to provide a better idea of what the impact is going to be."
Guindon said the division has approximately $1 million in its unrestricted reserves, but suggested it may not have to dip into the fund to balance its budget if enrollment changes for the better and/or the CEU cap has less of an impact than the current budget projected.
"Depending on how this year rolls out, this shortfall for 2018-19 will most likely be covered from a projected surplus from this year, but we have a couple of variables that we're not sure about," he said.
For more details about the budget, visit the school division's website at www.crps.ca.
