Creighton School Division is “anticipating a tight budget” for the 2015-16 school year with potentially $200,000 less in their books to account for.
That was the word at Wednesday evening’s Creighton School Division Annual Meeting from Secretary Sheola Jansen.
For the past four years the school division has received transition funding from the Ministry of Education ranging from $400,000 to $200,000 a year for their $6.5M budget.
“Transition funding is what the ministry allocated, or set aside, for certain divisions who were going to see quite a shortfall once they did the new funding formula,” said Jansen.
For the 2014-15 budget Creighton School Division was not expecting any transition funding, but did receive $200,000.
The school division has already received word that they likely will not receive any transition funding for the upcoming year.
“We’ve been fortunate to have received about $400,00, but then it was cut back to $200,000 and we’ve been notified that they have cut it back again and it will not be continuing,” said Jansen. Similar word came to the school division last year, but the transition funding appeared in their budget. “We’re anticipating
that we won’t get it this year.”
The 2015-16 budget for Creighton School Division will be released on March 18 where Jansen and the rest of the Board of Directors will know what they are working with.
“The ministry sent us a letter advising us of anticipating a very tight budget because of the fluctuation of oil prices,” said Jansen. “Oil prices affect the provincial revenues, which in turn affects the Ministry of Education funding.”
Already anticipating a smaller budget, Jansen noted an agreement already made that could put the School Division in a tight spot.
“We agreed to contract wage increases for our support staff for 2.75 percent for each of the next three years,” said Jansen.
The School Division is unable to make comment on this agreement until the budget is released next month.
“We’re just waiting to see what they are going to do not only for us, but for the rest of the province,” Jansen said.
Creighton School Division saw a surplus of $32,413 during the last school year with a budget of $6,535,501.
“On a $6.5m budget I don’t think we could have cut it much closer,” said Jansen.
Creighton School Division’s major expense came from the upgraded fire alarm system as well as the installation of security cameras at a price tag of $78,000.
Director of Education Bob Smith says the School Division has already received letters, emails and phone calls asking them to look at the 2014-15 school year and “consider cutting back on (discretionary spending) expenses so that it could be applied to surplus next year.”
Smith says Creighton School doesn’t have the same spending situations as other schools that are required to fly staff to meetings either out of province or out of country.
“In our division we don’t really have a whole lot of discretionary spending,” said Jansen.
During a conference call with other divisions Smith says he “chuckled” to himself in response to some of the questions being asked about travel.
“One, we don’t send people out of province, or country, and two, we have to be very fiscally tight because we’re a small organization,” said Smith. “I don’t think we have a lot of discretionary spending.”
The School Division is unable to make decisions or plans for the 2015-16 school year until the budget is released on March 18.
“We just have to wait and see what comes. We might have to make some tough decisions,” said Jansen. “If they are going to cut $200,000 that’s a very significant amount on a $6.5 m budget. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“You can do ahead and make all the plans you want to, but you might be wasting your time,” said Smith. “We anticipated last year that we were going to lose our transition funding and when we received our budget we were quite shocked,” said Smith, with the $200,000 remaining for the school year. “We’re optimistic that they will leave it, but realistically we’re not hopeful.”
Creighton School Division will begin plans and allocating funds shortly after the release of the 2015-16 budget in March.
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UPDATE
The Reminder reported that Creighton School Division’s support staff wage increase could be affected by the release of the March 18 budget.
In fact a wage increase was signed at the end of the 2013-14 school year. Support staff will see an increase of 2.75 per cent for the next three years.
The Reminder regrets the error.
