It’s crunch time for the Creighton School Division.
Nearly all school divisions in Saskatchewan, including Creighton, saw their provincial operating grants decrease in last month’s provincial budget.
While the Creighton division’s budget is still a work in progress and won’t be released until this summer, the division’s provincial revenue will drop 4.7 per cent.
It is unclear how much money the division stands to lose, but it is expected the school board will need to make drastic changes.
“It’s going to be a tough year,” said school division secretary-treasurer Sheola Jansen. “Our board has some really tough decisions to make. That’s part of the process we go through. It will be a painful process.”
Trustee Terry Brown, a long-time member of the board, said changes are inevitable.
“We definitely won’t be standing pat. What will happen will be the decision of the board once everything is laid out,” he said. “We’re in the same position as every other school division in the province – we’re losing money.”
The division may need to look into reducing funding for programs and extracurricular activities to make up for the shortfall. Last year, the division responded to a funding shortfall by cutting three teaching positions.
“I really hate to see what they’re doing, because in the end, what they’re doing is affecting the kids,” said Brown.
The final outcome of the funding change will not be known until the end of June, when Creighton is required to submit its 2017-18 budget to the provincial government.
“We’ll have a number of board meetings where we sit down and we figure out with the director and our admin team how we’re going to reduce,” said Jansen. “From there, we’ll work on it again and we’ll have a new budget that I will present to them. It has to be uploaded by the end of June to the ministry. This isn’t a one- or two-week project.”
Brown said another challenge could be on the horizon. While the province did not merge Creighton with another division, as had been considered, boundary changes could still be made.
“That could have a serious effect on us. The government goes through this process, they suggested this,” he said.
“Our director [of education] will be sitting on the committee that will be looking at the boundaries. I guess anything is possible. We just have to sit here and wait. We were hoping we’d escape amalgamation, but boundary changes could make a big difference, too. That was the bad news.”
