During last night’s (Tuesday) SD57 Board meeting, the 2020-21 amended annual budget of $181,498,081 was passed.
In order to balance the budget, SD57 will be utilizing the $4.7 million surplus even though the annual budget only utilized $568,000.
For reference, in 2018 the district had a surplus of $17 million dollars which is now $1.3 million.
Trustee Sharel Warrington advocated for this year’s surplus to be used for projects that haven’t been funded by the ministry of education, such as portables.
The budget amendment alters the annual budget passed last June to reflect funding based on the enrollment count from September 30th.
As of September, 12,994.668 students, both school-aged and adult learners, were enrolled, down slightly from the projected amount of 13,227.125.
SD57 Treasurer, Darleen Patterson noted that there are about 300 fewer students in school buildings because they transferred to distance learning.
“Students that are enrolled in distance learning are funded at a lower rate, ” explained Patterson, “which is why the school district ended up getting funding protection this year because our student rate went down below a certain amount and then the total revenue would’ve been down.”
SD57 received around $506,000 in funding related to the district’s enrollment decline, the funding protection guarantees a district won’t receive less than 98.5 percent of the previous year’s funding.
“There is a supplement for enrollment decline, this has to do with the reduction from our physical buildings to our distanced learning,” explained Patterson.
Currently, it is unknown whether or not SD57 will have funding protection next year as next September’s enrollment rate is unknown.
SD57 funding protection also depends on the status of the upcoming provincial education budget, which is also currently unknown.
However, if SD57 does have this protection, there will be a 1.5% cutback next year.
Within the budget, there are a number of ‘unique students needs’ funding grants, while overall they remained quite similar, the Aboriginal Education grant was amended slightly from it’s annual $5,521,500 in funding to $5,401,500.
Additionally, the Special Needs Education Grant was amended from $16,830,00 to $17,053,400.
The next SD57 general public meeting will be held online on February 23rd at 6:00pm.
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