ESTEVAN — Marilyn Yurkiw, manager of finance and payroll for the South East Cornerstone Public School Division (SECPSD), gave board members a quick but comprehensive look at the ongoing financial picture for the division during the board’s June 19 meeting in Weyburn.
Yurkiw focused their attention on the statement of operation variances in the various sectors, noting there were some significant differences in some areas and minor adjustments in others.
For instance, on the governance (board) side, she said the projections are for a figure to come in that will be just under $11,500 from budget while on the administration side, there will be another under-budget number of $54,663, which bodes well for the division, financially speaking.
On the larger instructional department, she said teacher salaries are expected to be under budget by a significant $943,220 mainly due to unpaid strike days during recent negotiation periods with the provincial government and the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation.
Educational assistant salaries are also expected to be $235,000 below budget based on current staffing levels while instructional aide costs will be over budget by more than $603,000.
“This reflects the technology items that were under the capitalization threshold in the budget but are expensed here,” she explained. “Because these items aren’t capitalized, the amortization is expected to be $125,435 below budget.”
Taken in total, on the instruction spectrum, the final expectation is that they will be under budget by just under $743,000.
Plant operations are expected to be just about $200,000 under budget while amortization in the transportation section is projected to be $219,000 over budget due to a larger number of buses being purchased. Total transportation costs though could be more than $465,000 lower than budget due.
Complementary services will be about $8,000 over budget and although there were no exacting numbers available at this point, Yurkiw suggested that external services such as school cafeterias and teacherages as well as program designer positions may end up being over budget.
So far, Cornerstone has received just over $80.4 million of anticipated revenue that is just under 70 per cent of the budgeted expectation. Total expenses amount to $85.75 million, or 75 per cent of the budget.
Yurkiw ended the presentation by noting that “Currently we are also projecting variances from budget in several expense categories with the new adjustment to expenses being $1,365,090 below budget.”
