WEYBURN – The Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division board approved their 2022-23 budget on Wednesday night with no staffing cuts made.
The school division is using money from reserves to balance the budget, as they had a deficit in funding as other school divisions had around the province, and trustees expressed deep concerns over the dwindling reserves that have to be drawn down just to provide the proper funding for the next school year.
Holy Family is projecting total revenue of $14.3 million and total expenses of $15.7 million, with a deficit of $1.3 million. The school division received a funding increase of 0.05 per cent from the Ministry of Education.
The board was told by Georgia Hanwell, the acting Chief Financial Officer for Holy Family, the budget will allow for a 15-per-cent increase in expenses for gas and oil for the school buses, and utilities are estimated to go up around four per cent, with an eight-per-cent increase expected for power, and a four per cent increase from SaskEnergy in November.
A slight bit of good news was that they were able to reduce the amount needed from reserves by $15,137, so they will now draw down $801,580 to balance the budget.
Holy Family had about $2.496 million in reserves as of last August, and by the end of next year that will be down to about $2 million, said Hanwell.
“How many years can we keep that up? What happens when we run out of reserves to balance the year?” a trustee asked.
Hanwell noted that it isn’t prudent for school divisions to use reserves every year as the well will run dry, and “school divisions can’t go out to create your own revenue. It’s a conversation you’ll need to have with the ministry.”
Part of the issue is how the Treasury Board provides funding for the Education ministry, said board chair Bruno Tuchscherer.
“When our minister, Dustin Duncan, goes to the Treasury Board, he gets asked, ‘what are the school divisions doing with all their reserves?’ That’s the question, as they believe school divisions have millions of dollars in reserves,” he said. “We’re going to run out sooner or later.”
Trustee Jerome Sidloski said from what he’s been hearing, most other school divisions are in the same situation, and are also depleting their reserves to balance their budgets for the next school year.
A number of those school boards are also cutting staff, including the Southeast Cornerstone School Division, as they announced a few weeks ago, but Holy Family was able to pass their budget without making any cuts to classroom staff. Costs for staffing comprises 78 per cent of the school division’s budget for this coming year.
“As we’ve been building the budget, we’ve had several scenarios presented with staffing,” said education director Gwen Keith, noting their focus was to sustain the levels of teachers in the classrooms.
She also pointed out that some counsellors were not able to be rehired as the funds they used before were part of the province’s COVID funding to school boards, and that funding has largely dried up from this point on.
“Our decision was to keep classrooms stable as much as we could. Next year, we’ll have to consider what that means for programs,” said Keith.
“We’re not alone in this. Every school division is in the same position,” said Tuchscherer, who wondered what the government will do when school boards run out of their reserve funds.
Superintendent Chad Fingler pointed out that they reduced the number of teachers the year before, so they didn’t need to do that this year.
The reserves are supposed to represent the costs to run the schools in the school division for a two-month period, said Hanwell.
“It feels like we’ve done some very prudent financial planning and we’ve managed to put some money away, and now we’re being painted as bad guys. It’s because we have plans for staff,” said Sidloski.
