"There's nothing simple in education finance," says Tom Hawboldt, manager of Business and Instructional Technology for the Light of Christ Catholic School Division (LOCCSD).
There's a challenge in applying information such as that contained in an online Ministry of Education document that reports Light of Christ is getting a 2.7 per cent increase in funding to the reality of how the dollars actually come in.
The bottom line for LOCCSD is that they are working with about $80,000 less in recognized funding for the 2013-14 school year, compared to 2012-13, says Hawboldt, the division's media liaison.
Understandably, says Hawboldt, some of the challenges in government reporting of education include the difference in fiscal years (government's fiscal year is the calendar year and education's is the school year), and the fact funding comes from more than one place (First Nations reserve residents who go to school off-reserve are funded by the federal government).
Behind it all is the provincial government's transition to a new funding model, setting a standard education mill rate across the province and distributing the taxes collected across the school divisions, eventually balancing out what each student in the province is allotted. But with significant differences between divisions, it is taking some time to find that balance.
The concept is to bring everybody to a level playing field by finding the average of the playing field, says Hawboldt.
"Education would have liked to bring everybody to the high average, but that's not realistic."
"In our division [which was considered under-funded] we are slowly being moved up and others are slowly being moved down Eventually, we will be happy with average, but it's not there yet," he says.
Hawboldt said, generally across the province there wasn't a significant jump in education funding announced in the recent provincial budget. The 3.5 per cent talked about applies to all education, not just the K-12 system.
"Universities got an increase, trades and apprenticeship programs got an increase; you didn't see those levels of increase in K-12."
Despite online appearances that LOCCSD has received an increase in funding, Hawboldt says the documents the division has received from the Ministry of Education lists recognized funding totalling $20,306,887 for 2013-14. Recognized expenses for 2012-13 were listed totalling $20,386,249.
The final budget for 2013-14 has still to be approved by the LOCCSD Board of Education.
However, he says, the division should not have to cut any programming. Over the last three years the director, Herb Sutton, and the chief financial officer, Joel Lloyd, have put extensive time into planning and making LOCCSD division sustainable in the long run, says Hawboldt. They have also been fiscally prudent in negotiating the division's locally determined teacher benefits, extra funding that is negotiated between boards and teachers over and above what is in the provincial contract, as well as support staff agreements, says Hawboldt.
"Being a small division, we didn't wield the political clout to ask for extra funding on an agreement so we're trying to base our agreements on an inflationary rate of about 1.6 per cent," says Hawboldt.
LOCCSD's LINC (local implementation negotiation committee) agreement and support staff agreement are currently in negotiation, says Hawboldt.
