Board members and senior staff of Living Sky School Division had a chance to air some of their concerns in a meeting recently with area MLAs.
Attending a Sept. 26 regular board meeting were Battlefords MLA Herb Cox, Cut Knife-Turtleford MLA Larry Doke and Rosthern-Shellbrook MLA Scott Moe.
Funding was on the top of the list, in light of the provincial government's launch of a new education funding distribution model.
While the government developed the new model to address inequities in the education funding distribution system and ensure funding is provided in an equitable way among school divisions throughout the province, the transition has resulted in some less than equitable situations, surprise deficits and uncertainty
The chair of the board, Ken Arsenault, was unable to attend the meeting, but had asked Director of Education Randy Fox to bring up the subject of the transition funding the government put in place to moderate the impact on school divisions most affected by shifts in funding due to the new distribution mode.
"If we hadn't received [transition funding]," said Fox, "we would have been looking at a $6 million deficit, instead we are looking at a million to two million dollar deficit. Some divisions are saying, let's cut out the transition funding and get right to the model and be done with it,' and we're okay with that, but we can't serve our students with a $6 million cut in our budget."
Fox continued, "That's the story. I don't know how else to say that. Over the course of time we can do some things that can help us shave costs, but if we are to get hit with that kind of deficit next spring, without much opportunity to prepare for it I just don't know how we could serve our children - it would mean massive cuts."
Fox said, when it comes to the transition funding, it's important it be there until something is in place that is, in the minds of the division, equitable funding.
"And, that's not an easy task," he added.
Among the funding issues brought up at the meeting with the MLAs is the lack of a reconciliation process to make up for any shortfalls the division runs into when collecting tuition from the federal government for on-reserve students attending division schools. It's an issue that actually pre-dates the province's decision to bring in a new funding model.
Lonny Darroch, chief financial officer for Living Sky, explained to the MLAs the division sends the Ministry of Education an estimate of how many federal students they expect, but the actual enrolments, the division's estimates and the ministry's approved numbers don't always fit.
"If our calculation is different," said Darroch, "there is the potential we're going to come up short. We need some sort of reconciliation process, and that will be the same for any division with a number of federal students."
Fox said he believes the ministry is aware of the some of the struggles school divisions are facing when it comes to collecting tuition. He said the division would appreciate any efforts by the provincial government to work with the federal government on a solution.
During the discussion on funding, a plan arose to take a resolution to the Saskatchewan School Boards Association on the issue of school divisions having to dip into their provincial funding to subsidize the cost of educating students for which the federal government is responsible.
Fox also said it's important the ministry look at another way of funding divisions according to how many students, overall, are enrolled, perhaps even another count during the year. Presently, the funding is based on Sept. 30 enrolments, but if the numbers go up after that, the division ends up being short-funded.
Fox said it's important to have accurate data for the ministry "when we look at who are the students in our schools."
Part of that can be tied to the student achievement agenda and some of the provincial testing that will come on board in the next two years, he said.
"Quite a bit of that has to do with young children and early education and what we're saying is that if some of that provincial testing shows we have a high proportion of young children - five-, six-, seven-year-olds - in our school division that, for whatever reason, are behind in their own development we would like to see that recognized as part of permanent funding."
While grants such as the First Nations and Métis Student Achievement grant the division expects to have approved are appreciated and important, permanent funding is extremely important to the division, said Fox. He added that if testing indicates more support is needed, not just for aboriginal students, but non-aboriginal as well, the division would like to see that become part of their permanent funding.
Capital funding also came under discussion, particularly how the division's recent renovations and expansion to its central office and addition of a bus maintenance garage were paid for.
Cox said he certainly understood the reasoning behind the bus garage project when trustee Kim Gartner explained it was a solution to an issue identified when looking at long-term operations. With the kind of activity going on in the oilfield industry within the division, timely maintenance and repair of the division's buses was becoming more difficult.
"One of our solutions was to have a central bussing system," said Gartner. He said the project was paid for out of reserves, money that had been put away in previous years.
"We couldn't wait for the department to come together with a policy around funding those facilities, and we decided as a board to go ahead."
He noted with the new funding model, there will be no more ability by divisions to put money away in reserve.
"When you start taking that kind of money out of a reserve, it's never going back in, and now we don't have the opportunity to put in reserves."
Doke indicated the Ministry of Education has had to address what to do about the reserves some divisions have built up.
"Some schools had huge reserves from previous funding so that became an issue."
Doke commended the division on its impressive facilities, as seen during a tour last fall, and on its "superb" maintenance program, adding he and his fellow MLAs went to bat for the division at the provincial level.
"I think between the three of us we made a pretty good push for you last fall and I think it all worked out. The minister was very appreciative of the information."
Fox said, "We felt our message was taken forward. We appreciated that."
