The North East School Division will be receiving an extra $209,400 as part of a province-wide $7.5 million funding injection into the school system.
During the Saskatchewan Party’s leadership campaign, Scott Moe promised to increase the education budget by $30 million for the next provincial budget. The $7.5 million is meant as a way for school divisions to hire extra in-school professionals right away.
“It’s encouraging to see that some of the money that the premier had designated through the leadership campaign being allocated to education, but our dollars are significantly below what they were two years ago,” said Don Rempel, the North East School Division’s director of education.
The North East School Division saw a $1.5 million cut for the 2017-18 school year.
Rempel said the division has already tapped into its reserves to make sure there was more teaching staff this year, so it won’t be doing extra hiring.
“We’ve spent into our accumulated surplus for this year’s budget already, so that doesn’t get us back to the level of funding we need to have to operate, but we’re thankful that we’re starting to see some money come back into the system.”
Rempel said he is now waiting to see what’s to come into the provincial budget that will be released in April.
“It’s an encouraging sign, anyway, that we’re not going to continue to have further reductions.”
