The North East School Division will be losing around $1.5 million in the next school year, a decrease of 2.7 per cent.
For the current 2016-17 school year, the grant the division received from the province was $54.3 million, a decrease of 3.1 per cent from the year before. The province’s 28 school divisions as a whole will receive $1.86 billion from the provincial budget, losing $22 million from last year.
The division could also lose some funding due to declining enrolment rates.
At this point, there a few ways the division will react, said Don Rempel, it's director of education.
“We will reduce the number of teachers through attrition. Nobody will lose a job but there won’t be as many teachers next year adjusted for enrollment,” he said, adding it’s a regular practice for the division to adjust the number of teachers annually to match the number of students.
The director of education said there will have to be a hard look at school board member pay, professional development and expenses, which will be standardized across the province with an eye to save money.
“There’s strong direction from the government to reduce costs related to governance.”
There was also some question in the past about the division’s ability to access its reserves it has saved over the years. The budget has answered that question.
“We’re happy that we’re able to access our reserves, our school division surplus, so we have to consider how much of that we’ve targeted from programs.”
The division also won’t face amalgamation with others. Kevin Doherty, the finance minister, said the public spoke strongly against the move.
“MLAs reported back that they were swamped in their offices – particularly rural Saskatchewan.”
Yet that victory for school divisions doesn’t come without a price.
“We recognize that there are efficiencies that have to be had – and can be had – and that’s why we’re going to make changes to the Education Act where the Minister of Education can be proscriptive and can provide not just direction, but some decision-making on some of these things going on in school divisions that do not occur right now.”
Rempel said that’s going to be achieved in part by making grants conditional – meaning the division will have no choice but to spend certain grants to items they target. The conditional grants will include minor renovations, plant renovations, maintenance, school community council funding, school board member education and governance. For governance and school board member education in particular, spending cannot exceed what’s in the grant.
School divisions will also look at joint purchasing and procurement, as well as sharing services between each other like payroll.
They will also have to work to reduce salary expenses by 3.5 per cent.
Rempel said these decisions have cleared up a lot of uncertainty that has been affecting the division over the past year or so.
There was also good news for the future of a new school in Carrot River.
“The big one for us on capital is that Carrot River consolidation moved up the list to number three,” Rempel said, adding that it was number five last year.
